741058 - Flash hardware acceleration fails on Mac for second media file onwards. (Firefox doesn't release VDA Decoder properly)

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect, P1)

Description

[[e-mail]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:11.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/11.0
Build ID: 20120312181643

Steps to reproduce:

On a Mac mini (OS X 10.6.8, 64bit, 4G RAM, CPU: Intel Core 2 duo 2.53GHZ. GPU:NVIDIA GeForce 9400), use Firefox 11.0 to browse Youtube. (Flash version 11.2.202.228).


Actual results:

1. The first media file plays in full hardware acceleration mode. 
"Video info" shows both "accelerated video rendering" and "accelerated video decoding" 

2. Close the current tab. Open Youtube in other tab. Choose same media file.  Hardware video decoding stops working.
"Video info" shows "accelerated video rendering" and "software video decoding".

4. At the same, use VDA decoder checker (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=261104) shows 
An error was returned by the decoder layer. This may happen for example because of bitstream/data errors during a decode operation. This error may also be returned from VDADecoderCreate when hardware decoder resources are available on the system but currently in use by another process.
VDADecoderCreate failed. err: -12473

5. At the same time, any other application that uses VDA frameworks cannot access hardware acceleration any more.

6. Only restart Firefox clears the issue.  VDA checker will then report
"Hardware acceleration is fully supported"

7. However, if repeat the above process, the issue will happen again.

It looks apparent to me that Firefox doesn't release the VDA decoder properly. On the same platform, Safari doesn't have such issue. All Flash Hardware Acceleration works as expected. 


Expected results:

When playing video on Youtube current or newly opened tab, hardware acceleration should always work. "Video info" should always show both "accelerated video rendering" and "accelerated video decoding"

Comment 1

[Benoit Girard (:BenWa)]

Is the first media file also a flash plugin instance? Can you provide a test links for steps 1 and step 2? I tried with 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kztNWdhRdnw' and I can re-open the tab several times.

Comment 2

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

no response to comment#1