Choppy Youtube video[SOLVED]

[vistal]

I'm working on getting PClinuxOS set up as my media/emulator PC.  So far everything has been far easier than any other distro I've tried (Crack Cocaine, mint, puppy, puppy arcade... and more.  You get the idea), but i'm having trouble getting flash video working correctly.

My symptoms seem to match this thread: http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,91236.15.html

(To summarize: video plays fine in small mode, but full screen it gets super choppy).

My first thought was to try downgrading the flash version, but i'm guessing it has been removed from the repo as the option to force version on flash is grey'd out.  Is there any other (reasonably) simple way to do this?  I don't mind using the command line, but i also get a little nervous searching random websites for old versions of software.

In case I'm barking up the wrong tree i'll include my hardware for further advice:

I'm currently using the Chromium browser with a 3.2 dual core amd and an ASUS motherboard with the on board ATI 760G [Radeon 3000] video chip set.  I put 8gig of ram in the system (although i haven't looked to see how much PClinuxOS is using because its a 32 bit OS?).

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.  If any additional info is needed let me know and i'll be happy to post it.

[T6]

hello and welcome to the forum

let me begin by saying that flash is like a bad joke, in linux and windows

after saying that, have you disabled hardware acceleration in the flash options?

remember to close the web browser after changing this setting and reopening the web browser

apart from that, do you know if you are using the ati proprietary driver? you could need it but i am not sure about this, don't have similar hardware to compare

[vistal]

Just tried disabling hardware acceleration in flash and it didn't seem to make much of a difference, maybe even a little worse. 

I am running the proprietary driver for ATI.

Thanks for the welcome to the forums.  I am aware that flash is a joke, but there really aren't any alternatives, and what kind of media pc would this be without youtube ? 

Finally, I do know that my hardware can handle it because i was able to get youtube playing smoothly on ubuntu (but pretty much nothing else worked the way i wanted).

[vistal]

Teehee @ filter pwn.

[exploder]

Doing a search in Synaptic will find you the pae kernel so all of your memory will be recognized. I am not sure about the particular ATI graphics you have but I would try turning off hardware acceleration in Firefox first like T6 has suggested. If that doesn't do the trick maybe someone running the same graphics card can advise you on weather installing the proprietary driver will work with your hardware.  

Edit: We posted at the same time and my suggestion obviously did not help.

[vistal]

Actually, it did help exploder because the next problem I was going to tackle was whether my RAM was being used or not. 

Looking in synaptic I see several versions, but there are two different descriptions.  What is the difference/Which would you suggest:  i686 linux kernel pae bfs scheduler or i686 server linux kernel (PAE enabled)?

[T6]

pae and pae.bfs

pae is physical address extension

pae.bfs is the pae plus bfs modifications to make the desktop run faster, you can find more info bout bfs in wikipedia, you'll find why i don't say more, bfs means...   

[vistal]

 Alright, went with pae.bfs after reading wiki/some benchmarks and am running it now.  All 8 gig is recognized, and my computer hasn't exploded (never switched a kernel before). Thanks exploder/t6!

Still having super choppy video on youtube though

Is there any way to try the older flash version or has it in fact already been removed from the repos?   

[T6]

as you know, pclinux is a rolling release distro, the repos we have are limited in many ways, one of the is space so it is very difficult to keep old versions of files with this limitations

i know that you can remove the current plugin and search and install by hand the old one

i don't remember how to do it but i know that it can be done

this can create complications when you update the machine

[Texstar]

I'm surprised that video card works at all. The Ati 3000 series is poorly supported by ATi drivers. You can try the following below. Also you can disable flash acceleration mode.

3. Enable ATi fglrx driver Tear Free mode.
Open the Menu -> More Applications -> Configuration -> Ati Catalyst Control Center
Click on Display Options -> Tear Free
Check the box that says Enable Tear Free Desktop to reduce tearing
Click on Apply
Click on OK

[vistal]

Thanks for posting Texstar, never expected the big man himself to post.  Thanks for the distro, i'm kind of hooked even if i need different hardware

I would like to qualify this because I am not sure...

I had clicked yes on installing/using the proprietary driver in the hardware set up and rebooted, but i never got the catalyst control center.

After reading your post I thought:  Well maybe i should install the catalyst control center!  1 Synaptic later and it is installed but crashes when i try to run it.  

I think Tear Free mode is driver specific and therefore can't be enabled any other way?

How should i procede?

If a video card (instead of badly supported ATI onboard video) is the ultimate solution could you recommend anything that will plug into the pci/express of my current board?  

EDIT:  After looking at the post i don't mean to ask "What card should i buy?" because that is not a thing you can ever guarantee.  I mean, for purposes of compatibility with PClinuxOS what cards have you found worked well?  (if the compatibility issue is within my own system thats my problem)

[CaptainSarcastic]

I run all Nvidia and have for years - the motherboard on this machine has integrated ATI graphics, but I've never used them.

I can tell you that in my machines I have at various times run a GeForce 6800GT, 8500GT, 9500GT, and in this one a 9800GT, and all of them have worked flawlessly.

[7272andy]

vistal,
Two things which are worth a try are;

• Boot into safe mode, run drakconf, re-setup the graphics and then run aticonfig --initial -f and reboot
  The ATI Catalyst Control Center should now work (if supported)
  
• As root edit/create the file /etc/adobe/mms.cfg to include the lines
  OverrideGPUValidation=true
  EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1

[vistal]

At work right now, but thanks for the reply Andy.  I'll try it as soon as I get home and let you know how it goes.

[davexnet]

I'm not the OP, but I wanted to report that adding those changes to mms.cfg has made significant improvements. 
Prior to modifying it, I measured the cpu usage of a 720p video in the popup window and it was just over 50%
on my modest rig (AMD X2 4200, Nvidia 8600GT)

I logged onto XP (same box) and got 24% with Flash HW acceleration enabled (right click video/settings),
and if I disabled HW acceleration and restarted Fireefox, I got 38% playing the video.

After modifying the mms.cfg, CPU usage dropped to 24%, same as XP.

I have also modified these settings in Firefox: (about:config) but I must state that I have no idea if they are related or not:
webgl.force-enabled > true
layers.acceleration.force-enabled > true

about:support (at the bottom) shows
GPU accelerated windows 1/1 opengl