Adobe Flash: some content is garbled

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WvR · Post by **WvR** » Tue Aug 27, 2013 11:04 am

I recently updated my computer to Gnome-3.8 and systemd. In the process, I simplified my USE-flags considerably. After the update, it seems that most things work fine. There is one minor nuisance, which is that some streaming content in flash is no longer played back correctly. Most of YouTube plays fine, but for instance a hotel website where I wanted to book a room was not visible - just white, black and red patches. I have used that site before without problems.

I have set the ffmpeg flag, and tried with several other USE flags but until now no effect. Does anybody recognize this problem?

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Tue Aug 27, 2013 7:26 pm

I have seen this before, I think. Since flash is a closed source package, I don't think emerging stuff will fix much...

I however think it has something to do with the video driver - what video card are you using? The machine I have that exhibits this issue is an 3g Core i5 built-in graphics... And it exhibits this behavior when the flash window is partially obscured by scroll bars. But it's the only machine I've seen this on... Hmm.

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 7:12 am

I'm going to bump this. I recently had another issue with my flash...well, it... flashes.

Meaning that some flash windows within firefox seems to be flashing at about 5Hz. I think this is cross-hardware now as my ati fglrx box also is also exhibiting the problem...

benny1967 · Post by **benny1967** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 7:02 pm

Mhm... I have problems with flash, too. Can't tell when exactly it started, must have been 2 or 3 weeks ago.

In principle, flash works fine with Firefox here. But it fails as soon as the flash-content reaches the edge of the window. This means that I can play YouTube (even fullscreen) as long as I keep the window as it is, but as soon as I scroll down and make the video touch the upper edge, it's like Lego stones allover. Like MPEG-artifacts, only more chaotic and bigger.

It's especially annoying with big Flash-based ads that usually sit on the side of the viewable area. The whole thing flickers so much it could probably cause seizures.

Funny thing is that Opera, on the very same web pages, shows no such problems.

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 7:38 pm

I picked up flash 11.2.202.297 on Jul 31ish 2013. I'm not sure when I started seeing this problem, it may be partially to do with firefox 17.0.8 as well, which I emerged on Aug 14 2013...

I'll have to see what the behavior of my other machines that I have not updated and ones that have problems, might be an upstream problem with one or the other...

Quincy · Post by **Quincy** » Sat Sep 14, 2013 11:31 pm

Seems to be an issue connected to Firefox in my case, as the same webpages play the videos without any artifacts in opera...

evoweiss · Post by **evoweiss** » Tue Sep 17, 2013 9:30 pm

Hi all,

I have found the source of the problem, but don't know how to fix it. The problem seems to be connected, in my case, with adblock plus being on. If I disable adblock, everything works fine again. Of course, that's not an ideal situation, but it suggests where the problem lies.

Best,

Alex

dE_logics · Post by **dE_logics** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 4:15 am

If you don't want distractive ads, just disable flash via ploff extension for FF.

evoweiss · Post by **evoweiss** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 10:14 am

Hi,

dE_logics wrote:If you don't want distractive ads, just disable flash via ploff extension for FF.

Thanks, but that's not the problem I'm trying to address. The problem, as noted in the thread, is distortion and the inability to watch some videos. Having adblock plus installed seems to lead to this problem or at least contribute to it.

Best,

Alex

mrbassie · Post by **mrbassie** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 2:41 pm

I get completely garbled video on certain sites using certain players. Youtube and dailymotion are fine, content on some other sites like skysports.com are perfect in full screen but completely unwatchable in an embedded frame. I don't use an extension to block ads, I do that with /etc/hosts.

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Wed Sep 18, 2013 3:20 pm

It's kind of funny: The garbled flash that I see are mostly advertisements. Perhaps it's the advertisers' best interest to fix this else we're not seeing their ads :)

dE_logics · Post by **dE_logics** » Thu Sep 19, 2013 3:30 am

mrbassie wrote:I get completely garbled video on certain sites using certain players. Youtube and dailymotion are fine, content on some other sites like skysports.com are perfect in full screen but completely unwatchable in an embedded frame. I don't use an extension to block ads, I do that with /etc/hosts.

