[hardy] flash plugin can't play videos at all then other program is using audio device

[ogc]

Binary package hint: flashplugin-nonfree

It's impossible to watch videos in youtube then other program is playing sound.
Steps to reproduce:
1)Have some video playing in vlc for example,
2) go to youtube and try to watch video,
3) It plays for some 2 seconds and stops. If you try to seek video, it starts playing for 2 seconds again.

Flash plugin should be able to play video, although it didn't have access to audio device.

This happens with both Firefox and Epiphany.

[John Leach (johnleach)]

Confirmed here on Hardy, latest updates from the repository. Play for 2 to 3 seconds with no sound output then stops (though the vid keeps buffering). Seeking starts again for 2 - 3 seconds. If I kill the pulseaudio daemon and reload the page, the video plays perfectly, with sound.

If I remove the libflashsupport package (which I have to force, because flashplugin-nonfree depends on it) things works as expected: flash movies play - alongside music from totem or whatever too.

So I think this is actually either a bug with libflashsupport or pulseaudio, though I'll leave as flashplugin-nonfree.

Additionally, I can't output sound using pulseaudio. If I set the sound preferences to pulseaudio and click test, I hear no test sound. Sound *input* works with pulseaudio though.

ii flashplugin-nonfree 9.0.115.0ubuntu4
ii libflashsupport 1.9-0ubuntu1
ii pulseaudio 0.9.9-1ubuntu2

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=8.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=hardy
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu hardy (development branch)"

[John Leach (johnleach)]

This appears to have been fixed with the latest updates. I've got all my sound settings to pulseaudio now, and flash movies play fine with sound. Can you confirm ogc?

[ogc (hackrez)]

No, still the same for me, although I haven't tried fresh install.

On Tue, Mar 11, 2008 at 1:55 PM, John Leach <email address hidden> wrote:
> This appears to have been fixed with the latest updates. I've got all
> my sound settings to pulseaudio now, and flash movies play fine with
> sound. Can you confirm ogc?
>
>
>
> --
> [hardy] flash plugin can't play videos at all then other program is using audio device
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/196470
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Ernst Persson (ernstp)]

Are you on 32-bit or 64-bit?

[ogc (hackrez)]

I'm on 32-bit

[ogc (hackrez)]

Strangely flash video works correctly (even with sound) if you have totem in background, but not with vlc, sox, or aplay

[kimus (kimus)]

my youtube flash videos also stops! :-S
but I think this happens with or without another player in background

[Kevin Oberle (kevin.oberle)]

I can confirm this when listening to amarok and watch a youtube video. Very Annoying:(

[Gordon (masterlight)]

I am listening to Amarok in the background and am unable to play flash movies . . it either stops like a quarter into the movie and has no sound or youtube.com just simply closes the browser completely.

[Bang Malley (bangmalley-deactivatedaccount)]

any fixes?

[Barteq (barteqpl)]

Yep. I hadexactly the same problem. It is fixed, but only when you install fixes on new, empty os..

So for you there is an advice - reinstall pulseaudio and libflashplugin support for ex this way : apt-get install --reinstall pulseaudio libflashsupport
Second thing is to change everything to pulseaudio in "system->preferences->audio settings".

I'm just after those operations and now audio works fine even in flash r48 under Opera and on r115 under Firefox 3.

You have to know that flash is closed commercial software with MANY bugs. One of this bug`o`features is usage of ESD daemon to play sound.
libflashsupport is a wrapper to pass through flash sound to pulseaudio server so it's good to have it installed.

[Maftoul Samuel (samuel-maftoul)]

Is this still present ?
Seems to work for me, I've update from gutsy to hardy , currently using banshee and youtube video loads.
Closing it, reopen if still occurs.

