AVS › AVS Forum › Video Components › Home Theater Computers › HTPC - Linux Chat › VDPAU support in latest Flash 10.2 beta!!!
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

VDPAU support in latest Flash 10.2 beta!!!

post #1 of 87
12/1/10 at 6:18am
Thread Starter 
As I reported a while ago in this article on LinuxTECH.NET, it looked like Adobe was working on adding VDPAU support to the Flash plugin.

I just checked the latest 10.2 beta of the Flash plugin and found the following:

Code:
$ strings libflashplayer.so|grep -i vdpau
H264 - VDPAU - CPU
H264 - VDPAU - VDPAU
libvdpau.so
libvdpau.so.1
GL_NV_vdpau_interop
glVDPAUInitNV
glVDPAUFiniNV
glVDPAUUnregisterSurfaceNV
glVDPAUSurfaceAccessNV
glVDPAUMapSurfacesNV
glVDPAUUnmapSurfacesNV
glVDPAURegisterOutputSurfaceNV
As you can see there are references to libvdpau in the flash plugin code!!

Unfortunately my first tests on my desktop PC haven't shown any difference in performance, so maybe the VDPAU support isn't active yet in this beta, or maybe my test wasn't done correctly.

If you have a Nvidia 8xxx or 9xxx or 2xx or 4xx series card and are using the Nvidia binary driver (and have the libvdpau libraries installed) then please test this 10.2 beta plugin and provide feedback.

Here is the 10.2 beta 32bit plugin:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/

And here is the hidden 64 bit version:
http://download.macromedia.com/pub/l..._111710.tar.gz
Reply
Reply

AVS Top Picks

post #2 of 87
12/1/10 at 6:38am
Engadget link with press release: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/01/a...are-accelerat/
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 87
12/1/10 at 6:58am
Thread Starter 
I have just looked at the 64bit version, and found that the 64bit version doesn't contain VDPAU support yet, there is no reference to libvdpau in the binary, only a single reference to the word VDPAU just like in the Flash Square player released in september:

Code:
strings libflashplayer.so|grep -i vdpau
VDPAU
So at the moment Flash VDPAU support is 32bit only.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 87
12/1/10 at 5:32pm
Thread Starter 
YES!!! Flash VDPAU support works great with the 10.2 beta plugin on my Atom+ION HTPC (Asus AT3IONT-I mobo), I just watched a couple of 1080p youtube videos fullscreen, it's perfectly smooth no tearing or stutter!

This finally makes Atom+ION boxes with Linux absolutely perfect for HTPC use, no drawbacks anymore!

This news and the HD audio support mentioned in the other thread makes this a memorable day for Linux HTPCs!
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 87
12/1/10 at 6:17pm
Yes, it works for me on YouTube also, but not Hulu. I'm sure Hulu will update their stuff soon enough, though, to make it usable on an ION system.
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 87
12/2/10 at 8:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by k_ross View Post

Yes, it works for me on YouTube also, but not Hulu. I'm sure Hulu will update their stuff soon enough, though, to make it usable on an ION system.

What kind of update do they need to do? I would have thought this to be content independent once the plugin was loaded?
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 87
12/2/10 at 10:41am
I'm not a Flash developer, I know next to nothing about it, but my understanding is content needs to be updated to use the StageVideo object instead of the Video object, as documented here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashpla...age_video.html

YouTube says something similar here: http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/12/a...-playback.html
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 87
12/2/10 at 3:28pm
I was wondering if something like this was on the horizon, here's why.

There was a new flash beta released for Android for the Folio 100 tablet. It also works on my ViewSonic g-tablet, a nVidia tegra based tablet. Since Android is based on Linux, I was wondering how it worked.

I have only used the Android flash to watch sports on the ESPN3 web site. It work quite well for that. I just tried Hulu, and I get a message:
Quote:


Unfortunately Hulu is not supported on your platform. We apologize for any inconvenience.

I believe this may be because the Android browser is identifying itself as being a Mac!

I haven't tried it on my ION systems yet.
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 87
12/2/10 at 4:57pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by k_ross View Post

I'm not a Flash developer, I know next to nothing about it, but my understanding is content needs to be updated to use the StageVideo object instead of the Video object, as documented here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashpla...age_video.html

YouTube says something similar here: http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/12/a...-playback.html

As far as I understand it, StageVideo and VDPAU support are two separate things.

VDPAU hardware decoding for flash video is working right now on every web site I tried with the latest 10.2 beta plugin even though surely none of these sites have implemented StageVideo yet.

