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I recently bought an external webcam to play around with OpenCV. It works great out of the box in Debian, but I realized that when I browse any site that contain flash content (youtube, soundcloud), the activity LED on the webcam flashes and in that time other applications (like Cheese) cannot access the webcam.

Naturally I denied webcam access in the flash player context menu and chose the other, built-in, camera for use with the plugin, but the problem still persists.

I think (although I'm not entirely sure) it all started the first time I set flash plugin to use this webcam, I don't think it happened before that. But still purging flashplayer-nonfree and reinstalling it doesn't change anything.

Is there a way to keep flash plugin from activating this particular webcam while keeping it available to other applications? Or perhaps there is a way to revert the situation to the state before I first touched the flash settings, but after I plugged in the camera (assuming my memory serves me right)?

I'm using an updated Debian squeeze and an Microsoft LifeCam Studio webcam. The browser I am talking about is Chrome v. 21.0.1180.57.

edit: This only persists while using chrome, when I switched to iceweasel, this wasn't happening. I guess that shows this can be chrome-related.

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
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nietaki
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2 Answers2

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Obviously, it happens because Chrome uses built-in flash plugin. Built-in plugin located here: 

/opt/google/chrome/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so

and it is PPAPI type plug-in ... so it use global Flash Settings, which available at Adobe Flash Settings Manager webpage.

Try to make Chrome using your Mozilla flashplayer-nonfree and deactivate built-in Chrome flash-plugin.
After installation Chrome will use both versions, signed above and: 

/usr/lib/< your_flash_plugin_vendor >/libflashplayer.so

so it can looks like: 

/usr/lib/flashplugin-nonfree/libflashplayer.so

However, it can bring a bit lower security for Chrome. After installation your Chrome will use both version, and second version have NPAPI type and will be processed in your local system.

Configs available at chrome:plugins built-in page.

swift
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Most likely some settings got left over in a config file somewhere, despite reinstalling the flash player. ~/.adobe/Flash_Player is where the settings usually are (as flash uses an external instller/downloader script, at least on my machine, purging may miss this folder), or maybe chrome stores them in your profile somewhere (~/.config/google-chrome).