flash videos in browser appear with significant blue tint

[pjnlsn]

flash videos both in chrome 12.0.742.91 and firefox 11.0 have significant blue tint

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: flashplugin-installer 11.2.202.228ubuntu0.11.10.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-14.23-generic 3.0.9
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-14-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: ksplice_g6womdkg ksplice_69jl89fo_vmlinux_new ksplice_69jl89fo ksplice_zlzbw2cw_vmlinux_new ksplice_zlzbw2cw ksplice_k8ao09pg ksplice_gea56ucd ksplice_snfmikjc ksplice_5uh2o0i5 ksplice_48wgulg8 ksplice_jeb7x3e3 ksplice_8gzyckli_vmlinux_new ksplice_8gzyckli ksplice_nmgoytmh ksplice_7o21lvr4_vmlinux_new ksplice_7o21lvr4 ksplice_ue5blqob ksplice_rwyjsfd0 ksplice_s1qmnmdk ksplice_zwyfjfb3_vmlinux_new ksplice_zwyfjfb3 ksplice_lr4wjak7_vmlinux_new ksplice_lr4wjak7 ksplice_7if1yy66 ksplice_l2plnan5 ksplice_wfs9xkoi ksplice_4nectugu ksplice_9bakhml4_vmlinux_new ksplice_9bakhml4 ksplice_g2iq9hgg_vmlinux_new ksplice_g2iq9hgg ksplice_ivdmbca9_vmlinux_new ksplice_ivdmbca9 ksplice_pov4jpg6 ksplice_rgrco3rw_vmlinux_new ksplice_rgrco3rw ksplice_6fc35wv1_vmlinux_new ksplice_6fc35wv1 ksplice_oatj7hk1_vmlinux_new ksplice_oatj7hk1 ksplice_ua8irfcl ksplice_d9jso9ok_vmlinux_new ksplice_d9jso9ok ksplice_0ifczr9k_vmlinux_new ksplice_0ifczr9k ksplice_xm2sx4t6 ksplice_a8d7cs8q ksplice_fzdptkdf_cfg80211_new ksplice_fzdptkdf ksplice_gaf23dbh_cfg80211_new ksplice_gaf23dbh ksplice_e7cmagxs ksplice_i9idsmnt ksplice_oa42n40n_vmlinux_new ksplice_oa42n40n ksplice_r613bn73 ksplice_y7fdps2v ksplice_nl6rqtz0_cfg80211_new ksplice_nl6rqtz0 ksplice_jxrogqzh_mac80211_new ksplice_jxrogqzh ksplice_zcmnkyw5_mac80211_new ksplice_zcmnkyw5 ksplice_0lpvo61e_vmlinux_new ksplice_0lpvo61e ksplice_ggzraxz6_vmlinux_new ksplice_ggzraxz6 ksplice_20ixptrv ksplice_qcvwx1ur_vmlinux_new ksplice_qcvwx1ur ksplice_mg2tblj1 ksplice_xes5p16x_vmlinux_new ksplice_xes5p16x ksplice_zkdcv04b ksplice_4w95q65q_vmlinux_new ksplice_4w95q65q nvidia
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Mar 29 14:24:39 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.1)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: flashplugin-nonfree
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2012-02-06 (52 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Francis De Brabandere (francisdb)]

http://askubuntu.com/questions/117127/flash-video-appears-blue-ubuntu-12-04/117297#117297

[Francis De Brabandere (francisdb)]

Is this an early April 1st joke? Bit strange that only skin color is affected and everybody turns smurf :-)

[Hendrik van Wyk (tonberry)]

This only seems to affect my computers that have Nvidia display cards. My laptop with an Intel display card works fine.

[Hendrik van Wyk (tonberry)]

Possibly related/duplicate Bug #968489.

Also possibly related Bug #424864. If this is related then it seems nvidia cards like blue for some reason.

[Francis De Brabandere (francisdb)]

I can confirm I have an nvidia card:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G98M [Quadro NVS 160M] (rev a1)

with current recommended nvidia driver

[Francis De Brabandere (francisdb)]

And I'm having this since about tuesday on 12.04 beta

[HorstBort (haukemuentinga)]

I can confirm this bug with 12.04 Beta 64 Bit.

Geforce GT240 with nvidia-current 295.33-0ubuntu1

Uninstalling libvdpau1 resolves this issue for me.

[Francis De Brabandere (francisdb)]

Uninstalling libvdpau1 also fixes the issue here

[Pascal Bergmann (pbergmann)]

confirmed for
ubuntu 11.10
flash version 11,2,202,228
nvidia gtx 570, driver version 295.33

changing x server xvideo setting (deactivate sync to vblank and setting gue to 0) seems not to work.
removing libvdpau1 helps for now.

[pst007x (turone)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/968489

[enedene (enedene)]

Same here:
Kubuntu 11.10,
Flash - Version: 11.2 r202
Shockwave Flash: 11.2 r202
GPU: nvidia 9800GTX+ proprietary drivers

What works is disabling hardware acceleration on youtube videos , go to settings of a video, uncheck and refresh the page. Of course this causes higher CPU usage.

[Tom Schönlau (joyce-666)]

Confirm from Ubuntu 11.04... since my last Update (don't know if Flash or Nvidia was updated) i get those "smurf videos" in youtube as well. Disabling the Hardware acceleration in the Flashvideo did fix it... although this couldn't be a solution.