After all Windows has had hardware decoding of flash videos for a while too, without StageVideo.

StageVideo seems to be a new way of implementing flash video that will improve performance of flash video even further once web sites start using it.

I don't know why Hulu doesn't work (and since I'm not in the US I can't even test it) but it must be something very specific to the way Hulu has implemented flash video.

Since Hulu did release the Hulu Linux desktop app a while ago I assume they are a Linux-friendly company so maybe some of you US guys should contact them and point out that VDPAU doesn't work with Hulu despite it works with every other flash video site.
I'd assume they will look into it and likely fix it fairly quickly.
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 87
12/2/10 at 5:01pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I have only used the Android flash to watch sports on the ESPN3 web site. It work quite well for that. I just tried Hulu, and I get a message:

I believe this may be because the Android browser is identifying itself as being a Mac!

I think that's because Hulu sees Android as a mobile platform, not as a PC and many of these streaming web sites have severe restrictions for any platform that is not a PC (that's why all those media players like the Popcorn Hour etc. have such a hard time getting access to Hulu, Netflix, etc.).
Reply
Reply
post #11 of 87
12/2/10 at 9:39pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I was wondering if something like this was on the horizon, here's why.

There was a new flash beta released for Android for the Folio 100 tablet. It also works on my ViewSonic g-tablet, a nVidia tegra based tablet. Since Android is based on Linux, I was wondering how it worked.

I have only used the Android flash to watch sports on the ESPN3 web site. It work quite well for that. I just tried Hulu, and I get a message:

I believe this may be because the Android browser is identifying itself as being a Mac!

I haven't tried it on my ION systems yet.

I was just flashing the latest Virtuous rom to my droid incredible tonight and noticed that there was a modified flash + hulu upgrade I could run on that rom. I didn't install it because I never use hulu, but I could certainly test it if you wanted.
Reply
Reply
post #12 of 87
12/3/10 at 3:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by lackskill View Post

I was just flashing the latest Virtuous rom to my droid incredible tonight and noticed that there was a modified flash + hulu upgrade I could run on that rom. I didn't install it because I never use hulu, but I could certainly test it if you wanted.

I'm sure the Flash upgrade is the same as the one I have. But if you could isolate the Hulu app, I could try it. I only see references to it inside of ROMs, and not as a separate app.
Reply
Reply
post #13 of 87
12/3/10 at 3:28am
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

But if you could isolate the Hulu app, I could try it. I only see references to it inside of ROMs, and not as a separate app.

I think that I found it:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=782169
Reply
Reply
post #14 of 87
12/3/10 at 6:32am
Thread Starter 
It would be great if you could continue the Flash on Android discussion in a separate thread since it's not really related to the topic of this thread.
Reply
Reply
post #15 of 87
12/3/10 at 2:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

It would be great if you could continue the Flash on Android discussion in a separate thread since it's not really related to the topic of this thread.

If this thread remained on-topic, it would be the only one in the entire Linux-HTPC section!

My angle was loosely associated to the topic. Tegra (nVidia) and Android (Linux) Flash. I won't mention it again.
Reply
Reply
post #16 of 87
12/3/10 at 3:29pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

If this thread remained on-topic, it would be the only one in the entire Linux-HTPC section!

Well, one can always try to improve things...

Anyway did you try the Flash 10.2 beta on a PC with Nvidia graphics yet?
Reply
Reply
post #17 of 87
12/3/10 at 4:19pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

Anyway did you try the Flash 10.2 beta on a PC with Nvidia graphics yet?

No, but maybe this weekend. I have Boxee installed along with MythTV. I wonder if the new flash will work with Boxee.
Reply
Reply
post #18 of 87
12/4/10 at 11:15am
OK, I installed it on my Zotac ION (Ubuntu 10.04) system. I just replaced the original one found in /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin with the beta.

I'm not sure the best way to test it, but watching a sporting event on ESPN3 is my test. Before switching to the beta, I watched a video. After installing the beta, I don't see any improvement. The full-screen video is still jerky, and even freezes sometimes. This is the same as with the Ubuntu installed version 10.1.

When I right-click on the video and choose "Settings", I see I have hardware acceleration enabled. It also tells me that I am using "Adobe Flash Player 10.2.151.49".

As a comparison, the same streamed video viewed on WinXP has a few hiccups, but is much better.
Reply
Reply
post #19 of 87
12/4/10 at 8:26pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

OK, I installed it on my Zotac ION (Ubuntu 10.04) system. I just replaced the original one found in /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin with the beta.

