Flash not working with jpay

Question

My foster son has started video visits with his bio dad who is incarcerated. We're required to use Jpay, which was kind of working this summer, but now I can't get the video to work. The audio is fine, but no video. I have updated everything, checked all the settings, but it won't work anymore.

I'm using a Samsung chromebook to connect, and I've ruled out its a hardware issue, as I zoom with it multiple times weekly.

jeromiec83223024 · Accepted Answer

Just as a head's up, on January 12th, Flash Player is no longer going to load content from the open web.

I see questions from JPay users on a regular basis, and I'm always somewhat surprised (and somewhat not) that they're still requiring Flash Player. We announced in 2017 that it was going away (along with browser plug-ins in general) at the end of 2020. Background: https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/

Given the potential impact to the families that depend on it, I've been wondering about what their transition plan is. As a paying customer, you might want to reach out and ask. At the very least, if you know that there's a technical train-wreck coming on their end, you can at least prepare your son for it.

For the more immediate issue, if you haven't rebooted the laptop, that's a great place to start. Make sure that you have the latest Chromebook updates installed. We definitely haven't changed anything in Flash Player recently with regard to webcams.

You can click the lock next to the address of the website to see if Camera/Mic and Flash permissions are allowed, and if you right-click on the Flash content and choose Global Settings, you should get a webpage that has the camera/mic settings for Flash Player in the context of Google Chrome. Unless someone accidentally clicked deny on a permission prompt, it's unlikely that this will help.

If you had another tab going in the background that maybe was keeping the camera busy, that might be what's going on. Rebooting should solve that, too. If you have an adblocker or something, you might try disabling it.

If none of that helps, here's a random webcam test: https://www.onlinemictest.com/webcam-test-in-adobe-flash/

It would be interesting to know if it's all webcam activity in Flash, or maybe something specific with JPay...

Hope that helps!

jeromiec83223024 · Answer

Yeah, that's odd. Chrome and ChromeOS are making changes in anticipation of Flash Player EOL and the subsequent jettisoning of the plug-in interfaces we use to work inside the browser. This allows them to jettison a lot of code that they no longer need, and they're doing a lot of modernization work in parallel. I've seen a couple things get dinged in the process, but I'm not aware of a widespread camera problem.

I'd definitely try rebooting the laptop. I'm curious if that other webcam test works for you. If it also fails, it's probably a decent substitute for testing jPay. If not, it sounds like there's some other technical thing happening. If some underlying driver crashed, rebooting will solve it (at least until you hit the condition that caused the crash again). If that doesn't help, it would be interesting to know what happens with an incognito window.

Also, I think when I originally responded, I was assuming you were talking about the webcam feed from your laptop not working (dad can't see kid), and not the video feed coming from bio-dad's computer (kid can't see dad).

Just to make sure that we're communicating well, which one is it?

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