Flash Player - Black Screen

Report · Sep 24, 2014

Hi,

I have had a long term problem, that is Flash Player just won't load, it's just a black screen.

The problem is in all my browsers: Chrome, Opera and Explorer. They are all updated versions.

Flash Player is up to date.

Display-driver is up to date.

Any suggestions to why Flash don't work?

At the moment I can't study courses on Open2Study.com or watch youtube videos.

Report · Sep 25, 2014

It's really interesting that it's in all browsers, as they're all significantly different, and the Chrome installation in-particular is bundled as a component of Chrome and is encapsulated from the other Flash instances on your system.

My gut says there's third-party Security / Anti-Virus / Anti-Malware / Privacy software involved. Does that ring any bells for you?

Report · Sep 25, 2014

Thanks for answer. I tried uninstalling my Comodo internet Security and turned off Windows firewall, but the problem still occurs.

Weird thing is if I log off youtube in Chrome or Opera, then youtube will work for a while. When I log back in it stops working.

In Explorer I'm not logged on to anything and it usually works (but not always).

At the moment Youtube works on Opera but not this welcome video (embeded youtube): https://www.open2study.com/

This problem is so random, but I appreciate any suggestions.

All browsers passed this Flash test: http://www.snailsanimation.com/benchmark08_play.php

I'm beginning to think youtube have it in for me:P

Report · Sep 26, 2014

Yeah, this is super weird. What OS and version are we talking about? Have you tried disabling hardware acceleration?

Also, YouTube serves mostly HTML5 video these days. You can check by right-clicking on the YouTube player. You'll either see Adobe Flash <version> or HTML5 Player listed. I'm wondering if logging out is changing the balance of whether you're getting more or less Flash videos.

Report · Jun 15, 2015

Please work through the video troubleshooting guide.

https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/video-playback-issues.html

Do you see either the HTML5 or Flash video? What happens when you disable hardware acceleration?

Report · Jun 14, 2015

At our office, we are debating on whether to include Adobe Flash videos from YouTube on our own website ( coursesnow.com.au ) but are worried about these technical issues causing disruptions for our students. What would you guys recommend? Is there a helpful or safe way to provide assistance for some users who are not able to see the videos? Is there a way to embed code / link for them to use? Not sure

Report · Jun 15, 2015

Well, the right choice for you depends on your overall business needs (do you only want paying students to see your videos, do you want to keep them from being shared, etc). There are a lot of specialized video hosting providers out there, many built on top of Flash technology, many that are technology agnostic and transcode and resize videos to deliver whatever the best stream for the particular client is.

YouTube probably has the largest video streaming deployment, and they provide HTML5 video with Flash fallback in most cases these days. If your end-user can't watch YouTube videos, I think you're going to struggle with them regardless of the technology you choose. When you have a deployment as big as Youtube or Flash Player (~1.5Bn users), you're going to see everything that can possibly go wrong with a config in the course of daily operation. Video is also complex. There are a lot of things between the video streaming server or CDN and the end-user that can affect the quality of the connection, and you're dependent on the user having decent hardware and drivers (and low end OEMs frequently integrate cheap hardware with poor driver support -- there's a reason that a dirt-cheap laptop is cheap). For users with intermittent playback problems, there's typically a connectivity issue in play somewhere along the route, but there's little recourse to provide aside from "talk to your ISP".

So, if you want a bullet-proof, no-excuses solution for students, you might want to think about providing both the stream and the ability to download for offline viewing (as long as you don't mind the potential for the media being shared). Users with poor connections can still grab the videos, and they have a variety of desktop/mobile video player options in addition to the browser at that point.