Ubuntu – How to get adobe flash fullscreen video fluid with an atom processor

12.04hd-videointelintel graphicsvideo

My system has an atom N270 + intel i915 graphic card.

Under Windows I can enjoy 720p bigbuckbunny youtube video fullscreen without any trouble.

Under Ubuntu 12.04 I have laggy and choppy fullscreen video and choppy video when not fullscreen.

I've seen that under ubuntu the cpu is almost always at 100% use.

What I must do in order to have videos playing well under ubuntu ?

I've already tried the following :

Force flash gpu detection : (no result) :

  • mkdir /etc/adobe
  • echo "OverrideGPUValidation = 1" | sudo tee -a /etc/adobe/mms.cfg

grub options (had results but not enough) :

  • i915_enable_rc6=1
  • i915_enable_fbc=1
  • i915_lvds_downclock=1
  • pcie_aspm=force

updated intel drivers (glasen ppa)

Using chrome instead of firefox (had impact but not enough)

Best Answer

Flash under linux does not support hardware acceleration. So instead of your graphics accelerator your CPU has to do all the audio/video decoding, which makes playback laggy. You have several options here. You could

  • Enable HTML5 playback and see if that fixes the issue for you (works on youtube and a couple of other sites).

    Not all youtube videos currently support HTML5 playback. To bypass this limitation you can install Youtube Center, an open-source extension that's compatible with Chrome, Firefox and other popular web browsers.

    Aside from making HTML5 playback available across the board, Youtube Center also comes with a lot of other features that can greatly enhance your youtube experience.

  • Play the video with VLC (open up vlc, hit CTRL + V to paste your video link and hit enter)
  • Use a dedicated youtube client such as minitube
  • Install ViewTube, a userscript that allows you to play flash videos on sites like youtube, dailymotion, blip, etc. in a video player of your choice

These are workarounds rather than definitive solutions. But until Adobe decide to fully support Linux again there is nothing else, I fear.

Related Question