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Very slow full screen flash

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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rafael23s
Posts: 79
Joined: 2011-03-12 21:05

Very slow full screen flash

#1 Post by rafael23s »

For some reason, when I play, for example, Youtube videos in full screen mode, they get REALLY slow. The same happens when I increase the resolution to something higher than 360p.

My Debian version is Squeeze 64 bit,; my video board is Radeon 6250 HD, and I use the Catalyst proprietary driver. As to flash, I use flashplugin-nonfree, from the nonfree repositories.

Is there a way to fix this problem?


Thanks

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dasein
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Re: Very slow full screen flash

#2 Post by dasein »

Real-time Flash (such as YouTube) is very CPU-intensive (especially in either/both full screen or HiDef). What's your CPU spec?

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bw123
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Re: Very slow full screen flash

#3 Post by bw123 »

did you try out the squeeze radeon or radeonhd driver? I like gnash, it doesn't crash but fullscreen lags. flashplayer-nonfree is smooth fullscreen but crashes several browsers constantly. I can't use ATI, cuz I'ma legacy or something, it won't run on xserver 7.7 with my board.

here's some places to start lookking

Code: Select all

lspci | grep VGA
cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep render
cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep DRI
dmesg | grep modesetting
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rafael23s
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Re: Very slow full screen flash

#4 Post by rafael23s »

My processor is AMD C-50, dual core, 1GHz. I really believe it is fast enough to run full screen flash videos...

Here are the outputs to these commands:

lspci | grep VGA
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 9804

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep render
(nothing)

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep DRI
(II) Loading extension XFree86-DRI
(II) Loading extension DRI2
(==) fglrx(0): NoDRI = NO
(II) Loading extension ATIFGLRXDRI
(II) fglrx(0): DRI initialization successfull
(II) fglrx(0): [DRI] installation complete
(II) AIGLX: Loaded and initialized OpenGL driver(II) GLX: Initialized DRI GL provider for screen 0

dmesg | grep modesetting
(nothing)

I have tried the radeonhd driver, but 3D applications such as Stellarium didn't run very well...

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bw123
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Re: Very slow full screen flash

#5 Post by bw123 »

Oh yeah definitely you can do fullscreen, I can run flashplugin-nonfree fulscreen and at about 60-80% cpu on my old sempron. Like I said though, it often crashes the browser right when you open the page and the content starts to load. browser-plugin-gnash is very reliable but lags fullscreen, so go figure...

Like I said I can't use the ati driver but I've been reading up on video a lot on radeon boards. Here's some links might help.

Try an open source driver first, tweak it a little before you give up. xorg.conf is a pain, but it's not too bad if you just start small with a Device section to chage drivers.

I think you'll need the latest stuff for sure from backports. You can probably use either radeon or radeonhd?
http://www.x.org/wiki/radeon/

this is an unofficial faq of some kind for fglrx
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Debian

That's a pretty new device I think so you might do the backport kernel thing and reinstall the fglrx. I don't think it plays nice with upgrades to X or the kernel, lags behind in support of latest X version maybe.

http://wiki.debian.org/ATIProprietary
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Re: Very slow full screen flash

#6 Post by craigevil »

I can watch full screen flash in Chrome or Firefox will no problems.

Code: Select all

Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RV200 [Mobility Radeon 7500] 
           X.Org: 1.12.1.902 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1024x768@60.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x209) GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.3
Firefox uses flash 11.2 while Chrome uses 11.3

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1
$ apt-cache policy flashplayer-mozilla
flashplayer-mozilla:
Installed: 3:11.2.202.236-dmo1
Candidate: 3:11.2.202.236-dmo1
Version table:
*** 3:11.2.202.236-dmo1 0
500 http://www.deb-multimedia.org/ sid/non-free i386 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status


$ apt-cache policy google-chrome-stable
google-chrome-stable:
Installed: 20.0.1132.57-r145807
Candidate: 20.0.1132.57-r145807
Version table:
*** 20.0.1132.57-r145807 0
500 http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable/main i386 Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Code: Select all

Flash (2 files) - Version: 11.3.31.115
Shockwave Flash 11.3 r31
Name:	Shockwave Flash
Description:	Shockwave Flash 11.3 r31
Version:	11.3.31.115
Location:	/opt/google/chrome/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so
Type:	PPAPI (out-of-process)
Raspberry PI 400 Distro: Raspberry Pi OS Base: Debian Sid Kernel: 5.15.69-v8+ aarch64 DE: MATE Ram 4GB
Debian - "If you can't apt install something, it isn't useful or doesn't exist"
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dasein
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Re: Very slow full screen flash

#7 Post by dasein »

rafael23s wrote:My processor is AMD C-50, dual core, 1GHz. I really believe it is fast enough to run full screen flash videos...
I wouldn't be so sure. In my experience with "netbook" class processors, it really comes down to a matter of: streaming, fullscreen, HD--pick any two. A subset of 720p flash videos will stream tolerably well on that hardware in fullscreen mode. But many simply will not.

But it's easy enough to test. Take one of the HD videos where you're experiencing a major slowdown and save it a local file, then play the local file fullscreen. If it plays well, then that's a reasonably strong indication that the issue is the (significant) extra burden that streaming places on the CPU.

rafael23s
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Re: Very slow full screen flash

#8 Post by rafael23s »

dasein wrote:But it's easy enough to test. Take one of the HD videos where you're experiencing a major slowdown and save it a local file, then play the local file fullscreen. If it plays well, then that's a reasonably strong indication that the issue is the (significant) extra burden that streaming places on the CPU.
I can play normally any video with resolution up to 720p, in fullscreen mode, using mplayer.

So, can I tell for sure that it is a CPU problem?

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dasein
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Re: Very slow full screen flash

#9 Post by dasein »

rafael23s wrote:I can play normally any video with resolution up to 720p, in fullscreen mode, using mplayer.

So, can I tell for sure that it is a CPU problem?
It's most likely a CPU problem. The underlying cause of the issue is that Adobe's Flash "player" is an Actionscript Virtual Machine that does a lot more than just play media. (Or at least this is the rationale that Adobe uses to explain why Flash is such a CPU pig.) This is also why Flash performance is so variable across different browsers.

A couple of options you might want to explore:
Or you can scale back your expectations. ;) Like I said, full-screen, streaming, or HiDef: pick any two.

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dasein
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Re: Very slow full screen flash

#10 Post by dasein »

Just an update...

I didn't actually take the time to read it in detail, so I'm not sure how applicable it might the to the OP's situation. But I ran across a blog post that seems to suggest that disabling compositing in one's WM might have a beneficial effect.

http://blogs.adobe.com/penguinswf/2008/ ... e_gpu.html

Edit One obvious way to confirm that this is a CPU issue is to have a "top" session running while visiting YouTube. Don't be too worried about any specific process; just keep an eye on total CPU use.

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