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Flash - CPU Usage - FPS - Frame Rate

New Here ,
Dec 10, 2008 Dec 10, 2008

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Ok, I first want to apologize if this problem has been answered and fixed before, but I have spent days pouring over forums, and I still can not fix my problem. It requires a little bit of background first:

I can't remember how long ago it started, but whenever I am viewing a flash file (a game, videos from youtube, advertisements, etc.) My CPU usage increases to 99-100% and remains there until I close the program that is running it, or go to a different webpage. I normally use firefox, so for the longest time I was searching for the problem relating to firefox exclusively. I came across FlashBlock, and I still use it in Firefox. However, this is not a SOLUTION to the problem, just a "work around." If I actually want to view the flash content - bye bye CPU usage.

So for the longest time I focused on firefox. I completely uninstalled and removed flash and firefox from my computer, and reinstalled. I even tried it with an older version of flash, because I can't remember always having this problem, and the problem persisted. But now I have everything up to date, and the problem is still there.

Then I decided to use IE for a little bit because I was upset at Firefox. I was surprised when I was on youtube, or playing a flash game, that my CPU went up to 100% and remained there. SO instead of googling "flash firefox cpu" I just googled "flash cpu" and I have been doing some research/experimenting. I am - by no means - a very technical person or a programmer, I am an ordinary user that is upset about this problem. I went to this page http://www.bezzmedia.com/swfspot/samples/beginner/Show_the_Current_Frames_Per_Second and watched my cpu usage go up to 100. But when the animation goes to a lower fps, from about 1-5, my cpu usage goes down, but only to about 80. So what happens is I can do control-alt-delete and watch the performance tab's graph. After letting it run for a while, I get almost an perfect, symmetrical mountainous "landscape" if that makes sense - with bumps up to a hundred, and coming down to about 80. It is so consistent that I am positive my system cannot handle even normal frame rates for some reason. However, I am running on XP Pro with a Pentium 4 2.80GHz processor and 2.5 gigs of RAM and I should not even be having this problem - I can run tons of programs and not have my cpu usage go above even 50, but a flash video puts it at 100. It is ridiculous! I don't have a virus or anything, and I actually take pride in keeping my computer clean and efficient. It happens to all users on the computer as well.

Again, I am not a programmer. Is there some option somewhere that I can tell my flash content to reduce its frame rate, or not go above a certain number? It seems that many people are having this problem. I think I remember someone somewhere saying that with the newer versions, they are trying to perform "better" than an older version you had, and the frames per second increases, but I have no idea if this is true. Should I roll back to a later version, like 5? I already tried it back on version 9 but I still had the problem.

The "ideal" solution is to figure out what is going on with the frame rate on my computer. Maybe if I could just right click the flash, and tell it to play a lower fps? Does hardware acceleration have to do with this? Also, changing the "quality" of the flash content from low to high or medium doesn't affect the cpu usage - it stays at 100%.

Please help out an ignorant person if you can. I want to preserve the life of my computer as long as possible. If someone could help me - in layman's terms - I would greatly appreciate it, and so would all the other upset people googling "flash cpu problem." Thank you!

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 14, 2008 Dec 14, 2008

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I too am frustrated by the very real problem with flash and CPU usage. I have a dell Precision 390 workstation and should not have my system come to a crawl whenever I go to a web site that has some silly ad that I am absolutely not interested in. I wish that they had a utility like FlashBlock for IE. Adobe seems to be silent about this issue. It would be nice if they would acknowledge it and say that they are working on a solution. At least allow the user to fine tune some optimization parameters so as to create an acceptable balance between performance and video experience.

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New Here ,
Apr 19, 2009 Apr 19, 2009

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Great post guys..shame that Adobe don't seem to be listening. I have the same problem and its really starting to annoy me.

