1062556 - No sound from Flash 11 plugin on Xubuntu 14.04.1

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[Jeffery Small]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:32.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/32.0
Build ID: 20140830210550

Steps to reproduce:

Xubuntu 14.04.1
Firefox 30, 31, 32

Sound is heard from all programs including music and video players, the Chrome and the Opera browsers.  However, Firefox refuses to issue any sound, including when playing a music clip or youtube video.

I have tried multiple profiles, including a new clean profile.  I have run Firefox in safe mode.  In no cases is sound heard.  There is no other application that exhibits this froblem.

When I start Firefox from a terminal, I do get the famous message:

(process:15258): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

Could this be the source of the problem?  Other than sound, Firefox seems to be operating normally, although it appears to be causing a problem with another program on the system.  See my bug report addition at:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=833117

In an attempt to get help from the forums, I did install the (likely unnecessary) gecko-mediaplayer plugin with no better results.  Here is a screenshot of the current plugins:

http://smallthoughts.com/photos/misc/gecko_plugin.png

Suggestions as to how to fix or work around this problem would be appreciated.


Actual results:

No sound output.


Expected results:

Sound should be heard.

Comment 1

[Matthew Gregan [:kinetik]]

Can you please post a link to an item of media that doesn't play?  Also, please attach the output from running http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-info.sh on your system.  Thanks!

Comment 2

[Jeffery Small]

Attachment: Results from running alsa_utils_alsa-info.sh

Submitting results upon request.

Comment 3

[Jeffery Small]

Any audio source will demonstrate the audio problem.  Here is a link to a youtube video that plays without sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0

Comment 4

[Matthew Gregan [:kinetik]]

Thanks.  In the system control control under the applications tab, while a video is playing, do you see Firefox listed?  Can you confirm it's not muted?

I've grabbed the first few seconds of the linked file in multiple formats.  To eliminate codec issues, can you confirm which of these (if any) produce audio?

http://flim.org/~kinetik/tests/bug1062556.webm
http://flim.org/~kinetik/tests/bug1062556.mp4

(In reply to Jeffery Small from comment #0)
> Firefox 30, 31, 32

Confirming: Firefox 29 was the last version that worked for you?

> (process:15258): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_slice_set_config: assertion
> 'sys_page_size == 0' failed

This is unrelated.

> In an attempt to get help from the forums, I did install the (likely
> unnecessary) gecko-mediaplayer plugin with no better results.  Here is a
> screenshot of the current plugins:

You don't need this installed to play HTML5 media in Firefox.  Unless you've got a reason to have it installed, it's probably better to remove it to avoid any possible conflation of issues.

Comment 5

[Jeffery Small]

I do get audio output for both the webm and mp4 links that you provided above!  Still no audio from the youtube site.

I'm not sure what youy mean by "system control control under the applications tab" so I can't check that.  Please explain further.

When the clips above are playing, I get audio levels displayed in the pulseAudio volume control window.  Nothing happens when the youtube video is playing.

This is a new system.  Only Firefox 31/32 have been used (and possibly 30 - I can't remember if that was initially installed) here and all have exhibited the problem.  I have used all versions through 32 on my Sun/Solaris system without any audio problems.

I will remove the gecko plugin.  I was pretty sure this was a dead end, but thought I would try it just in case.  I have run in Safe Mode with no plugins and the audio problem persists.

Thanks for the assistance and feedback.  I hope we can get to the bottom of this.

Comment 6

[Matthew Gregan [:kinetik]]

Sorry, typo: "system volume control", by which I mean the PulseAudio volume control window you're already looking at.

The fact that there's nothing showing up in the PA volume control when the YouTube video is playing is a useful clue.  When you're playing the YouTube video, right-click on the video -- do you see "About the HTML5 player" as the last menu item?  A screenshot of the video after you select "Stats for Nerds" from that menu might be useful also.

It's possible you're receiving the Flash player instead, in which case that points to an issue between Flash and your system audio.  On some distributions and with some Flash versions, it has been necessary to install an audio wrapper library in the past -- I think that's no longer the case (with recent versions of everything), but that might be an avenue to explore.

Comment 7

[Jeffery Small]

Right-click on video does not say HTML5, it says: About Adobe Flash Player 11.2.202.400...

I will attach the "nerds" screenshot.

I have been trying a lot of different audio sites and didn't get any sound.  However, I just randomly went to this Amazon page and I am getting audio for the song tracks.

http://smile.amazon.com/Definitive-Collection-Joe-Walsh/dp/B001O3SOE6/ref=sr_1_1?s=dmusic&ie=UTF8&qid=1409864947&sr=1-1&keywords=joe+walsh

Maybe the problem is flash and other websites are using flash for their audio playback.

This is the stock version 32 packaged build for ubuntu, yet others do not seem to be reporting any problems -- at least so far as I've seen.

I just went to the plugin page and deactivated shockwave flash.  And now the videos ARE playing sound and right-clicking on the video now says: About the HTML5 player.

If I set the flash plugin to Ask to Activate, then the youtube video tries to play flash, but when it is deactivated, the HTML5 version runs.

So what does this mean for flash support?  Does HTML5 handle all flash content and the shockwave plugin should be uninstalled?  Will I run into situations where some other content does not play?

Comment 8

[Jeffery Small]

Attachment: Youtube "nerds' screenshot

Comment 9

[Jeffery Small]

Follow up:

I was experimenting with various audio situations.  In Facebook, video content that people post is now embeded on the FB page as flash.  When I tried to play this, it reported that the flashplayer video plugin was disabled.  However, when I went to the youtube link directly, it first tried to play the clip using flash and then immediately switched to HTRML5.  From this experiment, it looks like flash content will not play without the plugin, but that youtube is prepared to serve up content in either format.

So there are two issues:

1: Can Firefox request HTML5 before Flash when the flashplayer plugin is activated?  Currently, it looks like it tries to play flash first (at least at youtube) if the browser supports it.

2: Can we fix the flash plugin so that it works?

Comment 10

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

>1: Can Firefox request HTML5 before Flash when the flashplayer plugin is activated?
Firefox doesn't choose in this case. Many pages detect what the browser supports and they use flash over html5. Firefox in that case gets only a page delivered with a flash applet.

Solution in general: Disable the flash player (Tools/addons/plugins) in Firefox or use for example https://www.youtube.com/html5 (site specific).

>2: Can we fix the flash plugin so that it works?
Note: Chrome (Opera is basically Chrome with different UI) is using a different flash player as Firefox. Google bought the flash player source from Adobe and they are developing their own version that Firefox can not use. 
The sound playing from the flash plugin is not controlled by firefox and there is nothing that we can change on our side to make it work. This is something between the flash player and your system configuration.
You may want to ask in the Ubuntu help Forum.

Comment 11

[Matthew Gregan [:kinetik]]

Moving this to Plugins, but ultimately this looks like it's a problem with Flash and your system rather than anything under Firefox's control, so there's not much we can do (other than keep improving the Web so that Flash is no longer required!), sorry.

Comment 12

[Jeffery Small]

Thanks for all of your help.  I'll now follow up with a Ubuntu bug report based upon this new information.  If there is anything else you think of that we can do at the Firefox side of things, let me know.

Regards.

Comment 13

[Georg Fritzsche [:gfritzsche]]

What Matti said in comment 10 covers it - we don't control the sound for Flash.
This is an issue for Ubuntu or Adobe.