YES YES YES....

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-970322.html

evoweiss · Post by **evoweiss** » Sat Sep 21, 2013 7:10 pm

eccerr0r wrote:It's kind of funny: The garbled flash that I see are mostly advertisements. Perhaps it's the advertisers' best interest to fix this else we're not seeing their ads

It is mostly ads that show this, but also some legitimate websites. It is, to say the very least, annoying. I cannot find anything on Firefox forums, etc.

Oh yes, I'm using a nvidia card (173 drivers).

Best,

Alex

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Sun Sep 22, 2013 10:10 pm

I just picked up Firefox 17.0.9 from portage, so far so good...

mrbassie · Post by **mrbassie** » Mon Sep 23, 2013 1:33 pm

eccerr0r

I've got it too, no change for me.

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Mon Sep 23, 2013 2:01 pm

Yep spoke too soon, it still flashes... :(

mrbassie · Post by **mrbassie** » Mon Sep 23, 2013 3:05 pm

It's quite recent, It's got to be the current flash version in the portage tree.

evoweiss · Post by **evoweiss** » Tue Sep 24, 2013 8:11 am

Hi,

I may have fixed it, but I don't know because I am not sure what websites do and don't work off hand.

Anyway, I unemerged adobe-flash and re-emerged it.

Also, I'm not sure if this was part of the solution, but, between the two times I manually installed an earlier version, which would have been wiped out by the re-emerge.

Alex

evoweiss · Post by **evoweiss** » Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:27 pm

Correction... still screwed up.

evoweiss · Post by **evoweiss** » Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:31 pm

Also, backing up to flash player 11.2.202.297 did not work, either.

I also just tried to remove the .mozilla directory to try and isolate a bad setting. That didn't help either.

Final update. It's definitely flashplayer.so. I downloaded an older version (ffp_10.3.183.90_archive.zip) rom the Adobe archives, copied libflashplayer.so into the directories its usually found in and video works flawlessly.

Alex

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Wed Sep 25, 2013 10:03 pm

Yes, 297 does not work. I was just updating my netbook that had 297 installed with firefox 10.0.6 which had the drawing issues. So it's definitely a flashplayer problem...

And *sigh* all old portage versions are gone... Would need to grab an old one from Adobe if they still have...

evoweiss · Post by **evoweiss** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 11:14 am

Hi,

eccerr0r wrote:Yes, 297 does not work. I was just updating my netbook that had 297 installed with firefox 10.0.6 which had the drawing issues. So it's definitely a flashplayer problem...

And *sigh* all old portage versions are gone... Would need to grab an old one from Adobe if they still have...

Oddly enough, I am running version 11.2.202.310 on my work computer (Ubuntu) and cannot detect the problem. That machine is not running off a nvidia card, but only what comes built into an i5 processor.

Best,

Alex

mrbassie · Post by **mrbassie** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 1:54 pm

evoweiss wrote:Hi,

eccerr0r wrote:Yes, 297 does not work. I was just updating my netbook that had 297 installed with firefox 10.0.6 which had the drawing issues. So it's definitely a flashplayer problem...

And *sigh* all old portage versions are gone... Would need to grab an old one from Adobe if they still have...
Oddly enough, I am running version 11.2.202.310 on my work computer (Ubuntu) and cannot detect the problem. That machine is not running off a nvidia card, but only what comes built into an i5 processor.

Best,

Alex

It's not an nvidia problem, I'm using intel hd.

eccerr0r · Post by **eccerr0r** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 2:30 pm

Yes this is for pretty much any video I think, I have yet to try my nvidia cards though.
The video drivers I have this issue:

Intel-HD 4000 (Core i5 builtin)
RadeonHD 5770/FGLRX
Intel 945GM (my netbook - eeePC 900A)

evoweiss · Post by **evoweiss** » Thu Sep 26, 2013 2:55 pm

Hi,

eccerr0r wrote:Yes this is for pretty much any video I think, I have yet to try my nvidia cards though.

I noticed that my kubuntu distribution is running Firefox 24. I'll emerge it, try to see if it works, and will report back.

Best,

Alex