These are my specs:

Mac PowerBook G4 (PowerPC) 1.67GHz

Mac OSX 10.5.6

Firefox 3.0.8

Flash Player 10.0 r22

ADOBE - PLEASE FIX THIS

Thanks,

Chris

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Community Expert ,
Apr 19, 2009 Apr 19, 2009

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it's not adobe's fault that it's possible to stress your cpu using applications created by one of their products.

just because someone has poor coding skills and uploads a poorly coded file onto their website that causes problems doesn't mean adobe should do anything about it.

here's that same file with more reasonable coding:

http://www.kglad.com/Files/31-framespersecond.html

and while that still may put some stress on your cpu because the glowfilter is cpu intensive, my file should look better, run better and put less stress on your cpu than the original authors file.

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New Here ,
Apr 19, 2009 Apr 19, 2009

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Thanks for your response, but not sure if I agree.

EVERY website I visit that contains Flash hogs my CPU - they can't all be poorly written??  I'm talking about blue chip companies like www.ft.com, www.cnn.com and www.theice.com

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Community Expert ,
Apr 19, 2009 Apr 19, 2009

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i'm not familiar with all websites, but a number of prominent ones that should have professional coders working on them do not have skilled flash coders working on them.  in particular, msnbc.com and cnn.com have frequent coding errors in prominent flash applications (like video) displayed on their sites.  in addition, their ads can be coded by low-skill individuals.

i suspect low cost is more important than high quality for these websites.

what if you visit www.kglad.com?  do you see cpu over-load?  what about that glowfilter file on my site?  did it cause a significant impact on your cpu's load?

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New Here ,
Apr 19, 2009 Apr 19, 2009

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OK, I hit your homepage, www.kglad.com, and my CPU was locked at a steady 85% whilst the pattern was being drawn on the page!  Guess that's a bad sign?

My Mac is only a Powerbook G4 (PowerPC) 1.67GHz...might that be the issue?

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New Here ,
May 02, 2009 May 02, 2009

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I also visit kglad.com and my CPU went not below an 85% of usage, and I have a 3Ghz genuine intel pentium.

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Participant ,
Jun 12, 2010 Jun 12, 2010

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Yes, this is the situation right now - nearly every website with HD video support uses lots of CPU resources. In most cases it means poor coding skills of the developer who made the flash content, and in some - the HD video itself demands lots of CPU resources just like the HD movies we watch on PC do. But, I want to point out - in neither case is Flash itself the cause of the problem. Just blame the website, not flash. When I stumble upon such website I've got a quick and very effective solution - I quit it and don't go there again

Emil Georgiev - Flash & Web Design

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New Here ,
Jun 26, 2010 Jun 26, 2010

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Something tells me (perhaps it's your signature) that you're not completely unbiased when it comes to Flash, Emil. The fact is, there are millions of people with high-end hardware, running either Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, that are experiencing this exact issue.

Now granted, some sites are very poorly coded. And to lay the blame with shoddy code is absolutely correct. But you're wrong to blame the websites themselves - this is, more often than not, Adobe's problem, and not that of the web developers. The likes of Google are doing everything they can to improve performance on the web. But there's only so much optimising one can do in the abstract layers of AS.

In my case, I'm running a fresh install of Windows 7 with very little installed (read: all updates, Chrome and Flash). I have two Intel Dual Core 2.16GHz processors (so that's two processors, four cores) and 4GB RAM. Now with only two tabs open (one for this forum thread, and another streaming video) CPU usage has gone from 0% to 80%. And it doesn't matter if I'm viewing a site coded by decent developers who know what they're doing (in this case BBC iPlayer or YouTube) or some rubbish off of MSNBC. Nor does it matter which browser I'm using, the experience is comparable with Chrome, Firefox and IE8.

And before someone suggests that I give a 10.1 release candidate a try, don't bother. Performance is exactly the same as in the latest stable version, i.e. absolutely dire.

If VLC and even Microsoft can produce decoders and players that don't completely cripple modern hardware, then so can Adobe.

Message was edited by: jfvd

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Participant ,
Jul 01, 2010 Jul 01, 2010

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Who has undeniably proved that the video player used on youtube and BBCiPlayer has been developed right? Who might tell you for sure if they've not used 60 fps with onEnterFrame() function with about 100 checkings defined in it? Or have not used the services of some unknown agency far back in India only because it has offered the lowest development price? Just like the sneakers you get from big brands and which ultimately have been manufactured in China?  It is the most common practice: the bigger the business - the cheaper it searches to pay.... Nobody could tell you ... And if someone can, be sure he won't ....

