Flashplayer crash

Flash video appears blue - Ask Ubuntu http://askubuntu.com/questions/117127/flash-video-appears-blue

Flash video appears blue
After updating to Ubuntu 12.04 from Ubuntu 11.10, all video is still blue, whether playing in a browser
or a player. Same problem occurs in 11.10 as well.

I have tried to uninstall all Flash and re-installed but it makes no difference.

What is causing the blue Flash video?

Ubuntu 11.10 64bit Ubuntu 12.04LTS 64bit

flash

edited Mar 31 at 11:03 asked Mar 29 at 18:42
pst007x
1,504 3 8 30
96% accept rate

3 bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/flashplugin-nonfree/+bug/… – Somatik Mar 30 at 10:52

feedback

18 Answers

UPDATE: Please look at this solution for a proper fix. The solution mentioned here leads to crashes
for many who tried it.

This is caused by a bug in the new Flash version that Adobe refuses to fix. There also is a bugreport
on Launchpad that discusses this (LP: #967091). The bug only appears when you use the NVidia
binary drivers and have libvdpau installed. A quick fix is adding some extra settings to the Flash
configuration.

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

This fixes the problem while still having VDPAU hardware accelleration. Unfortunately there
probably won't be a new Flash version to fix this without this manual config-hack because the Flash
version that introduced this bug is also the last Flash version Adobe will ever release for Linux.

If this causes instability for you, revert the changes by deleting the directory you created before.

sudo rm -r /etc/adobe

or you can try to reduce the /etc/adobe/mms.cfg file to just the

OverrideGPUValidation=true

line by editing with sudo gedit /etc/adobe/mms.cfg.

1 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


edited Jun 15 at 13:56
answered Mar 31 at 20:22
mniess
1,866 1 3 14

Thank you this resolved the issue for me on Ubuntu 11.10 (adobe-flashplugin 11.2.202.228-0oneiric1). This is not
the last version of Flash for Linux there will be security updates and newer versions will come bundled with
Google Chrome. – Mateusz Stachowski Apr 1 at 17:49

15 Enabling those features in mms.cfg made Flash crash regularly for me. – blujay Apr 2 at 22:52

4 Yeah, fixed the blue issue but crashes so regularly it's useless – Codemonkey Apr 10 at 5:20

3 This fixes the issue with the blueish tint, but causes instability for me. – foh1981 Apr 17 at 14:34

1 This command makes the flash plugin crash quite often for me as well. how do you revert back? – RockScience
Apr 21 at 21:21

feedback

There are some misleading and some wrong recommendations here, so let's sum up what the
problem is and what solutions there are.

TL;DR
If you have Oneiric or Precise, install patched libvdpau:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tikhonov/misc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libvdpau1

Otherwise you can modify Flash Player's library:

cd /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/
sudo perl -pi.bak -e 's/libvdpau/lixvdpau/g' libflashplayer.so

On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, the library to be patched is in a different location, hence:

sudo perl -pi.bak -e 's/libvdpau/lixvdpau/g' /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so

Read the whole post before commenting.

The problem
Flash Player since version 11.2 uses hardware video acceleration on most platforms. Unfortunately
the acceleration in Linux is not just unsupported, but essentially broken. Flash Player swaps colours
in video under the following conditions:

You are using fairly new Nvidia GPU with VDPAU support.
You are using current version of Nvidia binary driver (older versions don't support VDPAU).
You have libvdpau1 package installed.

2 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


The player on the site uses Stage Video – that's why only YouTube and few other players are
affected.

See the explanation by Pierre-Loup Griffais from Nvidia.

This is not a bug in Nvidia drivers. Nvidia is aware of this problem and they have already created a
workaround. Nouveau driver isn't probably affected because the video decoding support is not yet
finished.

This is not a bug in libvdpau. libvdpau is just a wrapper which allows video players to use VDPAU
decoding (see Stephen Warren's explanation).

This is not an Ubuntu-specific bug. Other distributions are affected as well, e.g. Arch.

The bug is very possibly in Flash Player – although Adobe tries to blame Nvidia and incompetent
users. There have been multiple reports on Adobe's bugtracker, most of them were rejected:

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3077076

The most recent report was not yet rejected, and there is some Adobe's employee responding,
although he's… Not very helpful.

If you want Adobe to fix this bug, vote for this issue on their bugtracker:

NOTE: I (dannyman) experienced this bug without Flash plugin installed. Installing the flash plugin
and then applying "Prevent Flash Player from finding libvdpau" fixed the video in Chrome.

