Hardware acceleration doesn't work anymore since version 10.2.153.1

[Jagiel]

Hi all,

Today I updated my flash player to the newest version and its hardware acceleration stopped working. Everything was ok with previous version (10.2.152.32 I guess). I tested it on YouTube - now I get "undefined video rendering" instead of accelerated. Sometimes, when I go to fullscreen before playing the video acceleration turns on but when I go back to the normal mode it shows as undefined or software video rendering. On the other sites (vimeo, dailymotion) I can't open "show video info" dialog so I can't check it but I see more CPU usage in my task manager. Anybody with the same problem?

OS: Windows XP SP3

Browser: Firefox 4 and IE 8 (tested on both)

Graphic card: GF 8600GT

Drivers: Nvidia 266.58

Flash version: 10.2.153.1

EDIT: I downgraded the flash player to previous version (after uninstalling the newest) and hardware acceleration still doesn't work. So what may be the problem? I didn't install any windows or drivers updates lately. I also checked my GPU load (with GPU-Z program) and it's 0% on every video site.

[Guest]

Hi there,

I'm having a different problem to you, but I have a similar configuration and am also using Firefox 4. Since the latter now supports HTML5, try joining the Youtube HTML5 trial which you can do @ http://www.youtube.com/html5 The player will automatically switch if to HTML5 available (Google is in the process of converting its db to work with the new standard).

If that doesn't bring you any joy, use the uninstaller: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html reboot and then run the installation again.

For IE8, the uninstaller you run for FF4 will also uninstall it from there too when you run it, so launch IE8, go to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ and reinstall it from there.

My own problem (just in case you know the answer) is that I can play flash videos everywhere except http://www.liveleak.com/ When I click a link to a video in FF4, the player is invisible even though I get audio.

[Guest]

Hi, From what I have read the latest Flash Player update was Security related, so that shouldn't have had any effect on H.A.

What could have happened is that maybe the Uninstall wasn't "clean" and left an older file in your System32 Flash folder.

In IE>Tools>Internet Options>Security Tab, it's set to Medium right?

Also IE>Tools>Manage addons, under "Show" (light text) look in All addons or Run without Permission for Shockwave Flash Object. Make sure it's enabled, but also the vs is 10.2.153.1.

Have you tried going to the test site and Right clicking on the Flash Player logo, then Settings>Display Settings and turning H.A. on there? http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

Just a few things to check.

eidnolb

[Jagiel]

@Xircal: Thanks, HTML5 feature on YouTube is very promising and works like a charm but HD videos consume even more of my CPU power than not HW accelerated flash.

@eidnolb: I used the uninstall procedure with Adobe uninstaller and I cleaned my system deleting both Firefox and IE plugins. I have hardware acceleration turned on in the settings.

I don't know what to think anymore. I tested the Stage Video (this is the HW acceleration, isn't it?) on Adobe site - http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/stagevideo.html and it works fine. With Stage Video turned on my CPU usage is ~10-20% and ~40-50% otherwise. I found people with similar problem but it looks like this problem is with YouTube's player only - http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=3809a51e02813930&hl=en .

How can I check if hardware acceleration is used when I watch a video on website? YouTube allows to "show video info" where I can see "undefined video rendering" now but on the other sites there is no such option and I can only watch my CPU usage which is not the best way to tell. GPU-Z shows GPU usage on Stage Video site. On YouTube, Vimeo and other it's only few % or zero. Maybe it's a problem with the onsite players, not with flash player itself?

[Guest]

Hi Those Stage Video samples are awesome:-) If you have H.A. turned on then it's on for videos, whether Youtube or any other video. Now with the Flash Player vs 10.2.152.32, there was an issue with H.A./FP & Youtube videos. Adobe & Youtube have both been working on this issue. From what I've read and been told, yes it may very well be with the Players.  Others are turning off the H.A. and or making sure their video card driver is updated to the latest. Then if that doesn't help, they just turn H.A. off.

Whether you saw the Sticky when first entering the Flash Player Forum at the top, I don't know. However, The Flash Player Team are trying to document these issues. If you would like to give them feedback, I'll post the link that has what you would forward to them.

Link: Troubleshooting and Reporting Flash Player Video Issues

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/839/cpsid_83952.html        
This includes all Platforms

One of the Flash Player Team, Chris Campbell may have some additional information for you, since he does post on the Flash Player Forum. I think that would be helpful for you.

Also they would be interested in knowing that the FP 10.2.153.1 has caused some change but unknown to you.

I'll see if I can find the bulletin on the latest FP update, but I'm almost sure it was only Security related as I said.

Now we have FF4.0 and IE9 in the mix. Glad to see you still have IE8:-) Both need some tweaking from what I've seen on the threads. Both seem to be causing various issues.

Thanks,

eidnolb

[Guest]

Jagiel, you talk a lot about your CPU, but where h/w acceleration is concerned, it's the graphics processor which does all the hard work.