I'm not sure the best way to test it, but watching a sporting event on ESPN3 is my test. Before switching to the beta, I watched a video. After installing the beta, I don't see any improvement. The full-screen video is still jerky, and even freezes sometimes. This is the same as with the Ubuntu installed version 10.1.

When I right-click on the video and choose "Settings", I see I have hardware acceleration enabled. It also tells me that I am using "Adobe Flash Player 10.2.151.49".

As a comparison, the same streamed video viewed on WinXP has a few hiccups, but is much better.

Obviously for some reason the plugin is not using VDPAU. Try some 1080p trailers on youtube, if those don't work either then there is something on your install that the flash plugin doesnt like (old nvidia driver, no libvdpau, old firefox, x64 install?).

If you see my first post I had the same issue on my desktop PC, where I'm using the rather old Mandriva 2008.1, while the plugin worked immediately (and very well) on my HTPC that runs Mandriva 2010.0 (with newer nvidia driver and newer firefox).

Edit: Ok I found the reason why vdpau wasn't working with the flash plugin on my desktop PC, I just upgraded the Nvidia driver from 195.x to the latest 260.19.21 driver and now the flash plugin is using vdpau on my desktop PC too.

So I think you need to upgrade the nvidia driver on your HTPC to take advantage of vdpau with the flash plugin.
Reply
Reply
post #20 of 87
12/4/10 at 9:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

Obviously for some reason the plugin is not using VDPAU. Try some 1080p trailers on youtube, if those don't work either then there is something on your install that the flash plugin doesnt like (old nvidia driver,

Before doing anything, I upgraded everything. This installed a new kernel, so I downloaded and installed the latest ION driver from nVidia
Quote:


no libvdpau,

Here's what I have:
Code:
paul@Zotac-ION:~$ locate libvdpau
/usr/lib/libvdpau.so
/usr/lib/libvdpau.so.1
/usr/lib/libvdpau.so.256.35
/usr/lib/libvdpau_nvidia.so
/usr/lib/libvdpau_trace.so
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.1
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_nvidia.so.256.35
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so.1
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so.256.35
/usr/share/doc/libvdpau1
/usr/share/doc/libvdpau1/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/libvdpau1/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/libvdpau1/copyright
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.shlibs
Quote:


old firefox,

I installed Google Chrome, and had the same results. Firefox is 3.6.12
Quote:


x64 install?).

Nope, 32-bit.
Reply
Reply
post #21 of 87
12/4/10 at 10:38pm
Thread Starter 
from your output you seem to be using version 256.35 of the nvidia driver, try upgrading to 260.19.21, that solved it for me:
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/linux...driver-uk.html

This is what you should have if you had the latest driver installed:
Code:
$ ls -la /usr/lib/libvdpau.*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   13 2010-12-05 05:50 /usr/lib/libvdpau.so -> libvdpau.so.1*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   21 2010-12-05 05:50 /usr/lib/libvdpau.so.1 -> libvdpau.so.260.19.21*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2644 2010-12-05 05:50 /usr/lib/libvdpau.so.260.19.21*
Reply
Reply
post #22 of 87
12/5/10 at 4:16am
No luck here.

I've got nvidia version 260.19.21 installed (GT240)

The adbode flash version page http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ reports
Quote:


You have version 10,2,151,49 installed

Using Firefox, I see no speed up for Hulu, nor http://www.thedailyshow.com/

top shows "plugin container" being 80-120%... just as it was before.
Reply
Reply
post #23 of 87
12/5/10 at 6:22am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

from your output you seem to be using version 256.35 of the nvidia driver, try upgrading to 260.19.21, that solved it for me:

I do have the 260.19.21 driver installed. That is what I meant when I said I installed the latest nVidia driver. The 256.35 driver was the last version that was installed. When I installed the latest, it did give a warning about not being able to completely remove some parts of the old driver. Maybe this is what it meant.

I have gotten that message before, and everything always seemed to work OK.

I will try running both driver versions, using the --uninstall option. Maybe then I should delete the contents of that folder, if anything remains.
Reply
Reply
post #24 of 87
12/5/10 at 6:37am
I just uninstalled the driver, and then ran a search for libvdpau. This time it said that I had the 260.19.21 files installed. So, I ran this command:
Code:
sudo updatedb
Now it reports that I have 185.18.36 versions installed! I never manually installed that version, so it must have been from the Ubuntu repositories. I am wondering if I should delete all references to vdpau? Will everything be re-installed with the new driver?

