On 04/03/2011 09:24 PM Robert Heller wrote: > At Sun, 03 Apr 2011 18:41:35 -0400 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote: > >> For a long time now I've wanted to be able to watch videos. I've done >> the "try this!" and "try that!" method and it hasn't worked well. So >> I'm wondering if anyone running CentOS 5.5 has Shockwave on Firefox working. >> >> Currently it works for me with short videos-- up to two or three minutes >> long. However, when Shockwave is enabled, CPU usage jumps to 99%, >> sometimes even 100%! If I disable it CPU usage goes down to 1 - 5%. >> (For those who speak load avg, I've seen highs of 6 and 8... as opposed >> to the no Shockwave-now of 0.14 to 0.45.) >> >> So with the CPU already buried just by having Shockwave is enabled, if a >> video lasts longer than four minutes, gaps in the video's continuity >> begin to appear, and by ten minutes in the video is locked up altogether. >> >> What's everyone else's experience with this? Does anyone have a setup >> where they can view a 1.5-hour video normally... and maybe even work in >> their editor alongside it at the same time? If so, would you be open to >> explaining what hardware and software etc. you've got so that this works >> so well? > > I am able to watch 1/2 hour TV shows with > flash-plugin-10.2.152.27-release from Adobe's repo in Firefox > (firefox-3.6.13-2.el5.centos), on my i686 IBM ThinkPad X31 laptop > (which has 512Meg of memory and a 1700MHz, Pentium M processor), using > CentOS 5.5. The CPU does get hot (the fan fires up sometimes). Oh, I > use a *very* lightweight X11 setup: I don't use GNome or KDE or any > sort of 'Desktop Manager' system at all. Just FVWM in MWM mode. > Virtually NO 'eye candy' at all. My system boots to runlevel 3 and > I fire up X11 from my login. > > I have made no attempt to watch longer videos with flash. I do watch > 3-5 minute music videos all the time, but I use mplayer for those (even > the FLV files I have downloaded from YouTube). Robert, you bring up a good point about X. But two things: First, my Dell i600m has the same CPU as your machine, except that mine is a 1500MHz, a tad slower, but I have 2G of RAM and so swap is almost never even touched. Still, since it's my CPU which is getting jammed up by Flash|Shockwave, perhaps measures to ease the load on the CPU generally would be a good strategy. Secondly, still, as said previously, when Shockwave isn't playing a video (but with gnome and everything else running as usual), my CPU's load avg is trivial, giving me no reason to suspect gnome or anything else I'm running is a hog worth trimming. All indications point to Shockwave itself as being the problem. NB: While writing this, yum-updated just gave me flash-plugin-10.2.153.1-0.1.el5.rf.i386.rpm. So I've upgraded from flash-plugin-10.2.153.1-release.src.rpm... hopefully it's the fix I need. Robert, thanks for the response.