I've seen how Flash evolves and how these issues emerged righ on time with the rising of the development hype - the CPU freakish usage and poor coding issues align with it exactly. Yes you can have bigger than 320x240 px videos in flash and not have it crashing your computer, and, you might have a small tiny video or even animation which crashes it - you just have to "know" how to do it.

Emil Georgiev - Flash & Web Design

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New Here ,
Mar 16, 2011 Mar 16, 2011

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Was there ever a fix for this? I am having the exact same issue on an Intel p4. Obviously there is some kind of conflict going on with flash to cause this on certain machines. I can’t believe I am looking at a post 3 years old and this problem still exist.

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New Here ,
May 07, 2009 May 07, 2009

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I have the same problem over here. I hate to dive into complexity regarding this, but there are two things happening that might be relevent. Firefox when examined with process monitor seems to be recursively creating and killing threads which accounts for upwards of 20% of the cpu usage, these extensive bouts of activity are preceded and punctuated by queries, read, and writes of "C:\Documents and Settings\Open\Local Settings\Temp\fla64.tmp". A second potential relevent note is that we should post what extensions we are using to see if we can track it to one of them. I use many to be efficient "Tools -> Addons -> My Config". I attempted to kill the cpu usage first with google desktop, disabling history, advanced, and safe browing features to no avail.

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New Here ,
May 07, 2009 May 07, 2009

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Seems as if a lot of us are having the same problem, with decent hardware specifications too....

KGLAD - any sugestions for us all?

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Community Expert ,
May 07, 2009 May 07, 2009

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i never noticed that problem but i'm seeing cpu usage between 30% and 40% with that home page design.  and that's way too high.

what about the mandelbrot snippet?  that's actually very cpu intensive and i'm seeing less than 10% during the draw-phase.

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New Here ,
May 07, 2009 May 07, 2009

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Mandelbrot image during the drawing phase takes up 90% cpu utilization.  

Another example, The Times online homepage has a Delta advert/banner at the top of the page right now - simply going to the Times homepage causes the Firefox CPU utilization to be locked on 85%...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/

These are my specs once more:

Mac PowerBook G4 (PowerPC) 1.67GHz

Mac OSX 10.5.6

Firefox 3.0.10

Flash Player 10.0 r22

Add-Ons - 1Click-Weather, Foxy Proxy, Chromifox Basic theme

Many thanks,

Chris

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Community Expert ,
May 07, 2009 May 07, 2009

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ok, now i'm seeing between 10% and 20% when kglad.com is on screen.  if i change tabs cpu use drops to 0% to 1%.

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Community Expert ,
May 07, 2009 May 07, 2009

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and now it's less around 3%.

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New Here ,
May 08, 2009 May 08, 2009

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I'm sorry, I'm not following you. Did you find a workaround for watching flash videos with minimal cpu usage?

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Community Expert ,
May 08, 2009 May 08, 2009

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no, i was just cleaning up my code and pointing out that your cpu problems are because of coding issues.

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Guru ,
May 08, 2009 May 08, 2009

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For mac users there is a slight performance hit with the mac flash player:

http://www.gskinner.com/blog/archives/2009/05/idle_cpu_usage.html

(that talks a lot about AIR, but the underlying reason apparently is the flash player on the mac platform)

But that's not something that would explain the 85%+ CPU consumption, I agree that that is related to how you code.

Video, and HD video in particular, for example, will consume a lot of CPU cycles on older machines. That's unavoidable as you are basically doing something that requires a lot of work on an older processor. Playing the same video in Vlan player or another player will have similar implications.

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New Here ,
May 09, 2009 May 09, 2009

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Hey, my cpu is less active on your site now. I am hovering around 30% now. What did you change?

Reading above, I just want to point out that the biggest cpu hits come from youtube tabs open, or embedded videos/slideshows (flickr, and other image hosts...)

Reading below, (Greg) I agree there should be a point where browsing the internet will be annoying or impossible on older machines, but I would hardly classify the machines listed above as obsolete, and mine even games nicely.

