If you’ve been getting blue faces when watching YouTube clips, or any other Adobe Flash videos, the cause can be hard to pinpoint. When faces and flames, and other red/orange elements, turn varying shades of blue, it can be due to a buggy Flash update (especially for 64-bit users), or it can be due to video card driver issues (currently it seems to be affects a few Nvidia users after upgrading to Ubuntu 12.04 – read more at the bottom). Whatever the cause, this issue usually drives people to uninstall Flash, then reinstall an earlier version.
But hopefully the following fix will correct the colours in the movies you watch in Firefox or Chrome (and any other web browsers) without having to resort to such drastic measures. All you need to do is create a text file and paste a line of text into it, but since saving it will fail unless you create the folder first, do so by running the following in the terminal:
sudo mkdir /etc/adobe/
Now to create the file and open it for editing:
gksu gedit /etc/adobe/mms.cfg
When it opens, paste in the following:
EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1
Close the file, and confirm you want to save the changes. Now, all you need to do is restart your browser and your clips should look fine. If not, you may need to reboot, and hopefully all is fine when you return.
The EASY WAY: Now that you understand what’s needed, you could cheat and just do the whole process with one command:
sudo mkdir /etc/adobe/ && echo -e "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1" | sudo tee /etc/adobe/mms.cfg > /dev/null
If you also want to force the Flash player to bypass its GPU validity checks (GPU validation – see below), then the command would be:
sudo mkdir /etc/adobe/ && echo -e "OverrideGPUValidation=1\nEnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1" | sudo tee /etc/adobe/mms.cfg > /dev/null
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That Didn’t Work, or Caused Problems? In some cases, you might find you need to disable GPU validation in addition to, or instead of, telling Flash to use vdpau hardware acceleration. If you’re experiencing trouble at some sites but not others (like YouTube videos are now fine, but at Vimeo the Flash plugin crashes), you may want to play around with the settings. For example, to enable the acceleration but bypass GPU validation, the text in mms.cfg would be:
OverrideGPUValidation=1
EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1
… or the following to just bypass GPU validation:
OverrideGPUValidation=1
EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=0
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To Revert Back: If these tweaks have caused you more headache than it was worth, just delete the entire folder you created with:
sudo rm -r /etc/adobe
Or you can just edit the file with:
gksu gedit /etc/adobe/mms.cfg
… and set EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode= to 0 if you prefer to keep it.
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Nvidia users: Apparently the issue (which Adobe reportedly won’t be fixing) is caused by having hardware acceleration enabled, so right-clicking a Flash video, choosing Settings… and disabling “Enable hardware acceleration” can often fix this. However, the above fix is perhaps more elegant since you’re allowing Flash to use vdpau hardware acceleration, rather than just disabling it altogether.
Fantastic, works well.
Initially, the youtube vid reported an error, saying the flash plugin had crashed. I refreshed the page and it works perfectly.
Ummm… I must amend my previous statement. Now the BBC website’s video doesn’t work at all. Same Crash Error.
:(
Oh dear. I might have to undo like the above instructions say.
Pity, cos I just got used to seeing people with normal skin colour again on Youtube.
Ahem… an amendment to my amendment. Inserting “OverrideGPUValidation=1″ into the mms.cfg file has fixed everything, amd now it all work properly.
:)
Good stuff! Now I’ll actually have to try the latter, as I too get Flash crashes (but mostly ads and other junk on web pages, so it hasn’t been that important). The people overdosed on blueberry juice were quite annoying though!
Hi – What is the exact link for asking you a question
This is the third time I ask beyond this subject which doesn’t affect me
But what is affecting me and you surely know what to do
is that I’m each 3 minutes of not usibg the system
obliged to type my password
And each time it even the keyboard / nimlock Led is ‘off’
and after touching the mouse or a key
it takes 2 minutes before the system goes awake
I have never touched or asked energy saving
and this was already during the last ubuntu version before the upgrade to 11.03
Thank you very so much
OH Yes on another system I cannot find in system the main audio
+ and – stetting hihi
Hi. I suppose to ask off-topic questions the best thing would be to contact me via the blog’s contact links – there should be a way to do it. As for your problem, I would assume you need to go into screensaver settings and see what is there. My guess usually would be that it has been set to turn off the monitor after 3 mins (very common), but then it seems your PC is going into Sleep or Suspend, which is handled by the Power app in System Settings. However, XScreensaver has a power management section under the Advanced tab, so that is the likely culprit. Run xscreensaver-demo in the terminal or via Alt+F2 and see how you go.
hi guys, there was another way to fix the flash player. open your shell command and write synaptic. after install this package(adobe-flash-properties-gtk, adobe-flashplugin,browser-plugin-gnash, get-flash-videos, gnash, gnash-common )
restart your computer and enjoy
Wow thank you! I recognized this bug time ago. Here: Gentoo (nvidia-drivers:295 or 195) I had the bug only in firefox. Google Chrome worked fine.
Thank you for the mini howto!
cheers
Ahhh noez! It freezes my KDE DEsktop after some minutes watching. I just can move my mouse at hold X is gone. :( So not the best solution for me.
OK, that’s a new one! Well, one day hopefully Flash totally dies and HTML5 will be giving us trouble-free vids on the web.
That worked for me. Will be checking out your site. Good advice available here.
Awesome. Easy as pie and worked. Thanks.
Amazing! it simply worked!!!
Thanks a lot !!!
Trying the method meant my Firefox completely crashed whenever I viewed a youtube video. Had to apply your reversal and am back with blue skin again :-(
Yeah, that can happen – though usually just the page with the vid crashes. If you have an outdated Firefox and/or Flash, you might want to update them and see if you have more luck (with or without this hack). Also, with YouTube, you can specify to use HTML5 instead of Flash, which can give you better results. Best of luck.
OMG Awesome!! Thanks!