The workarounds
Install patched libvdpau (proper patch)
Stephen Warren has created nice patch for libvdpau, which detects Flash Player and applies
workarounds only for it. The patch can be controlled using /etc/vdpau_wrapper.cfg file.

Patched libvdpau fixes colours and allows Flash Player to use VDPAU for hardware overlay which
still provides some performance benefits.

For Precise (12.04) and Oneiric (11.10) you can install the patched libvdapu from Maxim Thikonov's
PPA using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tikhonov/misc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libvdpau1

The change should come into effect after reboot (or possibly sooner).

Prevent Flash Player from finding libvdpau
(Via Daniel Mario Vega on Launchpad)

Run the following commands (given you have adobe-flashplugin package installed):

sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin

3 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


cd /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/
sudo perl -pi.bak -e 's/libvdpau/lixvdpau/g' libflashplayer.so

The change takes effect after restarting the browser.

This will modify Flash Player's binary to search for non-existent "lixvdpau" library instead of
"libvdpau". Therefore it won't attempt to use VDPAU presentation at all.

The command creates libflashplayer.so.bak backup of the binary in case you run into any problems.

You need to run this command every time there's a Flash Player update since your change will be
overwritten.

With this workaround you can keep HW acceleration on, have libvdpau1 installed and it's very easy
to apply compared to patching libvdpau.

Disable Flash Player's Hardware Acceleration
The easiest and the least intrusive fix is to disable Flash Player's HW acceleration in Display settings
– right click on Flash, select Settings…

This, however, is not that easy since the Settings window is unresponsive under composite manager
(Compiz, standard Unity) and if the browser shows scrollbars.

To disable Hardware acceleration open any video (e.g. on YouTube) in fullscreen and then open the
Settings… window. Or you an temporarily switch to Unity 2D or other non-composite WM.

The change takes effect after refresh.

The drawback: this disables HW acceleration in Flash Player even for vector and bitmap operations.
Some Flash games and movies may have worse performance and/or worse graphics.

Uninstall libvdpau
If you want to have HW acceleration in Flash Player enabled, you may uninstall libvdpau from
system, which effectively prevents Flash Player from using VDPAU.

Run:

sudo apt-get remove libvdpau1

The drawback: Desktop players (like Totem and Mplayer) won't be able to use hardware video
decoding too. This will lead to higher CPU usage during playback. Also the video playback
performance may be affected (e.g. dropped frames or completely frozen picture), especially if you
have slower CPU and you're watching 1080p videos.

Enable Flash Player hardware video decoding
Most users have reported that this leads to very frequent crashes of Flash Player (probably
due to concurrency issues in decoding) but if you're feeling lucky, give it a try.

This is also the same method used by Flash-Aid addon. It won't make it any better.

Run:

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

This will create the /etc/adobe/mms.cfg file with EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1 content. This is the
only way how to actually force Flash Player to decode video on GPU and it's not officially supported
by Adobe.

4 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


To undo this, run:

sudo rm /etc/adobe/mms.cfg

to remove the mms.cfg file.

You can try to further improve Flash Player's stability with VDPAU_NVIDIA_NO_OVERLAY=1 environment
variable, see Nvidia forums.

Replace Flash players
(As recommended by bowser on Launchpad)

Use FlashVideoReplacer Firefox add-on, Literna Mágica or other solution to replace standard
players in Flash with embedded video player plugin (like Totem – totem-mozilla – or VLC – mozilla-
plugin-vlc ). No Flash Player, no problem.

Patch libvdpau (vdpau_trace hack)
There's an unofficial patch by Nvidia which fixes Flash Player's bug on libvdpau level by hacking
vdpau_trace.

Note that aforementioned patch by Stephen Warren is technically superior and should be used
instead.

The non-workarounds
The following solutions will work only partially or they may have some caveats.

Enable HTML5 at YouTube
Enabling HTML5 player at http://www.youtube.com/html5 won't work with all videos; some
YouTube videos are just not available for HTML5 player (for example due to the lack of ads
support). However HTML5 video is awesome and you should use it anyway.

Downgrade to Flash Player 11.1
There are known vulnerabilities in FP 11.1 which are fixed in 11.2. If you want to risk it, you should
know what you're getting into.

