Why are embedded flash videos (like youtube) so heavy on the GPU?

Question

I have noticed (in psensor, and listening to the fan) that my GPU is terribly hot when playing youtube videos.

What happens at that point? Is this related to Flash in Ubuntu?

Youtube in Firefox and Chrome seems to take much more GPU resources than playing the same video or one with a higher resolution from the hard disk, or than playing it from youtube through smplayer (or VLC).

Related question here.

Solution

This is probably related to the implementation of Adobe Flash (in Ubuntu, or even in general); while the video codecs used by youtube are standardized, how they are implemented is up to Adobe and it may well be a poor implementation and/or one that uses the GPU excessively.

Compared to that, most Linux/Ubuntu video apps use the FFmpeg/libavcodec open-source codecs to decode video, and they generally do a pretty good job -- in your case, apparently better than the proprietary Flash!

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Alternately, you can always give Flash a chance by disabling hardware acceleration (the graphs in the question show that SMPlayer is using software decoding). Full-screen the flash video (it's a bug), right-click, go to Settings and disable:

Comments

[Neptunno]

+1. If you want to play a youtube video smoothly on Ubuntu, use VLC player.

[fcs]

@user64720 you mean, after downloading it? can i play it in vlc directly like in smplayer?

[fcs]

'disabling hardware acceleration' / 'SMPlayer is using software decoding': what is the relation between the two? (i'm only an amateur in computing). I disabled hardware acc. as mentioned while playing the very clip tested in the above images, and what I get is a few up and down spikes, and then the GPU temp stays close to the 100 degrees ceiling as before, stays there and never leaves until the end of video

[ish]

@cipricus Flash 11+ "attempts" (poorly, it looks like) to use the GPU (hardware) to "decode" the video instead of the CPU (software). Decoding is a fairly computationally intensive task, but most modern CPUs (except Atoms) will deal with 1080P HD without breaking a sweat. It appears that Flash doesn't seem to obey that checkbox and still tries to use the GPU...

[Neptunno]

@cipricus Yes VLC can stream and play youtube videos directly without needing to download. I always use it because my older PC can't handle flash very well and the system lags, but watching on VLC those problems go away. Check this on how to watch youtube videos on VLC Player: youtube.com/watch?v=FFg3_ZGsC6k

[fcs]

@Halkinn - Very nice! I tried to find an addon for FF to do that from context menu. There is one for VLC (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/…) and a clone for SMPlayer (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/smplayer-context-men‌​u/…) but they don't seem to work (they worked up to v.9 of FF it seems). There is one working for Chromium though! - chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/… The VLC web interface has to be enabled and vlc open

[user55822]

@Halkinn, works find with OpenWith. Just add smplayer and/or vlc.

[fcs]

yes, VLC works excellently with OpenWith, and not only for youtube! Thank you all. All these comments sum up to a good answer to the question ”How to play embedded videos in VLC or other external player”. The question apparently exists here (askubuntu.com/q/54379/47206) and I tried to give an answer

[fcs]

correction to what I said about the add-on for Firefox to open youtube in smplayer / youtube player (addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/smplayer-context-men‌​u/…): it works, if not in context menu, through a small button (i.stack.imgur.com/G2cb4.jpg)

[fcs]

based on all your ideas i have created a question and an answer: 'How to play embedded flash videos in external players?' - askubuntu.com/q/169622/47206