YouTube + Flash Plugin + Firefox = CPU Cook

[Harrison]

Very true. But Flash is quite a complex beast these days. The size of it's final FLV or SWF files is always down to the person creating the original file, or the code used (in the case of YouTube) to do the job for you. Only first hand optimisation can get a file to it's optimum size, compression ratio and quality. This is true of any video format. Optimise or encode any video format badly and the CPU hit will grind a computer to a halt.

The huge advantage with the format as far as streaming formats like YouTube are concerned is that it can do that conversion and encoding on the fly without human intervention. This is a huge step forward from using most other video codec technology where they have to be rendered before uploading.

[Bloodwych]

Flash is getting very close to being uninstalled because as complex as it likes to think it is, there is no excuse for this behavior that is reproducible on three different systems, one with a fresh install.

I thought the problem was fixed, but it's simply random. Sometimes flash will use less CPU time, others it will decide to double it's CPU usage. It looks like it has a stupidly high priority set but this really is an annoying issue, even more so for Laptops.

No programs should require 90% of my CPU, or some 9000 MIPS, for moving round an animated banner. The graph spikes start once I hit the YouTube homepage and move the cursor over the animated banner. Without the cursor movement, it spikes up to 60% when refreshing the images, 0% when stationary. Playback of one video can decide to use 60-80%, making the system sluggish and unresponsive:

[Bloodwych]

As well as the high CPU usage on animated banners, here is the usage when playing one video, then showing the flash video list at the end.

Playing a video uses between 60-70%
Showing a stationary flash list 30-40%

Definitely some issue going on here. Hardware acceleration is fine in other software (although I doubt flash uses it), so it's not the video drivers.

All I can do is wait for a flash/browser update.

[Demon Cleaner]

I just tested, I have the same version of flash and firefox, but I don't get such high cpu usage.

[Bloodwych]

What kind of numbers are you getting and what's your CPU?

This might be a conflict specific to certain hardware setups and drivers I suppose. But as I said above, googling shows many others have this high CPU issue with flash content.

The above graphs are from a 2Ghz Barton CPU, 1GB 400Mhz DDR. Not exactly cutting edge, but this issue has just popped up recently with Flash 9.

My parents have a similar speed laptop, Pentium M 1.6Ghz, that has the same issue. That of course results in poor battery performance and a loud cooling fan when surfing flash rich sites, such as YouTube.

[Demon Cleaner]

This is on my PC at work, which is a Core 2 Duo 1.86GHz and 2Gb of RAM running XP SP2.

[Bloodwych]

Ok, to prove that I'm not totally alone and there is a problem with Flash, this page runs my computer and others CPU up to 100% usage and WARNING: literally locks my PC until I close it:

http://www.lanik.us/misc/ff-flash-test.html

It's nothing more than a page with several embedded flash videos (check the simple source code), none of them set to play. All they are doing is sitting there waiting to be played.

Any page with similar heavy flash content, video or no video, banners, adverts, widgets etc can cause the same effect (but not always). Each object has the potential to use excessive amounts of CPU.

[AlexJ]

On viewing that page, my CPU goes up to 98% but I'm not experiencing any lag or slowdown. And looking at it my PC's underclocked itself again so it's effectively running as a Athlon MP 1800+. Normally it'd be a slightly overclocked 2600+.

[Stephen Coates]

I havn't measured it recently, but I'm pretty sure that meter thing goes up quite a bit when watching flash videos, but it doesn't really make the system noticably slower when doing tasks like looking at other sites.

I probably don't have the latest version of flash installed as I got a popup saying that there is an update and would I like to download it as soon as I switched my computer on.

That alone is enough to annoy me.

Ok, to prove that I'm not totally alone and there is a problem with Flash, this page runs my computer and others CPU up to 100% usage and WARNING: literally locks my PC until I close it:

http://www.lanik.us/misc/ff-flash-test.html

It's nothing more than a page with several embedded flash videos (check the simple source code), none of them set to play. All they are doing is sitting there waiting to be played.

Any page with similar heavy flash content, video or no video, banners, adverts, widgets etc can cause the same effect. Each object uses excessive amounts of CPU.

That link took me to 100%, but still no slowdown.

EDIT: This was with Opera, not with Firefox. Has anyone else experienced this problem with other browsers?

[Demon Cleaner]

On that page mine goes up to 10-15% and when starting a video, it goes up to 35%.