If you still want to downgrade, try Flash Player 10.3 which is still maintained – you can get it in
Adobe's archive

Switch to different GPU
It seems that very few Nvidia GPUs are not affected, particularly Quadro 2000 and GeForce GT 430.
Both have VDPAU feature set C, but otherwise most feature set C GPUs are affected too. If you
have any of the aforementioned GPUs, please tell us on Launchpad whether this bug affects you.

edited Jul 16 at 18:24 community wiki
14 revs, 2 users 98%
jnv

4 Extremely helpful and informative text. I have fixed the issue in my openSUSE 12.2 by extracting libvdpau.so.1.0.0
from the deb found in the mentioned repository launchpad.net/~tikhonov/+archive/misc to my /usr/lib64 -
perfect. Thank you! – RushPL May 9 at 22:41

3 This is by far the best answer--most accurate and most comprehensive. – blujay May 16 at 19:09

Newer GPUs definitely have the bug (with feature set C). I am one of the many. – Victor Jun 1 at 21:27

5 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


1 @Victor Yes, I have noticed; it was a theory and it was wrong. It's strange that two particular (and very different)
GPUs aren't affected, I'm more inclined to think that the reporters have missed something, e.g. they didn't have
libvdpau installed (negative report on Quatro 2000 comes from Adobe's representative). – jnv Jun 2 at 0:00

3 Thank you for taking the time to break the problem down and provide many solutions with explanations for each.
Applying the libpauv1 patch worked great for me, and I only needed to restart my browser to apply the solution.
Thanks! – dusktreader Jun 5 at 16:22

feedback

Fix (work around)
Issue: All web browsers flash player video is blue

Chromium
Google Chrome
Firefox

Both flash plugins causes flash video to appear have a blue overlay, so remove.

Adobe - flashplugin
Flashplugin - installer

Solution (not as functional as adobe flash plug in but it works)

Install lightspark (plus any browser-plugins) or
Install gnash (plus any browser-plugins)

Possible Fix 1
Removed:

gnash browser plug-ins
gightspark browser plug-ins
Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (libraries) libvdpau1
flashplugin - installer

Installed:

adobe-flashplugin Re-started browser, and it worked for me.

Possible Fix 2
Installed:

libvdpau1

Flash set-up

disable HW acceleration in Flash.

Open your browser and navigate to a flash video (youtube, abobe flash site, etc) right click, settings
and disable Hardware acceleration.

6 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


If you are unable to disable Hardware acceleration, log in to the Unity 2D environment.

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

OBS: In case of persistance. Restart the machine.

edited Apr 1 at 0:25 answered Mar 30 at 19:26
Fabricio Buzeto pst007x
22 4 1,504 3 8 30

1 For me merely installing libvdpau1 worked, after several other solutions didn't. I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 with
NVIDIA driver 295.33. – Derrick Coetzee Mar 31 at 10:02

libvdpau1 was already installed for me in Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit. Anyway disabling hardware acceleration did the
trick for me. I'm using the same Nvidia driver as @Derrick Coetzee, but on Precise with Gnome Shell. – titaniumtux
Apr 6 at 18:12

4 I can't seem to click on the option to disable HW accel. – Roland Taylor Apr 13 at 3:34

1 Removing libvdpau1 worked for me in Firefox and Chrome for all sites I have tested. I have an Nvidia 440 GT card if
that helps. – Luis Alvarado May 2 at 16:30

4 If you can't uncheck Hardware acceleration option in Flash settings, try it in full screen – go to e.g. YouTube, open
any video in fullscreen, and open the Flash settings (Right click > Settings…); the window should be responsive. If
the browser's window has scrollbar, the settings dialog is unresponsive under composite WM. – jnv May 3 at 7:25

feedback

Ok, so here is my experience with solving this (on Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit, nVidia drivers):

Removing flashplugin-installer and installing adobe-flashplugin (did not fix it)

This worked until rebooting. But I kept adobe-flashplugin since I'm on 64-bit (I've gotten the
impression that it works best).

Changing driver version (did not fix it)

At first I had the nvidia-current-updates, I changed this to nvidia-current. This did not fix it. Synaptic
indicates that the driver versions are the same, as of this writing (295.33).

Installing Flash-Aid add-on in Firefox (fixed it sort off, but unstable)

This worked as long as I activated the hardware acceleration option (not to be confused with the
option below!!). It did not matter if I installed the Flash plugin from repositories or the beta from
Adobe. However, while fixing the blueish tint, the plugin got extremely unstable and crashing
constantly while interacting with the Flash objects.

Activating HTML5 video on Youtube (fixed it on Youtube)

While I've only gotten this problem on Youtube videos, I can't be sure that other sites and videos
aren't affected. As per suggestion by others here, visit youtube.com/html5 if you want to activate
or deactivate HTML5 video on Youtube.com.