[Bang Malley (bangmalley-deactivatedaccount)]

thanks Barteq, it works=)

>Yep. I hadexactly the same problem. It is fixed, but only when you install fixes on new, empty os..
>
>So for you there is an advice - reinstall pulseaudio and libflashplugin support for ex this way : apt-get install --reinstall pulseaudio >libflashsupport
>Second thing is to change everything to pulseaudio in "system->preferences->audio settings".
>
>I'm just after those operations and now audio works fine even in flash r48 under Opera and on r115 under Firefox 3.
>
>You have to know that flash is closed commercial software with MANY bugs. One of this bug`o`features is usage of ESD daemon to >play sound.
>libflashsupport is a wrapper to pass through flash sound to pulseaudio server so it's good to have it installed.

[Kevin Oberle (kevin.oberle)]

I attempted Barteq's fix... it didn't work. So I wiped and installed the beta version of hardy. It all seemed to go fine. But this bug is still happening with Amarok /youtube . I even went under the sound properties and switched everything to pulse audio. Still the exact same behavior. No sound, then the clip stops after 2 seconds.

[Kevin Oberle (kevin.oberle)]

Woops sorry, forgot to mention, totem does not cause this problem. I can listen to flash audio and totem at the same time.

[Bang Malley (bangmalley-deactivatedaccount)]

use esd for amarok fix it too.

[Valentin Neacsu (valentin.neacsu)]

I have the same problem: when last.fm player is in the background I can't play any flash movies with sound - they stop 2 seconds in. I'm running Hardy Beta on a Dell Inspiron 6400/E1505.

[Kevin Oberle (kevin.oberle)]

Ok i was able to get amarok working with flash by changing it from autodetect to pulse audio. This should be selected by default though right?

[LeeV (leev)]

I have this problem too.

In System/Prefs/Sound menu, changing the Sound Events, Music and Movies, and Audio Conferencing to the PulseAudio Sound Driver, fixes YouTube videos in Firefox, but breaks Amarok, which gives a "Xine was unable to initialize any audio drivers" error message.

In Amarok, there does not seem to be an option to the set the output plugin to PulseAudio.

[Colin Gebski (colin-gebski)]

Same problem.

When amarok (using xine) plays something, Flash (plugin nonfree) is unable to play a video from youtube.
The youtube player stops after about 2 seconds of video with no sound.

When Firefox plays a youtube video, amarok is unable to play anything (Audio output unavailable; the device is busy.)

I'm up to date and tried what Barteq said.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Colin, please run these steps again:

>So for you there is an advice - reinstall pulseaudio and libflashplugin support for ex this way : apt-get install --reinstall >pulseaudio libflashsupport
>Second thing is to change everything to pulseaudio in "system->preferences->audio settings".

I'm just after those operations and now audio works fine even in flash r48 under Opera and on r115 under Firefox 3.

Please attach the output of of apt-cache flashplugin-nonfree, apt-cache libflashsupport.
You might also need to install clean Ubuntu as stated in comment
>Yep. I hadexactly the same problem. It is fixed, but only when you install fixes on new, empty os

This is not a bug Ubuntu can fix in flash however flash should have libflashsupport as depends (can someone please confirm that it does in latest version of flash?)

Flash source is not free so we are unable to change it to help with this issue so please file bug with upstream flash on this issue and please give us bug URL here. If you would like to see this changed in Flash.

[LeeV (leev)]

This isn't a Flash issue, this is a sound issue. If I start up Totem Movie player and play a video, then start Amarok, Amarok gives an "xine was unable to initialize any audio drivers" error...
So it's not Flash, it's having two programs trying to make sound at the same time...

Can we have this bug renamed please?

[Kevin Oberle (kevin.oberle)]

This bug is already fixed for flash. The problem now is that amarok is using alsa and is not capable of using pulse. It's causing the same symptom (youtube video problems) as this bug was in the begging.

