1198771 - Active sound indicator icon is not displayed on CNN site (maybe somewhere else, too)

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Description

[User Dderss]

Attachment: Active sound indicator does not show up on CNN site.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:43.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/43.0
Build ID: 20150824030206

Steps to reproduce:

Opened an article (http://us.cnn.com/2015/08/25/asia/boy-trips-punches-hole-in-painting/index.html) on CNN that has started some sound (video) stream


Actual results:

Active sound indicator did not show on on tab's label, while it always shows on YouTube site's tabs, when sound is active, and in other cases


Expected results:

Active sound indicator should have been shown on on tab's label

Comment 1

[User Dderss]

Same issue with this Huffington Post page that has background sound:

http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/welcome-to-beautiful-parkersburg/

Active indicator does not show up, though there is sound.

Comment 2

[Kartikaya Gupta (email:[e-mail])]

Ehsan, is this a known issue?

Comment 3

[arni2033]

Are you sure you have up-to-date Flash version? Also, try the 1st link in safe mode using new profile
https://support.mozilla.org/ru/kb/upravlenie-profilyami
I, however, confirm that the 2nd link doesn't display sound indicator. If I disable, then enable sound (using button in top right corner of the page), then after that tab displays the indicator.

Win7_64bit, 43.0a1 32bit, ID 20150828030205

Comment 4

[User Dderss]

I have the latest Flash version. Different profile did not help.

Comment 5

[(no longer active)]

Can you please go to about:plugins and search for "Shockwave Flash" and paste the entire section under it here?

I filed bug 1200208 for the huffingtonpost article issue.

Comment 6

[User Dderss]

As I wrote already, Flash is latest:

Shockwave Flash

    File: NPSWF64_18_0_0_232.dll
    Path: C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF64_18_0_0_232.dll
    Version: 18.0.0.232
    State: Enabled
    Shockwave Flash 18.0 r0

MIME Type	Description	Suffixes
application/x-shockwave-flash	Adobe Flash movie	swf
application/futuresplash	FutureSplash movie	spl

_________________________________________________________________

By the way, it looks that at least in case of that particular CNN page issues with active sound indicator are not stable, because right now indicators shows up.

However, when I first opened that page few days ago, sound was active right away (though without indicator on the tab's label, what was the issue I reported on), I did not do anything for it to utter. This time this page was silent, and it started to utter sound only after I "unmuted" speaker icon on a small video frame on the right of that page (active sound indicator appeared/disappeared correctly depending on how I muted/unmuted). But I did not mute it manually ever. This means that there were some changes somewhere (but not with Flash version, which is the same for few weeks already).

Comment 7

[Ralph Giles (:rillian)]

Adobe added an API which lets us query which tab is making sound, I hear.

Comment 8

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

User Dderss, I notice that you are running the 64-bit Firefox, 64-bit Flash, and e10s. Can you reproduce this problem with 32-bit Firefox? Or with e10s disabled? Tools > Options > uncheck "Enable multi-process Firefox".

I tested 64-bit Firefox (Nightly 43) and Flash with e10s, but the audio indicator icon worked correctly for me.

Comment 9

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to User Dderss from comment #6)
> As I wrote already, Flash is latest:
> 
> Shockwave Flash
> 
>     File: NPSWF64_18_0_0_232.dll
>     Path: C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF64_18_0_0_232.dll
>     Version: 18.0.0.232
>     State: Enabled
>     Shockwave Flash 18.0 r0
> 
> MIME Type	Description	Suffixes
> application/x-shockwave-flash	Adobe Flash movie	swf
> application/futuresplash	FutureSplash movie	spl

Your Flash player is too old, you need to download the beta builds from <http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer.html>.

> By the way, it looks that at least in case of that particular CNN page
> issues with active sound indicator are not stable, because right now
> indicators shows up.

That is extremely weird.  I am 99.99% sure that the Flash player version you are running doesn't support the new APIs in Flash 19.  Are you sure that the audio is actually coming from Flash?

> However, when I first opened that page few days ago, sound was active right
> away (though without indicator on the tab's label, what was the issue I
> reported on), I did not do anything for it to utter. This time this page was
> silent, and it started to utter sound only after I "unmuted" speaker icon on
> a small video frame on the right of that page (active sound indicator
> appeared/disappeared correctly depending on how I muted/unmuted). But I did
> not mute it manually ever. This means that there were some changes somewhere
> (but not with Flash version, which is the same for few weeks already).

I think you are probably seeing audio from multiple sources, some Flash and some HTML5 sources.  Please upgrade your Flash and test again and reopen this or file a new bug for any specific issues.  Your report of the huffington post issue uncovered a bug, so thanks for that!  :-)

Comment 10

[User Dderss]

Christopher, I will try that, if I will be able to reproduce the effect in default configuration.

Ehsan, thanks for the link. But I really do have latest release version of Flash (18.0.0.232): and plug-in update check in Firefox says so, and Adobe's site indicates the same. I will update it to beta if I will find case of Flash sound not affecting tab's label.

And you are probably right that at in some cases CNN might insert HTML5 audio stream, which would be the same issue as Huffington Post case. This would mean that there is nothing wrong with active sound detection of Flash, no matter what version it is. In my latest experiment was I have tried multiple times to mute and unmute that small floating video -- and it was Flash object, as I saw it via context menu, and tab's label reacted on it correctly, adding or removing active sound indicator. So if this is API-dependent, then it was added already in Flash 18 few weeks ago.

Comment 11

[(no longer active)]

(In reply to User Dderss from comment #10)
> Ehsan, thanks for the link. But I really do have latest release version of
> Flash (18.0.0.232): and plug-in update check in Firefox says so, and Adobe's
> site indicates the same. I will update it to beta if I will find case of
> Flash sound not affecting tab's label.

OK, this got me curious so I installed the same version of Flash (18.0.0.232) on Windows and it seems like Adobe has added part of this functionality to Flash 18 now!  More specifically, I get the audio indicator with it, but muting doesn't work.  The muting problem (bug 1189772) was fixed in a follow-up release of Flash 19 beta, so I think that not all of the fixes required for this feature have been deployed to Flash 18 yet, but you're right, the basic functionality works with Flash 18 now!

I suggest that you test with Flash 19 though, since that should have all of the bug fixes and should give you a good experience for this feature.  Please file bugs if you encounter issues with Flash 19.

Thanks!