What kind of graphics card do you have in your system and what driver version do you have installed?

If you've enabled h/w acceleration in any video you've played, then it remains valid for every other video you play no matter where it's located.

I'm just guessing now, but I would imagine that the last Flash update took into account the fact that HTML5 is going to become the forerunner in the graphics world because of its abilities. That said, Adobe won't want to lose business to its competitors. So I would imagine that the last upgrade will have been quite a significant one. That being the case, then it will also require a high end graphics processor to run Flash videos from now on.

I figure also that Microsoft's decision not to make IE9 available to Windows XP users is going to mean that many of them will switch to Firefox 4 because the latter supports HTML5 whereas IE8 doesn't. Firefox is free whereas IE9 requires the user to install Windows 7. Yet Win 7 will only be supported until the end of next year while Windows XP support continues until 2014. So there's no incentive to switch to Win 7 just to get hold of IE9.

But like I say, I'm only guessing....

[Jagiel]

@Xircal: As I mentioned in my first post, I have GeForce 8600 GT with latest official drivers from Nvidia. I don't know exactly when hw acceleration stopped working. I just tested it after last Flash Player update and was surprised because days/weeks ago it worked on YouTube, changing my core 2 duo usage from 40-60% to 10-20%. I just hope it's YouTube player problem and if I turned hw acceleration on, it's turned on everywhere.

[Guest]

Apologies for that one. I should have looked again at your original post. And yes, the 8600 GT should be more than adequate.

What kind of results so you get for the Google speed test @ http://www.youtube.com/my_speed# ? At the foot of the page, there's a link to a video where you can view the raw data. I get the undefined...etc., message myself when I play it.

Something else you could consider doing is to download videos you like to your own machine. For that you'll need Firefox 4 and a couple of extensions. The latter are Flash Video Downloader @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flash-video-downloader-youtube/ and VLC Player @ http://www.videolan.org/ (Windows Media Player doesn't support Flash). Installation is a piece of cake and you don't need to reboot the PC: just restart Firefox.

It would also be interesting to know whether you get the same problems playing files locally rather than over the Internet.

[Jagiel]

That test page says that my avg speed is 17Mb/s and the test video has "undefined video rendering". I can download videos from YT via sites like www.keepvid.com - there are FLV and MP4 (HD is available only as MP4) version to download - both are supported by my WMP (through my video codecs) so I guess I can't test Flash Player "on my machine". However I tested downloaded flv and mp4 files in WMP and VLC and my GPU usage is 0%. I presume it's because they're not played by Flash plugin like in a browser. I'm waiting for YouTube to upgrade on-site player to work like few weeks ago.

[Guest]

You're very lucky if you can squeeze 17 Mb/s out of Youtube. I only average 9 Mb/s, but presumably, you're located in the US whereas I'm over the other side of the pond in the Netherlands.

I wouldn't hold your breath concerning YT upgrading again any time soon somehow. They already performed that task this time last year and are concentrating now on converting their whole dbase to HTML5. Google recently made its VP8 codec open source which enabled Mozilla and Google Chrome among others to back HTML5. In the YT HTML5 trial, most of the videos will be delivered by WebM: http://www.webmproject.org/

Similarly, there are free open source players appearing on the market now like VideoJS: http://videojs.com/

So there's really not much incentive to use a player which appears to be problematic. Bad news for Adobe I know, but that's progress for ya I'm afraid.

A thought just occurred to me: this machine of yours; is a laptop or a PC?

[Jagiel]

Nope, I'm from Poland, not US, so we're on the same side. I just have an access to a good local ISP. And my machine is a PC, not laptop.

I'm just wondering if the hardware acceleration couldn't be forced by Flash Player plugin in every situation its used (of cource if the client machine is supported)? This should be Adobe's feature, not on-site's players.

[Guest]

I wonder if I could sign up to the same ISP then...lol

As for h/w acc., I think it is if "enable h/w acceleration" has been checkmarked in the control panel (?)

[Jagiel]

Not exactly, this option just enables the possibility of hw acc by client. As far as I know the flash video host have to enable acceleration also in its on-site player. If this option was the only requirement, every flash video/game would use GPU.

[Guest]

If the animated stage video @ http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/live-player/ is anything to go by, I'm not very impressed. It used 61% CPU on my system as can be seen in this screenshot: http://img861.imageshack.us/i/stagedvideo.png/

The muppets video on YT @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbNymZ7vqY used 22% CPU using HTML5. I played both videos full screen.

[Jagiel]

And you have similar machine to mine? In possesion of what CPU you are? I'm using core 2 duo E4400 (2GHz), also 4GB RAM. On the Stage Video test page my CPU usage is max 20% just as YouTube's accelerated videos. HTML5 versions vary, some like muppets use ~20% but some use even 60-70%.

[Guest]

In trying to solve my own problem, I posted my system specs here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/3587710#3587710

Why did you choose a 64-bit OS? It's good for notebooks because it offers better security, but a 32-bit system is still more than adequate for PCs in my opinion.