So in summary:

1) Bug as described was present for all audio and flash video.
2) Was fixed in flash for all audio accept amarok, because amarok was still using alsa. The user could manually change the xine engine over to pulse audio in amarok's configuration which would make youtube and amarok work together in harmony.
3) Pulse audio option has since been removed from amarok causing the symptoms of this bug to reappear but only for amarok.

So because this is no longer a flash problem I will set this bug to fixed. Here is the bug for the amarok problem: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/amarok/+bug/211006.

[Satoshi Tanabe (stanabe0917)]

I installed Hardy RC and had the same problem (Youtube played without sound when Totem was running).

Installing libflashsupport from Synaptic fixed this problem in my case:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=708907&page=2

[Kevin Oberle (kevin.oberle)]

Satoshi Tanabe: Unfortunatley, this is intentional because libflashsupport is causing a large number of crashes. Anyway I still filed a bug for it here: https://launchpad.net/bugs/220033.

[Brad Jensen (bradwjensen)]

OS: Ubuntu (Hardy Heron Final)

Browser: Firefox

Plugin: Non-Free Flash

Problem:
Played a YouTube video just fine with sound. Then I started up Banshee and played 2 seconds of a song then paused it - went back to YouTube and tried playing a song and it has no sound.

[Ben (b3nw)]

Interestingly enough I also had this problem.

But when I installed the http://flashblock.mozdev.org/ extension on firefox, I no longer had the issue. Something to do with not permitting everything to auto load, and allowing me to one by one click flash I wanted to see blocked the issue.

This is not a fix, but a good bandaid for those who want to use it + pulseaudio.

[hertz (aliencek)]

Installing libflashsupport from Synaptic fixed this problem for me too.

[m2matson (m2matson)]

"Ok i was able to get amarok working with flash by changing it from autodetect to pulse audio...."

Thanks Kevin, that fixed the Amarok/Firefox-flash problem.

All, do the following (in Amarok):
- goto settings > Configure Amarok > Engine
- change "output plugin" from "auto-detect" to Alsa or Pulseaudio

[EzNet (zeroezezero)]

Although there seem to be many work-arounds for specific program combinations, none really seem to address or resolve the issue completely for all applications. Although I was able to gain additional stability through some of the aforementioned methods, there are still programs that wreak havoc when trying to use them simultaneously along side of flash - for me, notably Last.Fm's player.
No matter what I do, when I load firefox (and flash) first, Last.FM reports the 'ALSA error'. When I load Last.FM player first and then attempt to play a flash video, I get 2 seconds and then the video playback hangs... Has anyone found a 'real fix'?

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

EzNet wrote:
> Although there seem to be many work-arounds for specific program combinations, none really seem to address or resolve the issue completely for all applications. Although I was able to gain additional stability through some of the aforementioned methods, there are still programs that wreak havoc when trying to use them simultaneously along side of flash - for me, notably Last.Fm's player.
> No matter what I do, when I load firefox (and flash) first, Last.FM reports the 'ALSA error'. When I load Last.FM player first and then attempt to play a flash video, I get 2 seconds and then the video playback hangs... Has anyone found a 'real fix'?
>
>
This is fixed in flash version 10 and as of this moment its in intrrepid
only i have build hardys in my PPA but i can push until we figure out if
this is going to be in -proposed>-updates or -backports.

--
Sincerely Yours,
    John Vivirito

https://launchpad.net/~gnomefreak
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JohnVivirito
Linux User# 414246

[asdf (asdf123123-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

This worked for me since flash got alsa support. It's really amazing, how you always manage to break everything and annoy your users with it.

[Das Auge (0815jo)]

I am using Kubuntu Jaunty and have the problem again. I was playing with amarok, and then opening a youtube video.

[Jānis Kangarooo (kangarooo)]

I have no audioplayers open and this problem started for me 1 week ago. On yt plays all ok but on other pages when different flash player playing it loads all then plays only for 2 seconds. on some pages after restart but not after log out/in flash works but as i said to some sites witth different flash players its playing only 3 seconds