No Sound with Flash

[Brainonska511]

I recently install Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop. Everything is working alright, but I can't get flash videos to play with sound. I've tried some of the fixes I've found through Ubuntu's documentation, but none of them are working.

Any suggestions?

 

[xSauronx]

install libflashsupport?

i had the same issue and i think thats the package that solved it

 

[Brainonska511]

I had tried that and it didn't work.

I screwed up a bunch of other things so I ended up just re-installing the whole OS - a little extreme, but since I was playing with a lot of things, I figured it might have been something like that (and the process is MUCH faster than reinstalling Windows). Then I just installed the Adobe Flash plug-in through the Add/Remove section. Everything works fine now.

 

[Brainonska511]

Hm.... now it only works sometimes. If I restart my computer and go right to something like Youtube, the videos will play with sound. If I start to open other programs, like Songbird and Pidgin and then try to play more videos later, they'll play without sound.

If I install the libflashsupport package, is there anything else I have to do or is it just install the package and leave things alone?

Edit:

Additionally, I just found if I close off Songbird (altogether) and restart firefox, flash videos work again. Maybe Songbird is taking over the sound driver (even when it is stopped) and prevents other stuff from playing sounds?

 

[xSauronx]

no, its not songbird, just flash on firefox

i run into the same thing every once in a while and have to restart ff. i just havent bothered looking for a fix (i doubt there is one, but, meh)

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: xSauronx
no, its not songbird, just flash on firefox

i run into the same thing every once in a while and have to restart ff. i just havent bothered looking for a fix (i doubt there is one, but, meh)

That's good to know. I'll probably just stick with restarting Firefox then when flash stops working right.

 

[Nothinman]

The version of flash that you're using probably doesn't support ALSA. Whenever a program opens up the OSS emulation device (i.e. /dev/dsp) the driver is blocked and nothing else can play or record sound. You might able to ge by with launching firefox under the 'aoss' command (in the alsa-oss package in Debian) but it's kind of hit or miss.

 

[Terzo]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showth...hlight=libflashsupport

That worked for me, although I'm using the Flash 10 release candidate. It's really nice, I can full screen flash videos without having them stutter.

 

[Brainonska511]

I found a workaround for the whole issue - just close my media player and restart firefox and flash videos work fine. If I don't do that, flash videos still play, just no sound.

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: Brainonska511
I found a workaround for the whole issue - just close my media player and restart firefox and flash videos work fine. If I don't do that, flash videos still play, just no sound.

Yes, like Nothinman mentioned, depending on what sound system you're using, sometimes only a single app at a time can access your sound hardware.

 

[ZappDogg]

I'm having this problem too. I tried the libflashsupport fix, didn't help. As a weirdness, the only way I can get audio output in ANY program is by selecting Digital in the drop down box. ALSA doesn't, and has never, worked. Technically, Digital is correct (using optical out), but I think this bypasses ALSA somehow.

 

[Brainonska511]

An update and solution to my situation:

I had resigned myself to using Flash (with sound) only when I would exit out of Rhythmbox and then watch a video in Firefox. When I wanted to switch back to my music, I'd have to restart FF and reopen Rhythmbox.

I was playing around with my sound preferences and set it from Autodetect for "Music and Movies" to the ALSA setting and now can play (with sound) Youtube videos and listen to music simultaneously. I had tried it with the Pulse option and that just resulted in the same problem I was having before.

 

[drag]

Flash 9 sound stuff is fairly broken.

install libflashsupport?

ya that will work for some things.

I wanted to switch from using Alsa directly to using PulseAudio for various reasons. Flash9 won't work with that for nothing. There is nothing you can really do to fix it.. The best I've been able to get it working would end up with a static sound at the beginning and sound would play for a few moments then sort of randomly cut out completely.

If you can your best bet is to use the Flash10 beta. It'll make your browser more crash-happy on pages with lots of animations, so I'd combine it with some flash block goodness. Using that I had zero issues getting Flash to work with PA and I think I got a performance boost as well.