Message was edited by: Xircal

[Jagiel]

Why do you assume that I use 64-bit OS? Maybe because I wrote "4GB RAM". I have 32-bit XP so it sees only 3,5GB. I'm going to change to Win7 x64 but not yet, maybe after upgrading my machine.

[Guest]

Sorry, got bogged down yesterday trying once more to fix my own problems with Flash.

Yes, I figured you had a 64-bit OS because you had 4GB RAM.

Up to you of course, but if you only have one 8600 GT with probably a max 512MB RAM onboard, there's not much danger of running low on memory addresses. If you had two of them, then they would map something like 1GB RAM which wouldn't leave you with too much to play with, but with just one, you should still have around 1.3GB RAM available for apps which is more than adequate for a 32-bit OS.

[Guest]

Hi, Here is the link for the Security bulletin for Flash Player of 3/21/11, followed by the one for Adobe Reader/Acrobat, etc.

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb11-05.html

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb11-06.html

Just for the record, IE9 is available for Vista & Win7. Not XP as Xircal said MS better make a sweet deal for the many businesses that use XP. MS knows XP still has the Market share

On MS ending support for Win7 at the end of next year. I doubt that since it hasn't been MS's pattern. When they do end support for Win7, you can be sure Win8 will be released, which they no doubt already are working on:-)

I know you had no problem with FP vs 10.2.152.32, and you could roll back to that. However, I would wait until Chris Campbell receives your info if you sent it.

Patch Tuesday was on 3/8/11 but I can't remember without checking if there were any updates to IE. Just from memory I think there were. Sometimes various updates cause a glitch too. I wish they would space them out, so if there is a problem you can know which update may have caused it.

Thanks,

eidnolb

[chris.campbell]

Hi,

I suspect what's happening here is that YouTube recently made changes on their side that disabled StageVideo under certain conditions.  This change has been most prominent on Windows, but as you noted it sometimes works during full screen playback.  We've been actively investigating the issues reported in the forum (both here and on youtube's.)  We're trying to find reproducable cases where the video playback is black/white yet the audio still works, corrupted video, or other issues with hardware acceleration enabled.  If you'd like, we'd love to get your feedback on a few tests:

Testing Steps:

1. Verify that the Flash setting "Enable hardware acceleration" is checked.  For instructions on finding this setting, please see step 1 of our Troubleshoot video playback issues document. Ignore the instructions to uncheck this setting, we want hardware acceleration to be enabled for the first pass (make sure “Enable hardware acceleration” is selected/checked.”)

2. Navigate to: http://www.youtube.com/embed/tgbNymZ7vqY?wmode=direct

Does the video playback correctly with…

Hardware Acceleration Enabled (Yes/No):

Hardware Acceleration Disabled* (Yes/No):

3. Navigate to: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/live-player/

Note: I have seen buffering/bandwidth issues with this video, what we're looking for here are display issues (black screen, corrupted video, etc.)

Does the video playback correctly with…

Hardware Acceleration Enabled (Yes/No):

Hardware Acceleration Disabled* (Yes/No):

*If you encounter problems with either of these two videos, please disable hardware acceleration from step 1 (uncheck “Enable hardware acceleration”) and try again.

Thanks,

Chris

[Jagiel]

@chris.campbell: Thanks for the info, so this is on-site player's fault, not Adobe's? I tested all the situations and videos plays fine everytime - with HW acceleration turned on and off. My GPU takes part in rendering on this YouTube video ("accelerated video rendering" in "show video info") and with Stage Video turned on. Why acceleration can't be forced in every situation and we can see "undefined video acceleration" in non-fullscreen mode?

[chris.campbell]

Jagiel wrote:

@chris.campbell: Thanks for the info, so this is on-site player's fault, not Adobe's?

I wouldn't charactarize it as fault.  With the release of Flash Player 10.2 some customers reported issues with Stage Video.  YouTube and Adobe are just working together to reduce, isolate, and fix the problem using all means necessary.  I don't anticipate that this will be the final resolution, things are still changing.  Please don't hesitate to bring these issues up, we'll do our best to investigate and help clarify.

Thanks,

Chris

[thecapsaicinkid]

Ubuntu 64bit

Chromium

Flash 10.2 r152

Nvidia VDPAU working as expected

I have not once seen YouTube report anything other than Undefined/Software video rendering. The Big Buck Bunny test video on the Adobe site reports Stage Video as yes with cpu around 60%. VERY frustrating.

[chris.campbell]

@thecapsaicinkid: I asked around and found out that hardware decode is disabled on Linux for 10.2 due to stability issues.  You can override this by setting OverrideGPUValidation to 1 in your mms.cfg file, though it's very possible it will cause stability issues.  For more details on doing this, please see:

Secrets of the mms.cfg File

Chris

[thecapsaicinkid]

Hi Chris,

I have this option in the /etc/adobe/mms.cfg, still no joy.