Comment 113 for bug 967091

I have tested PepperFlash in Chrome Dev build (unstable). It doesn't have this bug – guessing from the CPU usage it seems it really uses hardware decoding by default. Before jumping in, note that it has still many unrelated flaws, e.g. fullscreen doesn't work and it can sometimes speed up video playback. It's a development version after all, don't be surprised if it deletes your data and eats your lunch.

Maarten, thanks for pointing that out. What I like about this patch is that it pinpoints libflashplayer and can be easily turned off using configuration file. I think it's PPA-worthy; patched libvdpau1 can be provided as an easy workaround for affected users. Nonetheless it's still a (hopefully temporary) workaround.
VDPAU_DRIVER env variable is safer and cleaner, but I am afraid also not so easily deployable. It means a modification of browsers' launch scripts (or creating wrappers), possibly messing with file diversion to keep changes across browsers' updates. Unless there's some way to deliver this variable specifically to Flash Player's binary; something like a wrapper library?

Alex, thanks for the HOWTO. You can also pin the libvdpau1 package to prevent updates:
$ echo libvdpau1 hold | sudo dpkg --set-selections

See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PinningHowto