On my Eee PC, when I search for libvdpau, it comes up empty. So I guess that I could delete all folders and files referencing vdpau, and start fresh. Anyone see this as a bad idea? I won't rush into this, and maybe run apt and remove any related packages that I can find.
Reply
Reply
post #25 of 87
12/5/10 at 7:04am
I have temporarily booted using the nouveau driver.

I am still showing these files present:
Code:
/usr/lib/libvdpau.so.1.0.0
/usr/lib/libvdpau.so.185.18.36
/usr/lib/libvdpau_nvidia.so.185.18.36
/usr/lib/libvdpau_trace.so.185.18.36
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so.1
/usr/lib/vdpau/libvdpau_trace.so.1.0.0
/usr/share/doc/libvdpau1
/usr/share/doc/libvdpau1/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/libvdpau1/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/libvdpau1/copyright
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libvdpau1.shlibs
In Synaptic, I uninstalled every package that had nvidia in the name or reference, except one. The libvdpau1 package cannot be uninstalled. When I try to, it also wants to completely uninstall MythTV! This package seems to be the source of most of the remaining files, except the 185.18.36 files.
Reply
Reply
post #26 of 87
12/5/10 at 8:40am
I manually deleted all files with references to an older driver. I then re-installed the 260.19.21 driver.

Watching Hulu in full screen, I still get constant stuttering. I doesn't seem to be working.

Dam! I wanted this to work sooo much.
Reply
Reply
post #27 of 87
12/5/10 at 9:22am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I manually deleted all files with references to an older driver. I then re-installed the 260.19.21 driver.

Watching Hulu in full screen, I still get constant stuttering. I doesn't seem to be working.

Dam! I wanted this to work sooo much.

As k_ross reported earlier in this thread, vdpau doesn't currently work with Hulu yet (but it does work with every other site i tried), you need to do the testing with 1080p videos on youtube to check if your install is ok or not.
Reply
Reply
post #28 of 87
12/5/10 at 9:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by tux99 View Post

As k_ross reported earlier in this thread, vdpau doesn't currently work with Hulu yet (but it does work with every other site i tried), you need to do the testing with 1080p videos on youtube to check if your install is ok or not.

I don't watch anything at youtube, as I think it is a big waste of time. If it only works for youtube, then it is useless for me.

In troubleshooting, I think that the libvdpau1 that is installed with MythTV may be part of the problem. When you manually install the nVidia driver, the package manager doesn't know this. It therefore keeps the libvdpau package for the MythTV install

In an attempt to install the latest driver through the package manager, I enabled the nvidia-vdpau ppa:

https://launchpad.net/~nvidia-vdpau/...series_filter=

I had hoped to see the latest driver offered in my package manager. I did not find it, but it does offer an upgrade to the libvdpau1 package. I installed it, then tried Hulu again. This time it reports that the flash plugin has crashed. Not sure if this is progress.
Reply
Reply
post #29 of 87
12/5/10 at 10:24am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I don't watch anything at youtube, as I think it is a big waste of time. If it only works for youtube, then it is useless for me.

I doesn't just work with youtube, it works with practically everything apart from Hulu (and I guess Hulu will eventually fix their player, too).
I meant use youtube to confirm if vdpau is working or not, not to enjoy the youtube videos!

Quote:
Originally Posted by waterhead View Post

I had hoped to see the latest driver offered in my package manager. I did not find it, but it does offer an upgrade to the libvdpau1 package. I installed it, then tried Hulu again. This time it reports that the flash plugin has crashed. Not sure if this is progress.

The libvdapu1 you got from Ubuntu is probably old, the current version is 0.4.1, but you should really only have the one that comes with the latest nvidia driver installed since that's always the latest.
Here is the source repository of libvdpau for reference (no need to install from there since the one that's included with the nvidia driver come from there): http://cgit.freedesktop.org/~aplattner/libvdpau/
Reply
Reply
post #30 of 87
12/5/10 at 10:36am
I watched a 1080p youtube video (Maine) and it played good in full screen. I guess we have to wait for other web sites to enable this.
.
As for the libvdpau1 package. There is a conflict with MythTV when it is installed by the package manager. I don't believe the manually installed driver is replacing this.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: HTPC - Linux Chat

AVS Top Picks

AVS › AVS Forum › Video Components › Home Theater Computers › HTPC - Linux Chat › VDPAU support in latest Flash 10.2 beta!!!