Disabling hardware acceleration through right-click on a Flash video (fixed it)

This is what worked best for me (but I had to log in with Unity 2D as per the suggestion by pst007x in

7 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


this thread). The blueish tint is gone, and the videos are stable. I was afraid that the CPU workload
would increase but in testing with and without hardware acceleration I could see no change (I used
a video from Googles channel in 1080p for this), it begins on around 40% and drops to 20% when
the video is fully loaded.

edited Mar 31 at 12:44 answered Mar 31 at 12:37
foh1981
212 8

feedback

my quick fix to this, for YouTube anyway, was to join their HTML5 beta.

http://www.youtube.com/html5

Worked a treat.. and from what I can see, it seems only YouTube is effected by this old bug rearing
its ugly head again..

Its actually best to start using HTML5.. You have to remember that flash its on its way out when it
comes to Linux. Then we will all have to use Chrome and nothing else :(

MikeH
71 1

1 doesn't work on videos with ads – waspinator Apr 26 at 2:25

feedback

I resolved this problem after removing the flash player and then manually installed flash back by
downloading the flash from the Adobe's site and installing it via Ubuntu Software Center.

answered Jan 16 at 9:27
subeh.sharma
572 16

feedback

I resolved this (using Linux Mint Lisa, which is based on Ubuntu Oneiric) by rolling the NVIDIA driver
back to version 173.

Update: Unfortunately, NVIDIA driver version 173 produces the same blue tint in MP4 videos that
the recommended (updated) version of the NVIDIA driver does in Flash videos. That's a little
infuriating: I can either have my coffee too cold or too sweet.

And another update: I was able to fix the MP4 problem in Totem by accessing Preferences and
shoving the Hue slider all the way to the right. Hot and not too sweet.

8 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


edited Jan 24 at 1:53 answered Jan 23 at 3:43
Avi Jacobson
29 2

feedback

Try this:

sudo apt-get purge flashplugin-installer
sudo apt-get install adobe-flashplugin

SirCharlo
3,461 3 15

+1 I had this same problem a while ago (10.04), and I'm pretty sure that this is how I fixed it. – BryceAtNetwork23
Mar 30 at 13:22

2 Unfortunately the problems stays. – enedene Mar 30 at 13:35

2 OK, then try disabling Flash hardware acceleration with the instructions founds here. – SirCharlo Mar 30 at 13:50

I have the same problem, on Youtube. Vimeo seems to work. Switching to HTML5 fixes the problem on Youtube. I
temporarily fixed it by purging flashplugin-installer and installing adobe-flashplugin, but the problem returned
after a reboot. As for deactivating hardware acceleration, that's impossible for me since a while back. I can't
interact with the popup (a problem since 11.10 and now on 12.04). – foh1981 Mar 30 at 15:30

Right click on youtube video, settings, disable hardware acceleration works. That is an unfortunate solution, but
it's a working one till adobe decides to fix it. – enedene Mar 30 at 19:53

feedback

I used Flash-Aid, it fixed it right away.

edited Mar 29 at 12:18 answered Mar 29 at 6:41
jrg ♦ Shaun
10k 6 39 116 11 1

1 I can't disable hardware acceleration.. When I right click on a flash file menu appears but i can't uncheck or
anything in settings menu. Mouse can't effect it and keyboard only be able to close it.. I tried to install flash-aid for
firefox. Installing beta version of flash solved the color issue but it's soooooooo unstable – fISHOZON Mar 30 at
20:11

Log in using the Unity 2D environment, make the changes there. Then log back in as usual. That worked for me.
– pst007x Mar 31 at 11:05

Flash-aid fixed it for me, but after a few minutes it needed fixing again, and then again, then… and on and on and
on – keepitsimpleengineer Mar 31 at 15:22

9 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


feedback

It seems to be an issue with the 11.2.202.228 update and below is the quickest and most
reasonable fix until Adobe resolves it:

sudo apt-get remove flashplugin-installer
wget https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archive/partner/+files/adobe-
flashplugin_11.1.102.63.orig.tar.gz
tar xzvf *.tar.gz

Locate the libflashplayer.so for your architecture.

cp /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so libflashplayer.so.bak

Copy the new libflashplugin.so to the directory above, overwrite and restart your browser.

edited Jul 22 at 11:32 answered Mar 31 at 19:32
jokerdino sm0ke
10.5k 4 27 88 11 1

feedback

Ok. Here is the fix, that did it for me and I'm sure it should do it for everyone!!

sudo apt-get remove libvdpau1
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-installer

after that, do:

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

answered Apr 30 at 6:48
entonjackson
178 1 9

1 Once you uninstall libvdpau1, the second step with mms.cfg is not needed. Again, all recommendations to
uninstall libvdpau1 should come with big fat warning: you are removing hardware video decoding support and
performance of video playback may be affected – jnv May 3 at 19:34

