Archive for the ‘Flash Player’ Category

How to speed up Linux Flash Player videos in Firefox on old Computers

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Firefox browser cache variables to tune for better Flash player performance Linux screenshot
 

If you happen to run old Computer hardware with lets say 256 or 512 MB of memory, a CPU of 600-800Mhz and a small hard disk like 5 / 10 GB and you need to have Flash Player on Firefox play Videos in Youtube and Vimeo with as less obstructions as possible, it is useful to take a look and try tuning up browser caching values, to do so type in URL Address Bar


about:config

iceweasel about:config Iceweasel Firefox about:config screenshot in URL address bar

Then search for;

browser.cache

Iceweasel Firefox browser cache screenshot Debian Gnu Linux screenshot tiny

Raise (tune up) the values for:

browser.cache.disk.capacity 1048576

Try to raise this value with 50% (524288), (1048576 + 524288) = 1572864.

By default, as you see

browser.cache.disk.enable is set to false

Try to change it to true, as this might have positive effect on flash video buffering and thus improve a bit experience.

browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value 358318

Again it is good practice to try raise it with 50% and test if Flash Player performs better. I.e. (358318/2) = 179159, (358318+179159) = 537477. Hence raise it too lets say 358318. I give the 50%, example because the cache size on Firefox (IceWeasel) will differ depending on the browser version Linux distro and architecture.

There are few other caching, variables to tune, though I doubt if they will have impact on Flash Player performance it is good to know they're there. To see all Mozilla caching variables in Search filed, type "cache". One other non Flash Player performance related variable to check and tune is:

image.cache.size

In time of writting on my Firefox ver. 18.0.1 it is set to 5242880.
I'm looking forward to hear if this little tuning tips helped improve Flash Player. If you happen to have some positive impact on Video flow, please drop a comment with Linux distribution type and version, Flash Player version and changed caching variables.
Hope this little post helps. Happy tuning 🙂
 

how to set Youtube default to use Adobe Flash player – fixing weird problem with youtube displaying videos using HTML5

Tuesday, January 29th, 2013

 

Youtube change html trial to Adobe Flash Player - how to change Youtube videos be played with Adobe Flash Player

I'm just coming from being a guest to dear friends. They're having a bit old hardware PC running Windows XP and some old ATI Radeon model video card. A video was played in youtube so I noticed the video is displaying very slow. The PC hardware was good enough to play videos with no delays and image chops, so I give it a check.
My guess was something is wrong with Video driver and to make driver is installed okay I take a look in:
Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager

For my surprise there all was fine, so my next guess-es were:

  • Mozilla Firefox Browser is out of date
  • Computer resolution is set to too high for the old video adapter hardware
  • Something is wrong with Adobe Flash Player
  • Computer has Viruses or Spyware loading CPU creating the video lags
     

I check Mozilla Firefox and it was latest version; Help -> About Firefox As of time of writting Firefox 18.0.1 The computer Monitor was a huge 21 inch LCD HP display and Windows was configured to display on a very high resolution ;

1280×1024 (32 bit Colors)

I've earlier, seen old Computer hardware creating similar video delays and chop issues with Played videos thus to see if this will solve the issue lowered down video resolution 1024×768 with 16 bit color depth.  Video continued to be showing slowly in every few seconds and display "choppy", so I excluded it as cause.

To make sure something is not wrong with Flash Player, I check in browser about installed plugins by typing in URL Address bar;

about:plugins

Very surprisingly the Flash Player was not installed! I hurried and install – googling, "install flash player" and following the trivial install procedure.

Then I give Firefox a restart and tested video with Alexander Nevsky Russian Movie (which btw is an interesting one to see for people who value art and history). The movie chops continued, I checked Flash version clicking on the video again just to determine, weirdly still Youtube was displaying videos usiong HTML5 (WebM) format!

I check once again if flash player is properly installed in about:plugins and weirdly all seemed fine I had on the PC properly working installed Adobe Flash 11.x.x. Now this was weird ?

For a first time I had a situation, where even though I installed Flash Player, Youtube continued to show videos using HTML5 WebM (open source video format). Now I should say I'm a big fan of HTML5 and open technologies, so HTML5 is great, the only problem is it still not production ready so for ordinary user Flash Player is still better – Flash's video buffering is much better, its compression is better, it is less buggy etc. etc.

It took me a bit of pondering Why Youtube was showing videos in HTML5 instead of using the Installed and working Flash Player?? After about 5 minutes of googling, I came to conclusion the person who fixed their Software, some months before had on purpose choose Youtube to be displayed with Experimetnal HTML5. I was not sure how to check if HTML5 is set as a default player in Youtube, so looked on the net, The page to change it is found by googling for "youtube html trial".

The URL to tune this as of time of writting is on;

https://www.youtube.com/html5


youtube change html trial set youtube to use adobe flash player screenshot pciture Windows

 

I had to click on;

Leave the HTML5 Trial  – to stop using experimental Youtube HTML5 support

After a FF restart and lowered resolution to 1024×768 in 32 bit color depth, video started playing nice & smoothly 😉