Win8.1/Chrome 64bit: NPAPI Flash Player crashes on every page with Flash content

[MrX1980]

Hi,

Chrome 64bit (beta+) crashes on Win8.1 64bit, if I use the NPAPI Flash Player (v15 beta or v14 stable) and open a website with Flash content.

More details here:

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=402262

[jeromiec83223024]

Thanks for the head's up.  Chrome is dropping support for NPAPI entirely this year, and we're not investing engineering or testing efforts there.  It's unlikely that we'll fix this bug, but it would be good if we can prevent the NPAPI plug-in from being listed as an option in 64-bit Windows browsers.

If there's a particular issue with the PPAPI version of Flash Player that ships with Chrome that's compelling you to fall back to the NPAPI version, I'm definitely interested in trying to get it resolved.  Hardware Acceleration is working in Chrome now (that was a pretty recent change), so we should be very close to parity at this point.

[MrX1980]

Hi Jeromie,

thanks for the info.

I switched to NPAPI to test the v15 beta. Chrome Canary has currently v14.0.0.177 built-in.

The PPAPI beta version only exist as "content debugger" so I decided to use NPAPI for my tests.

Will there a "none content debugger" PPAPI beta version coming soon ?

In the meantime I will do my tests with the PPAPI content debugger.

[jeromiec83223024]

Yeah, sorry.  I realized after the fact that you were talking about the beta.  One of the challenges with conducting the beta program is that we don't control big chunks of our distribution pipeline.  At the moment, we have no mechanism by which we can ship betas for Windows 8 at all, and betas on Chrome are conducted as part of Google's typical testing strategy.  There is no way for us to distribute a release PPAPI plug-in for Chrome, and overwriting the exiting files has the potential to break future automatic updates in Chrome, so we don't go there.

In general, Chrome deviates in a couple ways.   We provide them with beta builds around the time that we ship our weekly builds.  Depending on their internal testing priorities at the time, they may choose to surface new Flash Player builds to either Canary, Dev, or not at all, and the build may only be pushed to a subset of the population. 

In short, while beta testing for the purposes of stability is being conducted on Chrome, there's not a guaranteed way that you can get ahold of the latest beta build.  Installing the Chrome dev and canary channels is your best bet, as new Flash Player builds do typically move through those stability branches on their way to stable.

The other thing to note is that while we will typically move on to the next major feature-bearing milestone, Chrome will typically ship betas specific to each monthly milestone release, so where you might get a Market or Noe beta in our beta channel, they may be serving a Market+1 or Market+2 beta instead.

[MrX1980]

Update:

39.0.2171.13 beta-m (64-bit) and 40.0.2184.0 canary (64-bit) are working again.

38 final still crashes

[jeromiec83223024 · Accepted solution]

Great to hear.  It sounds like it was resolved on the Chrome side.

My understanding is that NPAPI will be switched off by default in Chrome soon.  Again, PPAPI Flash Player has matured significantly at this point.  If you're still running into issues that make the NPAPI Flash Player superior for your use-case, let's talk about them.  The goal is to have the plug-ins at parity, and the window for having an NPAPI option is quickly closing.

Thanks!

[philochs1]

Turning off NPAPI in Chrome 64-bit will be a very bad move. I'm using a Windows 7 Setup, with a Core2Quad 65 nm CPU and a pathetic Geforce GT 8500 GPU that is basically worthless. PPAPI  flash betas are available as a standalone now at this point, but I have done lots of side by side comparisons, and the PPAPI plugin is absolute garbage compared to the far superior Netscape architecture based plugin. I'm not the only one saying that. I have found loads of forums, and instruction videos online to fix Chrome video playback on youtube for instance. I have to install "Magic Actions for Youtube" addon for chrome so that I can disable HTML5. then I have to go into the plugins menu on chrome and disable pepper flash. I keep the 64 bit flash betas regularly updated this way, and I am getting peak performance. Once in a blue moon it will crash, but I think that is Google's fault. HTML5 should not be the default option in youtube. Compared to Flash, it does not have great GPU acceleration ability, and HTML5 in 64-bit doesn't even perform superior to 32 bit web browsers, where as 64 bit flash is a leap forward, as long as it's the NPAPI version, that is. Problems I have with the HTML5 and also Pepperflash are very similar.   The audio is out of sync with video, and the cpu is maxed out from memory leaking. I'm skipping frames and seeing glitches left and right. The seek functions in pepperflash never work right on youtube, you have to click an inch before wherever you want the video to play. On and on. Pepper flash has audio crackle. You can't get rid of the crackle from pepper flash or HTML 5. Yet, with NPAPI 64 bit flash beta in 64 bit chrome canary it plays PERFECTLY. once in a while I have it crash, which i think is the fault of the fact that I have to use an add on to force off HTML5. Why would I want html5, when flash NPAPI  64 bit produces superior picture quality on all quality settings. It's better in every conceivable way. Shame on Google for not putting more care into 64-bit flash on 64-bit Chrome. It couldn't possibly be a more important deal! You can tell pepperflash and HTML 5.0 are an afterthought. It's only youtube playback quality. why would that matter to google? OMG...  

While I'm at it, I have one other issue that blows my mind. Adding command line flags in Chrome 64-bit (Canary) in Windows. Why do we have to add them through a shortcut in the "target" line? The target line runs out of space after 3 or 4 commands! I wish they would update Chrome Canary to allow for unlimited command lines to be added. It should be an option to add Command Lines on the About:Flags screen. I am so disappointed in these two glaring issues. It keeps me up at night.