Yes but for some graphic cards, this is the only way to enable flash. And what is browsing the Internet without
flash? – entonjackson May 4 at 8:11

It's definitely not the only way, please read up: askubuntu.com/a/131040/19674 – jnv May 4 at 9:15

didn't knew this, thanks – entonjackson May 11 at 9:22

10 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


feedback

This can be a problem if you have the NVidia drivers installed with the latest flash, try right clicking
on the flash video and disabling the hardware acceleration from the settings, it worked for me.

answered Apr 30 at 11:24
Mark Taylor
1

feedback

Uninstalling libvdpau1 resolves this issue for me. For now...

answered May 1 at 19:55
Gonzoza
436 1 15

1 ....but then you cannot accelerate video decoding on the gpu anymore... – Egil May 1 at 20:20

What do you mean by that? For example? – Gonzoza May 2 at 5:41

2 vdpau means Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix, which is the library used for offloading video decoding
to the gpu. Without it, video will be decoded in software on the main processor. – Egil May 2 at 7:07

feedback

11 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


For NVIDIA users. I have tested 3 video cards right now. All Nvidia. So for anyone with an Nvidia
8600 GT, Nvidia 9500 or an Nvidia 440 GT (Might be all Nvidia cards). You only have to remove the
libvdpau1 package. Then just start Firefox or Chrome and everything should be good.

sudo apt-get remove libvdpau1 and done.

Tested youtube with/without joining the HTML5 and works both ways.

Tested vimeo and TED also. Everything LOOKS as it should.

You should use this option only if you have a good CPU since removing this package sends video
decoding to the CPU instead of the GPU. Anyway if you have a Dual Core or better, you will not have
a problem even with a 1080p video.

edited May 2 at 17:06 answered May 2 at 16:58
Luis Alvarado
20.6k 5 54 147

feedback

I have the same problem. I am using Linux 3.2.0-24-generic (32-bit), Flash (latest) version
11.2.202.236 and Mozilla Firefox.

I tried to cancel acceleration in the global settings - it did not fix it. I tried resetting Nvidia driver
settings for my X screen.

There is no problem at all with the colour in movie player and there are videos that I can play on the
internet which are okay, but not YouTube videos.

Creating mms.cfg file worked. However it knocked out the media player and miro playbacks (videos
and film turned blue there).

I then followed this:

1. Open gstreamer-properties ( Alt + F2 , enter gstreamer-properties). Change to the video tab.
Change the default output plugin to "X Window System (X11/XShm/Xv)". Make Device
-'Default'. Test and close the box.

edited Jun 13 at 10:19 answered Jun 13 at 6:52
jokerdino user70284
10.5k 4 27 88 1 1

feedback

The issue is caused by the NVIDIA drivers. Ensure that you use the drivers shown as Recommended
under System > Additional Drivers. That happened to me, and now I don't get the blue haze in my
videos.


12 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


Petronilla Escarabajo
263 4

This did not fix it for me. As of this writing the versions are the same in 12.04 (295.33). Yesterday when I tested this,
the nvidia-current (recommended) was actually on version 295.33 while nvidia-current-updates was on version 295.20.
– foh1981 Mar 31 at 12:47

Didn't work for, I always use recommeded drivers, except when they don't like in 10.4 LTS – keepitsimpleengineer Mar
31 at 15:23

Wrong info. It's not a bug in the drivers, it's a new bug in Flash. – blujay Apr 2 at 22:52

feedback

Go to this link and foloow instructions to install new VDPAU1 and it will fix the problem
properly:

http://ubuntuguide.net/fix-youtube-video-blue-tint-problem-in-ubuntu-12-04/

answered Jun 13 at 8:40
TenPlus1
1

feedback

I had the same problem with each ubuntu edition (oneric, natty, maverick, lucid). But now I use
Ubuntu Ultimate Edition 2.7 (Based on Ubuntu Lucid Lynx) 32 bits.

http://ultimateedition.info/ultimate-edition/ultimate-edition-2-7/

I have nvidia video card (GeForce 6150 SE with 256 MB VRAM) and Flash 11 works! (I tested with
both: Adobe - flashplugin and Flashplugin - installer)

I have 32 FPS with 1080p videos on Youtube (No frames dropped in fullscreen!!!). I use Mozilla
Firefox 11.

I used the "Recommended" nvidia driver package from nvidia website. It has ".run" extension.

http://www.geforce.com/Drivers

This Ubuntu version works very very well for me. If you have any problem I will help you. Enjoy it!

Mevex
1

feedback

13 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM


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14 of 14 08/02/2012 07:29 AM

Flashplayer crash

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