Adobe Flash woes... again.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

A few hours ago i was watching a music video on youtube in 1080p and i noticed lots of stuttering. This didn't use to happen. Specs: HP DV9800, C2D T9300 @ 3.06GHz, 4GB DDR2, nvidia 8600M GS, 1920x1200 screen, Crucial C300 SSD and a regular spinner in the 2nd drive bay. Yes it's old. But i'm not big on gaming anymore and it handles everything i throw at it just fine.

So i investigated a bit and looked at the Flash Player version. It's now version 15. 12 was released at the beginning of this year and it took ages to get to version 12, now they're up to version 15 in less than an year?? Now if you go to Archived Flash Player Versions, you'll notice that in the same day there are 4 versions released, two 15.0, one 13.0 and one 11.2.

Every new release touts "improved video performance" or something to that extent. Yet the only thing guaranteed about each new Flash Player release is that it's gonna be SLOWER than the old one. No small wonder Android dropped the support for Flash, and Apple never bothered with them in the first place.

I went back to 11.7 released in December 2013 and 1080p video is once again smooth as silk. The version isn't old enough to get Firefox complaining, so i was happy with it. The problem is, 2 hours later, it silently updated behind my back, without any notification! I want to Adobe. I have turned auto update off in the Flash control panel now, hopefully it'll stay put.

I have a friend with an Asus gaming laptop with an i7, 32GB RAM and a 3GB GTX670MX video card. That thing maxes out almost all games, yet he watches youtube in 480p on a full HD screen as anything higher stutters. This is ridiculous. The Adobe forums are full of similar complaints.

I don't need a new laptop. I am saving money to buy something better, but do i NEED it? No. It handles anything i throw at it and even the odd game or two. Flash needs to die already. Sadly, HTML5 isn't any better, either.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

Adobe Flash is synonymous with PITA. I hate it. You can't get away from it, it's a cross-platform piece of crap.

[retiredcaps]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

Some people on eevblog are complaining too.

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/yo...fering-issues/

I just use a youtube downloader in firefox to download what I want to watch and view it offline later.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

I've tried a few YT dowloaders. Not pleased with results. It's been a while since I've found one that works at all and when they did work they were hit and miss. I think flash downloaders are one reason why flash keeps getting "updated", in an attempt preventing offline viewing, which tends to defeat the purpose of selling ad space. Follow the money...

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

You can use VLC player to watch youtube with great performance (i have tested it and it does smooth, stutter-free 720p fullscreen on 2nd monitor on a lowly 1.6GHz Pentium M with 512MB RAM) but it's generally a PITA due to the lack of integration, no playlists, and so on. I want to make a site that automatically replaces the youtube video player with VLC (not a firefox or chrome plugin, plenty of those but all are crashy). However, i'm not good with coding, and it's a big project i cannot handle alone.

There's the application Minitube, but the full version costs money, and the free version has several annoying limitations put in place. For Mac there is MacTubes which is great and enables you to watch fluid 480p fullscreen on an old PPC-based Mac for instance, however, i have not found an Windows equivalent.

[stj]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

adobe just writes unreliable spyware.
it's just a side effect they they can usually play video or display documents.

dont forget to delete your flash-cookies!!!!
if you run linux, delete the cookies and then set the ownership of the folder to "root", then it cant save anymore!!

[diif]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

Unique, be wary of running an older version of Flash, whilst it might make youtube less stuttery, it will leave you very vulnerable surfing the net. After Java it is the most compromised piece of software with the popular exploit kits checking for outdated versions.
Have you tried using Google Chrome to view youtube ?

[Agent24]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

I have so far managed to get by without Flash installed on my current install of Windows (reinstalled a few months ago when I upgraded to 64-bit)

Youtube seems happy with the HTML5 player so far.

adobe just writes unreliable spyware.

http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/1...ook-libraries/

Funny thing, you wouldn't get that problem if you download pirated eBooks!

[retiredcaps]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

I've tried a few YT dowloaders. Not pleased with results.

I use this one

https://github.com/gantt/downloadyoutube

[Agent24]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

I used to use extensions in Firefox but they kept breaking with all the rapid updates...

The only thing that has consistently worked for me is keepvid.com website.

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

Unique, be wary of running an older version of Flash, whilst it might make youtube less stuttery, it will leave you very vulnerable surfing the net. After Java it is the most compromised piece of software with the popular exploit kits checking for outdated versions.

I guess then that's the way they patch vulnerabilities. They make it so slow that people will use it less and thus be less vulnerable. Thanks for the heads up, but i'll be fine.

Have you tried using Google Chrome to view youtube ?

It's the same in all browsers.

[goontron]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

It's the same in all browsers.

chrome doesn't support NPAPI, Chrome uses Pepper flash, a Google version of flash which the GNU community has worked on a non-NPAPI to NPAPI compatibility layer to get chromes Pepper plugin working in chromium, Firefox, palemoon, midori, etc. no windows version as far as i know.....

[momaka]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

Every new release touts "improved video performance" or something to that extent. Yet the only thing guaranteed about each new Flash Player release is that it's gonna be SLOWER than the old one.

Yup.
I don't mean to bust your bubble, but yeah... that's old news . I NEVER ever update my flash player anymore. Plug-in version 10.3 it is for all of my old computers. I think I have only one or two with v11. Not sure.

The problem is, 2 hours later, it silently updated behind my back, without any notification! I want to Adobe. I have turned auto update off in the Flash control panel now, hopefully it'll stay put.

+1
First thing I do after installing an OS is to disconnect the computer from the internet, install most (or all) necessary software from a flash drive, turn off auto-update on whatever software likes to auto-update, and then reconnect the computer back to the net again.

