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Since updating to Flash player 30.0.0.113 our Windows 7 PC's are no longer able to view Skype Broadcast events. Reverting the PC back to an older Flash version resolves the issue. Though as you can imagine this is not a path we want to take for multiple reasons.
We've already opened a premier support case with Microsoft about this issue. They've confirmed this is a Flash issue, but claim they have no way of interfacing with Adobe directly and asked us to open a case with Adobe. Since I was unable to find a way to open a support case with Adobe I'm posting this here in hopes that someone from Adobe can assist. I have contact info for Microsoft engineers who worked with us on this issue whom are ready to work with Adobe if needed. Likewise if someone from Adobe can provide me a non public method of communication I can share a link to a broadcast so you can see the issue yourself. I've already tried the EnableInsecureByteArrayShareable and EnableInsecureByteArrayShareableDomain options outlined in Flash 30 release notes with no changes in the behavior.
The issue we see is the video never starts. We just get a spinning wheel as shown in the below screenshot. This only occurs on Windows 7 with Flash 30.0.0.113 in the IE (11) browser. Chrome 67.0.3396.87 works fine (currently at least). Windows 10 is also currently working fine.
I've been investigating a similar issue here:
Videos fail on Windows 7 since Flash Player 30.0.0.113 installed
In that instance, toggling the EnableInsecureByteArrayShareable flag *did* resolve this. Apparently there's some handshake stuff happening in the background that used Shareable ByteArrays for inter-process communication. The team working on the actual video technology is actively engaged and working to remove this dependency.
I suspect that in your instance, a similar approach may act
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We have noticed the same results in our environment Brian.
Windows 10 users are not affected on Internet Explorer 11 as it has built in flash and doesn't use the Adobe Flash ActiveX.
Edge and Chrome work fine because they use HTML5 to display the video.
The older version of the Flash Active X plugin also works successfully - however v30 patches security vulnerabilities - so obviously not a good security practice to roll back to an older version.
The affected environment is Windows 7 users - Internet Explorer 11 with v30.0.0.113.
We also found that this affects all the videos shared in Office 365/SharePoint as well.
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I've been investigating a similar issue here:
Videos fail on Windows 7 since Flash Player 30.0.0.113 installed
In that instance, toggling the EnableInsecureByteArrayShareable flag *did* resolve this. Apparently there's some handshake stuff happening in the background that used Shareable ByteArrays for inter-process communication. The team working on the actual video technology is actively engaged and working to remove this dependency.
I suspect that in your instance, a similar approach may actually work. The mms.cfg file needs to be saved as UTF-8 or ANSI (we see a lot of issues related to people saving the file with more esoteric encodings for some reason), and you would need to either whitelist the right set of domains, or just enable the shared bytearray feature across the board.
I'd recommend just doing a double-check, making sure that mms.cfg is in the right locations, that the file is saved with a supported encoding, and that you have the right directives and values specified.
See Page 54/55 for details on those directives:
If that doesn't help, it would be helpful if you could send me a link to a skype broadcast that demonstrates the problem, if that's possible. Feel free to shoot me a private message -- just click my username.
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@jeromiec - Thank you very much for your assistance!
Adding EnableInsecureByteArrayShareableDomain=*.broadcast.skype.com to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg resolved the issue.
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Hello Jeromie,
I was able to resolve the issue using your fix. I tested first by enabling across the board which fixed it. For security sake, we will locate the source domains and enable just for those domains.
Thank you for the quick turnaround!
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Sweet, glad I could help!
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It's not about built in Flash, post Windows 7 OSs don't use Adobe Flash at all for Skype broadcast instead they use HTML5 streaming media, therefore, we don't see this problem on Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.
Windows 7 doesn't fully support HTML5, thus it uses Flash for Skype broadcast:
System requirements are stated in the following documentation:
What is a Skype Meeting Broadcast? - Skype for Business
Plan for Meetings clients (Web App and Meetings App) | Microsoft Docs
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Issue is resolved with latest Adobe update v 30.0.0.154
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Yes, thanks for the reminder. Tuesday's release (in tandem with an update to Microsoft's video player) removes the dependency on the functionality that was impacted, and gets video playback working again. You shouldn't need the mms.cfg flags anymore after updating to the latest Flash Player, and we'd recommend that you remove them from your deployments.
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Could you please update the kb number which needs to be installed with Flash Update
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That's a great question for Microsoft. Flash Player is a built-in component of Internet Explorer and Edge. Microsoft handles the packaging and distribution of Flash Player through Windows Update.