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guitaaron1999
Participating Frequently
November 7, 2013
Question

Flash very slow and crashes in Adobe Connect Meetings

  • November 7, 2013
  • 2 replies
  • 6894 views

Hardware: 2011 iMac / Intel i5 / 8GB RAM

Software: OSX 10.9 (Mavericks), Flash Player 11.9.900.117

I'm having serious problems attending meetings that use the Adobe Connect platform on a Mac.  I thought this might be because of the Adobe Connect plugin, so I uninstalled it and just logged into Adobe Connect meetings within the browser (which just uses the flash plugin), but the problem persists.  Basically, the performance is really laggy, e.g. clicking on buttons or entering things in the chat box meets with a 30-90 second delay.  Also, connection drops about every 5 minutes and I have to start my webcam again.

I talked to the school's tech support (this is being used for an online class), and they related that they've been getting a lot of calls from Mac users lately on this issue.

I've tried this in Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Firefox with the same result.  Also tried clearing cache first, that didn't work.  Also tried completely uninstalling flash and re-installing, as well as disabling hardware acceleration.  There's nothing really indicative of a .plist corruption in the console log either (I still tried clearing all the preferences and cache files for Flash anyway).  I'm fresh out of ideas.

Although I recently upgraded (last week) to OSX 10.9, the same behavior was present in 10.8.

Question is:  Is there a fix or work-around here, or am I just going to have to give up and use a windows machine?

As a side note, I have a work laptop that runs windows and both Flash and  Adobe Connect plugin works great on it, which rules out the possiblity of a bad router, ISP problems, etc. etc.  Basically I'm pretty confident the Flash plugin is just not playing nice with Apple (which has historically been the case, but c'mon).

Thanks,

-Aaron

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

J
jasgaralli
Participant
November 27, 2013

Hey there Aaron, this is Jon from tech support at your program.  We spoke the other day regarding your findings.  Could you contact me when you get a chance?  I was wondering if you've tried the latest version of the Connect Add In (11.2.392.0)?  It can be found on the following page:  http://helpx.adobe.com/adobe-connect/kb/latest-connect-91-addin.html (Please scroll to the bottom half of the page and manually install it, as it is not listed on the Connect Add In downloads and updates page).

Also, do you experience the same problems on your Mac when you launch a meeting in the browser directly, rather than in the Add In?  To launch a meeting in the browser, take the meeting URL and append the following to the end of it in the address bar:  ?launcher=false

Try either of these and let me know how it goes for you please.  You can contact Student Support, and ask for Jon in tech support.  Otherwise, I still have your email address so if you say it's ok to contact you there, I can send you my direct line.

G
guitaaron1999Author
Participating Frequently
December 4, 2013

Jon,

Thanks for the tech support over the phone.  I was relieved to hear lots of other people are having the same problem.  Answer to all questions is "yes", I have the latest versions of Connect Add-In and Flash Player, and I've tried both with and without the Add-In.

In addition to the troubleshooting steps outlined earlier in this thread, here's a recent update of what I've done and what I think is going on.

1.  Attempted to use the "legacy" camera driver provided.  No difference in behavior.

2.  Noticed it's now only my 2011 iMac that has the problem.  I also have an employer-owned MacBook Pro (i7 processor running Maverics, same version of Flash and Connect Add-In).  The MacBook Pro works just fine - no problems.  Upon discovering this I started comparing what the two computers were doing.  The PlugIn Process was accessing a bunch more libraries on the iMac.  There were also some strange WebKit Console errors on the iMac that weren't on the laptop.

3.  I eventually did a clean install Mavericks on the iMac, figuring there was some long-since-uninstalled software that messed up some libraries or environment variables or something somehow.

4.  The clean install did not fix the problem (but it did fix some unrelated .dylib problems I was having).

5.  I deleted the .plist flie (/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.cmio.VCDAssistant.plist).  That seems to have fixed the problem.  After discovering this I compared it with the same plist file on the laptop.  They are IDENTICAL.  So basically I simply disabled the driver and so the problem is going to come back eventually.

One thing I noticed is virtually everybody posting a similar problem in Adobe forums or elsewhere has some version of AMD Radeon GPU.  My MacBook has an NVIDIA GeForce card, but the problematic iMac has the AMD GPU.  I'm beginning to suspect there's some issue with AMD Radeon cards, or their drivers.

The work-around I finally found was to use Linux inside a VM to connect to the meetings.  Or use my work laptop.

A
Anonymous
November 7, 2013

Many people on my team (including myself) use Connect frequently on our Macs - including 10.7.5, 10.8 and 10.9. A few weeks ago, we discovered that due to an update to Safari, it was blocking Flash for Connect. The warning would appear for about one millisecond and then disappear. As a result, Connect would launch without the browser. We did not have this problem in Firefox and we don't use Chrome (per Adobe). The solution we found was, in Safari, to go to Preferences, Security, make sure that your Connect URL and Flash are selected, then go to the dropdown menu and select "Run in Unsafe Mode". While this is not the same problem, it's worth a try to see if that helps. We are finding that we sometimes have to do this with other Flash-based sites if they become inoperable.

Good luck,

Dave

G
guitaaron1999Author
Participating Frequently
November 7, 2013

Yes - same thing here with Safari 7 (Incidentally, that's not Adobe's fault per se - I have to use the same "Allow in Unsafe Mode" work-around to make my employer's java-based VPN work).  Anyway, like I said the Flash issue in Adobe Connect rooms is the same in ALL browsers, not just Safari.  It seems to work marginally better with Firefox, but there are still issues.

I read somewhere that Apple and Adobe have actually (try not to fall out of your chair now) started working together to make Flash better for Mac users, and they've been noodling around with APIs and things in recent updates.  If that's the case the hiccups in Flash 11.9 may just be growing pains we just have to live with (i.e. use windows for Connect meetings).

If anyone knows a workaround or fix though - messing with a plist file, running some shell script, changing some setting or whatever - I'm all ears!

Aaron

A
Anonymous
November 9, 2013

Has anyone tried installing an older version of Flash (assuming it's available)?

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