The only time I ever update software is when a version gets too old to work properly with modern stuff (read: forced obsolescence).

I have a friend with an Asus gaming laptop with an i7, 32GB RAM and a 3GB GTX670MX video card. That thing maxes out almost all games, yet he watches youtube in 480p on a full HD screen as anything higher stutters.

That is indeed terrible. With Flash 10.3, I can STILL run 720p YouTube videos on my 2.8 GHz P4 Prescott HT.
Really makes me wonder if people even know how to write software nowadays or are just copying and pasting random crap from the net, hence all of this BS.

Two weeks ago, my mom was trying to buy a plane ticket from one of them ticket/travel websites (forgot which). The page controls failed to work on anything other than Internet Explorer. I tried everything I had (Firefox 3.6, Opera 11, and Firefox 24 Portable).

adobe just writes unreliable spyware.
it's just a side effect they they can usually play video or display documents.

So true.
Then again, Google Chrome isn't much better in that regard either. Using Google Chrome for HTML5 so that you can avoid Adobe Flash is synonymous with using a bloated Teapo cap to replace a bloated CapXon cap.
Might as well not bother.

[Agent24]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

Then again, Google Chrome isn't much better in that regard either. Using Google Chrome for HTML5 so that you can avoid Adobe Flash is synonymous with using a bloated Teapo cap to replace a bloated CapXon cap.

But even IE does HTML5 now

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

I think flash downloaders are one reason why flash keeps getting "updated", in an attempt preventing offline viewing, which tends to defeat the purpose of selling ad space. Follow the money...

Actually, I think that's why YouTube keeps getting changed. (Not Flash)

[diif]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

Use Firefox and one of the many YouTube downloaders. If you are running outdated software you are handing your PC to the bad guys. I can't be the only guy on here that's spent 12+ years cleaning crap off computers as part of their job ?
And for those that think they're not bothered about your PC as you don't do online banking or online shopping please read this article about the many uses the bad guys have for your PC.
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2012/10/t...-pc-revisited/

Update that software peoples

[momaka]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

I think flash downloaders are one reason why flash keeps getting "updated", in an attempt preventing offline viewing, which tends to defeat the purpose of selling ad space.

Yeah, either that or YouTube itself, as RJARRRPCGP noted (or both?)
I have an old version of YouTube downloader, and it no longer can download videos from certain popular music channels such as VEVO. Not that I listen to popular music anyways, so it doesn't bother me all that much.

But even IE does HTML5 now

Which versions? I don't think I have anything newer than 8. IE lost me with version 7 - that's where it got really bloated and slow. So I still have many PCs with IE6. I don't use it though, except maybe for badcaps.net only (and only once in a while). Actually, I'm typing this post in IE6 right now.

Update that software peoples

No thanks.

I'd rather have my PC slowed down by viruses and spyware than slowed down by bloated software. Through the years, I have found that the latter is always worse. And I haven't had a single instance of my computers (note that's multiple) getting infected due to outdated Flash player. Java may be another story. But I don't install Java on any of my computers anymore, unless I really have a need for it for some piece of software.

Even all of my XP installs are still SP2. I only put one update on that - KB958644. This stops the annoying DownAdUp worm infection from re-occuring.
With all of that, I haven't had any problems for quite a few years now.

Common sense online + a fat hosts file keeps my PCs safe enough.

[diif]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

The flash updates are because it is poorly written and they keep finding security holes.
The youtube downloader extension i installed in the summer on Firefox continues to work, none of the updates has stopped it working. VEVO working fine here.
When flash isn't playing a video/game it does not run, therefore cannot be slowing down your PC and the update only runs at startup. Yes it will probably max out a single core processor, but if anything newer is struggling then there are further issues that need investigating.
Just fired up a 7 year old Dell D520 Core 2 Duo 1.67Ghz 2GB, CPU is between 30% and 50% mem usage 56%, no stuttering at all. On a first gen i3 the cpu is using 5%.
Whilst common sense will help you, how does it stop one of the websites you visit being infected by skiddies with an exploit kit ? or a hosts file when most new stuff uses fast flux for c+c. The one i cleaned last week wasn't even picked up by the big name antivirus, or the common malware cleaning programs. 5/56 on virus total.

[momaka]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

VEVO working fine here.

Yes, in the browser it is for me too.
But try to download a video from VEVO (or other popular channel that has CP) with an old version of YouTube Downloader - it won't work. This didn't happen before when my (now old) verison of YouTube Downloader was still fairly new. So Steve and RJAAAR have the right idea here - either YouTube or Adobe Flash keep shooting up updates probably to stop people from downloading "copyrighted" Flash content. Patching up the security holes is likely just a "side-project".

When flash isn't playing a video/game it does not run, therefore cannot be slowing down your PC and the update only runs at startup.

I know that. I actually don't mind the whole Adobe Flash update process at all (in fact, I find it one of the least-annoying ones).
The problem is that newer versions of Flash tend to degrade performance when using Flash, and that's my whole gripe with their updates.

Whilst common sense will help you, how does it stop one of the websites you visit being infected by skiddies with an exploit kit ? or a hosts file when most new stuff uses fast flux for c+c.

I never claimed my methods above are bullet proof at all. (Well, what is these days? )
They are good enough to stop the majority of attacks.

[SteveNielsen]

Re: Adobe Flash woes... again.

It doesn't make any difference whether we blame Adobe or YT, the result is the same.

Patching "security holes" can also mean trying to prevent unwanted (by them) content downloading.