Excessive CPU usage when using YouTube/other flash based sites.

It's quite normal that Flash burns CPU.

• Find your Flash version and make sure it's the latest version available.
• Install ClickToFlash (Safari), Flashblock (Firefox) or FlashBlock (Chrome) to control which Flash content plays on websites.
• Use the YouTube HTML5 Video Player to watch YouTube videos, when available

That is how flash works. It's outdated and there's nothing you can do about it. This is why HTML5 is so much better.

AlphaDogg said:

That is how flash works. It's outdated and there's nothing you can do about it. This is why HTML5 is so much better.

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h.264 destroys my MacBook. Hardware accelerated playback is a must unless you enjoy a molten laptop and 6200 RPM.

I can watch Youtube videos all day long without the computer heating up or the fans going crazy. I'm watching one as we speak and my CPU is 90% idle.

TheJing said:

I can watch Youtube videos all day long without the computer heating up or the fans going crazy. I'm watching one as we speak and my CPU is 90% idle.

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So can I, but I don't have flash installed. I find most YouTube videos have a HTML5 version.

TheJing said:

I can watch Youtube videos all day long without the computer heating up or the fans going crazy. I'm watching one as we speak and my CPU is 90% idle.

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I just watched about 5 minutes worth of Will it Blend on youtube.com...activity monitor was always around 90% idle for me too...

hmmm...how do you tell if you are watching the flash version or the html5 version?

iforbes said:

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hmmm...how do you tell if you are watching the flash version or the html5 version?

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If you haven't chosen to always use HTML5 when possible, you are watching the flash version which is default.

TheJing said:

If you haven't chosen to always use HTML5 when possible, you are watching the flash version which is default.

Click to expand...

Then I am watching Flash with no problems...90% idle...

nateo200 said:

Lately I've had nothing but trouble with Safari and YouTube! Videos play but my CPU usage has spiked anywhere from 80-100% during even a 240p video!

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1. Quit/restart the Finder. It robs 80 percent of one core. QuickLook and other Finder processes/plugins can cause such high CPU usage.
2. Make sure you use at least Mac OS X 10.6.3 or better 10.6.8. Mac OS X 10.6.3 includes the VDA framework, which newer versions of the Flash Player use to decode H.264 data streams (GPU hardware accelerated). Even a 9400M IGP is enough for 1080p H.264 YT-videos (tested). Video-stuttering is mostly a bandwidth problem, not a GPU problem.
3. Make sure you have the latest Flash Player, because it supports hardware acceleration and multithreading.
4. If you use Safari v5.x.x, go to http://youtube.com/html5 to enable the HTML5 H.264 video decoder for YT-videos within Safari. Safari uses then the GPU to decode the H.264 stream.

go with Chrome if you do a lot of flash. Its so much better than Safari

Mr. Retrofire said:

...
4. If you use Safari v5.x.x, go to http://youtube.com/html5 to enable the HTML5 H.264 video decoder for YT-videos within Safari. Safari uses then the GPU to decode the H.264 stream.

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I tried this and no videos will load in youtube....hmmmm...turn it off and they load fine?

GGJstudios said:

It's quite normal that Flash burns CPU.

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Nonsense. Not 100% anyway.

There's something wrong with the OP's system.

Krazy Bill said:

Nonsense. Not 100% anyway.

There's something wrong with the OP's system.

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It's not nonsense, and I didn't say anything about specific percentages. It's common knowledge that Flash content on websites is demanding on CPU resources.

1) Go to youtube.com/html5 and deactivate the html5 trial. That fixes the fullscreen issue

2) Try Chrome instead of Safari.

3) I don't know why Flash is acting up suddenly for you.

This is really good for me!

GGJstudios said:

It's not nonsense, and I didn't say anything about specific percentages.

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Exactly. Did you even see the OP's claimed CPU load?

No. Instead you once again chose to respond with one of your canned responses implying that all is well in Apple Land and the OP's plight is basically "in his head". :confused

Krazy Bill said:

Exactly. Did you even see the OP's claimed CPU load?

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Of course I did, and such a load under Flash is not uncommon.

Krazy Bill said:

No. Instead you once again chose to respond with one of your canned responses implying that all is well in Apple Land and the OP's plight is basically "in his head". :confused

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Wrong. In no way did I imply that it was "in his head" or that "all was well", which is why I posted suggestions on how to mitigate the problem, rather than say "there's nothing you can do about it" or "get used to it." My post was completely accurate and appropriate for the OP's situation.

92 to 96% idle for me, and thats with a number of apps open and active.

Flash can cause this, if the app is poorly written, but I am not seeing this with youtube in Safari. Bad developers need to be pointed out just as much as flash, given they cause most of the issues most people complain about. Its not all the tech. I've developed a number of apps and I've only seen high CPU usage when i used realtime 3D in full screen mode, and some videos playing full screen.

The problem...core 2 duo. I've used both the i5 and core 2 duo mbp's and the icore handles flash and hd video without breaking a sweat.

With chrome flash, I've noticed that the CPU demand is very high (20% load/80% idle on quad core i7) when part of the video is still downloading in the background. This is almost independent of the video resolution. Once the video has finished loading the CPU load goes down to 5% or less.

Safari with html5 playback behaves much better, the load always stays around 5% or less. Unfortunately fullscreen playback is broken currently.

Krazy Bill said:

Exactly. Did you even see the OP's claimed CPU load?

No. Instead you once again chose to respond with one of your canned responses implying that all is well in Apple Land and the OP's plight is basically "in his head". :confused

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Nothing to do with Apple land. High CPU usage when using flash can be reproduced in Win 7.

theSeb said:

Nothing to do with Apple land. High CPU usage when using flash can be reproduced in Win 7.

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Yeah, but if you look at the OPs post in detail, there are two issues:
- significantly increased CPU load during video playback compared to the situation a few weeks ago on the same machine
- fullscreen video playback not working

The standard response that Flash is resource hungry is really useless here. Recommending the html5 player is also counter-productive, since this is the one that actually is responsible for breaking full-screen.

If one does not want to take time and identify the problem of the OP, then sometimes it's better not to reply.

thundersteele said:

Yeah, but if you look at the OPs post in detail, there are two issues:
- significantly increased CPU load during video playback compared to the situation a few weeks ago on the same machine
- fullscreen video playback not working

The standard response that Flash is resource hungry is really useless here. Recommending the html5 player is also counter-productive, since this is the one that actually is responsible for breaking full-screen.

If one does not want to take time and identify the problem of the OP, then sometimes it's better not to reply.

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Fair enough, but I was replying to a specific post that really needed a response. It's a disease I have.