As an recap/update of the current status we are still looking for fixes and workarounds other than to get most of the internets better coders or to go i7?

Thank you for efforts, we will be the beacon of hope for many confused and frustrated people as they start to identify their slow sauce. I wish process monitor/explorer and wireshark shipped with windows...

-J

maybe if there is a point where the coding pushes us too hard to upgrade that we can spoof our OS/browser ID and get something a little nicer served?

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Community Expert ,
May 09, 2009 May 09, 2009

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i wasn't coding as efficiently as i could.  that design on kglad benefited from a few tweaks.

so, the problem with your cpu being 80+% utilized was because of poor coding and not because of any flash player shortfalls. cleaning up my coding dropped utilization from about 40% on my machine to 1%-2%.  and there's more that could be done.  i think i could drop that by 1/2 again, if i thought it would matter to anyone visiting my site.

the problem was, prior to the comments in this thread:

1.  i didn't notice any problem.   and, in fact, i developed that design on an older computer and i'm certain utilization on that computer had to be much higher than 40% and i didn't notice an impact on my older computer's responsiveness.

2.  i didn't think to check if users with less capable computers might have a problem, or people with similar computer specs might have trouble when doing several cpu intensive things simultaneously while visiting my site.

those are programmer (=me) issues.  to some degree that's not adobe's fault.  to some degree it may be adobe's fault:  they made it very easy, in as3, to overload computer memory and bog-down cpu and they made it difficult to create and maintain efficient code.

of course, they didn't make it impossible.  now, with a few years as3 experience i saw right away how to tune that code to be more efficient.  as3 has all the tools needed to create and maintain efficient code.

further, despite the fact that i created that kglad.com design years ago when i was just learning as3, it's safe to say that almost all flash content that i see on the big websites (in particular, cnn and msnbc) are coded by people significantly less knowledgable than i was years ago.  and, in addition, they are probably unaware of the problems they create for many users.

the one thing i can't really understand is, i doubt any of those banners are coded in as3.  they're almost certainly as2 code and that means the coders must be inattentive novices to cause problems using as2.

it's much more difficult to cause problems with as2.  short of creating 1) run-away setInterval() functions, 2) onEnterFrame loops that never end and 3) many movieclips that are not removed when no longer needed, it's hard to create a problem in as2.

i suspect once banner ad creators learn some basic flash, they graduate to creating poorly developed websites instead of making more professional banner ads.  and, if they stick with it, they learn more actionscript and eventually make better-coded websites and applications.

anyway, maybe by complaining to the big websites, they might do something about their poorly coded content.  but i'm sceptical.  i doubt they would care unless the number of visits to their sites dropped.

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New Here ,
May 09, 2009 May 09, 2009

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Thanks for your reply kglad, however, I'm afraid my original problem still stands (and I'm sure it still stands for others too.....)

Please see the attached screenshot (download from the Drop.io share if necessary) from my Mac taken this afternoon. I am only running Firefox, no other applications, while viewing your homepage kglad.com - you can see from the Activity Monitor, by CPU utlilisation is running at a constant 80%

http://drop.io/xehwrgj/asset/picture-1-jpg

So despite making the code more efficient, my Mac is still being hammered whenever I view Flash content on websites.  I've already provided my system specs above in previous posts, I'd prefer not to buy another Mac, but I suppose the answer will be to get a faster CPU??

Thanks,

Chris

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New Here ,
May 09, 2009 May 09, 2009

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Also just cut and pasted a CRITICAL paragraph of text from the link that Greg Dove posted above - it seems that there IS a problem that Adobe are aware of!!!

"I've been in contact with the team at Adobe, and they have acknowledged that they are aware of the issue, and are actively working to address it. Despite that, I felt it would still be good to write this post for three reasons:

The first reason is to create awareness of this issue, and hopefully through that awareness help to generate some external pressure on Adobe to fix the problem in a timely manner. If you feel this issue is important to you, spread the word about it, and please vote up bug #FP-2009 in the Flash Player bug system. To do so, register on Adobe's JIRA bug system, do a quick search for "FP-2009", and vote for the issue using the link in the left column."

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