How do I watch Flash video in RetroPrecise 5.4.3?

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Hogweed
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#16 Post by Hogweed »

Just as a little note...

While attempting to figure out the performance difference of Flash on various Puppy variants I have noticed that if colour depth is set to 16 then recent Flash variants perform very poorly at least with the Intel video driver on this old laptop. Changing colour depth to 24 results in perfectly acceptable full screen video in standard resolutions. Don't expect HD though.

The colour depth setting is counter-intuitive. At first thought it would seem that 16 would be better than 24 but it isn't. At least in the config I have been testing RetroPrecice 5.4.3 and 5.4.91

The recommendation from xorgwizard will be to use 16 depth unless you are sure you can use 24. That will result in very, very poor Flash video full screen performance with current Flashplayer in some, if not all, hardware configs.
Last edited by Hogweed on Mon 18 Feb 2013, 15:35, edited 1 time in total.

summersolstice
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#17 Post by summersolstice »

As I said, somewhere here, xorg does not work, only xvesa makes the vye useable.

I will try the other distros.

Hogweed - I have always had it set to 24 colour depth but thanks for the suggestion.

Hogweed
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#18 Post by Hogweed »

summersolstice wrote:As I said, somewhere here, xorg does not work, only xvesa makes the vye useable.

I will try the other distros.

Hogweed - I have always had it set to 24 colour depth but thanks for the suggestion.
You might want to try as an experiment setting it to 16 just to make sure that doesn't improve things in your config. Hope you can get your driver issue sorted as that's the real underlying problem.

summersolstice
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#19 Post by summersolstice »

Thanks Hogweed. I have tried all available colour depths. The driver is the real pain in the butt I am sure.

Trying Semme's suggestions -

lupu-528.005.iso seems to load but backgrounded, as in, puppy barks but black screen. So I have no idea as to the resolution or visuals.

pclinuxos-kde-minime-2013.02.iso seems to load with a black screen with whire cursor, aks what keyboard language and the screen remains black with white cursor.

So far, at least, RetroPrecise Puppy 5.4.3 is very useable as an OS, simply the video playback on youtube that is the problem and I guess if that is the driver, there is not much I can do about it. What is strange to me is that I can download the videos on youtube without trouble and play them back fine, I wonder if it is simply the amount of data and info on the youtube pages that stop better playback?

The Vye suppied drivers I linked to are installed on the windows xp OS and they seem to make it a little better, still not watchable though.

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Semme
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#20 Post by Semme »

Did you go through my xorgwizard routine in Precise? The routine's the same on Lucid: puppy pfix=ram..

If YouTube's the deal-breaker, install this. YouTube itself, along with their horrid choice of delivery's a joke!

One other thought that may help your situation..

Hogweed
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#21 Post by Hogweed »

Adobe's Flash player is a terrible resource hog and by far the worst decoder/player I have ever seen. Every other player in existence will easily outperform it. On that at least I agree with Steve Jobs (but unfortunately I view a lot of Flash based content)

If the correct drivers are installed on Windows and it sill doesn't work well then that's probably the best you will ever get sadly.

Note in Youtube you can right click and "show video info" to see details of the current playback performance that you can use for comparisons.

summersolstice
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#22 Post by summersolstice »

Semme - Yes, went through the same process.

I have downloaded and installed GTK 3.0.4, and guess what, the same results..........Video freezes on start and occasionally I hear a click from the speakers trying to play the video sound. If I wait for five minutes, the screen might even show a frame!! This is the same even using 240p resolution.

I also created the " Improve Flash performance under Linux" in your second link, again, no change.

I am not saying that youtube is a deal-breaker for me but as allways, when something does not work, the obsession is getting it fixed somehow.

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Makoto
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#23 Post by Makoto »

It might also help to disable hardware acceleration in Flash. One way to do this is to play a YouTube video, set it to full-screen, then right-click on the video and select "Settings...". Under the Display settings, make sure the "Enable hardware acceleration" checkbox isn't checked, then click the Close button.

If you're using Firefox, there's an extension called "Low Quality Flash" that attempts to set all Flash elements to low quality in an effort to improve performance. There isn't an equivalent for Seamonkey, exactly, but I've been using a userscript (Greasemonkey/Scriptish) that attempts to do the same thing. I couldn't tell you whether or not they really impact the performance all that much, though.

Hogweed, Semme: Huh. I can't remember what color depth my desktop is set to, offhand, so would either of you happen to know a way to check it without having to set xorgwizard up all over again? :oops:
[ Puppy 4.3.1 JP, Frugal install ] * [ XenialPup 7.5, Frugal install ] * [XenialPup 64 7.5, Frugal install] * [ 4GB RAM | 512MB swap ]
In memory of our beloved American Eskimo puppy (1995-2010) and black Lab puppy (1997-2011).

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Semme
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#24 Post by Semme »

Yeah, under *screen* in xorg.conf >> cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep Depth
Last edited by Semme on Tue 19 Feb 2013, 04:19, edited 1 time in total.

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Semme
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#25 Post by Semme »

Hey Summer- this page says you have which version of Flash installed?

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Makoto
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#26 Post by Makoto »

Semme wrote:Yeah, under *screen* in xorg.conf >> cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep Depth
Thanks. I'm surprised hardinfo doesn't list it (or if it does, not in the obvious place). :shock:

I figured I was running in 24-bit color, but wanted to make sure... anything to get better performance out of good old never-optimized Flash. :)
[ Puppy 4.3.1 JP, Frugal install ] * [ XenialPup 7.5, Frugal install ] * [XenialPup 64 7.5, Frugal install] * [ 4GB RAM | 512MB swap ]
In memory of our beloved American Eskimo puppy (1995-2010) and black Lab puppy (1997-2011).

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Semme
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#27 Post by Semme »

Aha! We've got an even later build..
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summersolstice
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#28 Post by summersolstice »

Semme - I have found thr driver with the same Ref but when I unpacked it and looked at the drivers it says "modified time : 05:55:06 11 Feb 2008"

Do you think it really updated in 2010? I have my doubts looking at the details.

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Semme
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#29 Post by Semme »

The update's a *patch* that gets applied..

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