[Udovdh (udovdh)]

This problem might be more common than on Ubuntu and nvidia as I see it on Fedora 16 with ATI (radeon git)

[Jan Vlnas (jnv)]

I guess that problem started for all of us with Flash Player 11.2 released on March 28 – indeed, release 11.1 (which can be downloaded at http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html ) doesn't seem to have the problem with swapped U/V components.
Looking at release notes – http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/release-notes-flash-player-11_20120305.html – 11.2 introduced "Multi-threaded video decoding" which was "written ground-up". Maybe version 11.1 doesn't use VDPAU at all.

As I have written in #968489, there are many bug reports on Adobe's bugtracker – see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/968489/comments/15
The most recent response from Adobe's staff from February – at https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3120888 – is: "[...] we do not support Linux anymore post 11.2". There you go, Adobe doesn't give a f***k and we can only wish for a quick and painful death of Flash plugin on the web.

So to sum it up I think we have currently these options:
- switch to older version of Flash Player – can't recommend since there are unfixed vulnerabilities; however 10.3 line seems to be still maintained
- uninstall libvdpau1 – not recommended since you can still use HW acceleration in desktop players like Totem and mplayer
- disable HW acceleration in Flash – the easiest way to go; however the settings window doesn't respond under Compiz so you'll have to switch to e.g. Unity 2D to untick that checkbox
- fix the problem at libvdpau level – there's somewhat hacky patch by Nvidia which swaps U/V planes at libvdpau level when the tracing is enabled: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=2518770#post2518770 – so far this seems to be the only solution how to use the most recent version of Flash Player with hardware acceleration and correct colours
- use native HTML5 video on YouTube – just a quick fix for blue kittens: http://www.youtube.com/html5

I wonder if any other GPUs are affected too – Udovdh mentions ATI and I've seen some reports with Intel GMA. To my knowledge, only Nvidia supports VDPAU, Intel has VA-API and ATI has XvBA. It would be really surprising if Flash could use all three of them – and not so much surprising if all three options were broken.

[Mathieu Marquer (slasher-fun)]

Workaround :

sudo mkdir /etc/adobe
echo -e "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1\nOverrideGPUValidation=true" | sudo tee /etc/adobe/mms.cfg > /dev/null

[jelyfish (gerharter11)]

For what it is worth -I'm only seeing the blue tint with youtube. Vimeo for example works fine.

[Mathieu Marquer (slasher-fun)]

Note that my workaround in comment 17 makes Flash to become pretty unstable (plugin crashing)

[Jan Vlnas (jnv)]

Jelyfish: This really depends on how the video player is implemented, from what I have found only YouTube, Brightcove (which is used by many other sites), and Viddler use Stage Video. See http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/stagevideo.html – there's a nice demo with Big Buck Bunny where you can switch between Stage Video and regular video to see the bug in action.

Mathieu: Same problem here, EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode makes the plugin very unstable.
This also explains why `EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=0` doesn't disable Stage Video acceleration, apparently it's a different function than HW video decoding on Linux…

[ishai levy (ishai-levy-gmail)]

Also confirmed on Ubuntu 10.04 with chrome 18.0.1025.142 and Firefox 11.0
Also using Nvidia driver. Disabling hardware acceleration seems to work.

Nvidia driver: nvidia-173-modaliases 173.14.22-0ubuntu11

[Udovdh (udovdh)]

FWIW: git radeon does vdpau too, see http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature#Feature_Matrix_for_Free_Radeon_Drivers.

[Udovdh (udovdh)]

@jnv: doe we have (software) test cases for each of VDPAU, VA-API and XvBA to see if we can determine if the error is on Adobe's player or in Linux driver-land?

[Jan Vlnas (jnv)]

Udovdh: In case of VDPAU, there's tracing available which is the best way to determine what the applications sends to the GPU.
But since Flash Player is doing hardware detection on its own, I'm afraid it won't be easy to mock another hardware and change Player's behaviour.
Given how the aforementioned patch for libvdpau works, we can assume that the problem is on Adobe's end (Flash Player sends wrong data), since none other player with VDPAU support has the same problem.

The only other case I can think of is broken feature detection, where the NVidia driver (or less likely libvdpau) gives Flash Player incorrect information, but I don't find it very likely; I believe NVidia would fix their driver (given that their staff actually care about this issue) and Radeon didn't have the same problem.

Moving on to bug #967091.

[Ole Jon Bjørkum (olejonbj)]

Same problem here. Downloaded 11.1 and put it libflashplayer.so in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins (works in Chrome as well).

http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/installers/archive/fp_11.1.102.63_archive.zip

[Clarence Harre;; (charrell5)]

I removed libvdpau1 and it worked for me

[Luis Alvarado (luisalvarado)]

I removed libvdpau1 and it fixed everything for Firefox/Chrome on all sites. I have an Nvidia 440GT card if this helps.

[anders (anderspn)]

I got the same problem when upgrading to 12.04. The following solves the issue for me:

sudo mkdir /etc/adobe
echo -e "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1\nOverrideGPUValidation=true" | sudo tee /etc/adobe/mms.cfg > /dev/null

From: http://askubuntu.com/questions/117127/flash-video-appears-blue

[Aliasbody (aliasbody)]

It is a problem with flash and the Hardware Accelerated feature provided by it. You have 2 choices, or you disable it in the flash plugin "right click on a flash content and then select Settings and disable the Hardware Acceleration, or you'll have to wait for a correction.

Here with my 9800GT (latest proprietary drivers), chromium (latest) and flashplayer (latest) it works like a charm but I already had a similar problem.

The problem can come from the libvdpau librarie.

Adding those lines into the /etc/adobe/mms.cfg file can solve the problem too :
EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1
OverrideGPUValidation=1