Bug 5773 – Flash animations in Safari are choppy when not the selected window.

• Status: RESOLVED
• Resolution: WONTFIX
• Component: Plug-ins

[Chris]

Summary:
Flash animations in Safari are choppy when not the selected window.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open Safari
2. Browse to a website that uses Flash animation to play audio or video, such as ESPN Motion
3. Choose a video to play
4. Select another window or application

Expected Results:
The audio/video will continue to play without interruption.

Actual Results:
The video becomes choppy and the audio skips.

Regression:
This issue occurs no matter how powerful the system. I experience this issue on a Dual 2Ghz G5 with 2 
Gig RAM and a 933Mhz iBook with 640 MB RAM.

 

While this is most likely done to spare CPU cycles for a window that the user “isn’t using”, a lot of Flash 
animations contain audio or video that users will keep the window open as they surf to a new site. I 
don’t think the window should have to be selected for the animation to play correctly. Both of the 
systems I use on a daily basis could handle playing the animations in the background. Also, viewing the 
same sites in Firefox, the animations play just fine when not selected, and the OS is still very usable.

I feel Safari should use the system’s processor speed/load as a way to determine whether or not Safari 
should become less of a CPU priority when the window is not selected. Older systems which can not 
handle the multitasking should pause the animation until the window is brought to the front.

[Joost de Valk (AlthA)]

Reassigning to webkit-unassigned, to make sure more people see this.

[Joost de Valk (AlthA)]

Confirmed. Don't know if this is intended behavior or not though.

[Richard Das]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Confirmed. Don't know if this is intended behavior or not though.
> 

This has been the way Safari handles Flash objects for as long as I can remember. I work on Flash projects on a daily basis in a Mac/PC dev environ. and only OSX displays this behavior (tested specifically with 10.3 through 10.4.5)

[Mihnea Ovidenie]

Hi,
Tested with WebKit 38619 with youtube clips. I was not able to reproduce it.
Tested on:
MacBook Tiger 10.4.9, Flash 9,0,124
MacBookPro Leopard 10.5.5, Flash 10,0,26

Regards,
Mihnea

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Mass closing plug-in bugs, as plug-in support has been removed from WebKit.

Please comment and/or reopen if this still affects WebKit in some way.