Youtube and other video issues in Chrome | Ubuntu

The videos, flash plugins and other high graphic stuff may stop working in Google Chrome.

Symptoms
Videos won't play properly
VLC may misbehave
Audio and Video decoding may not be in sync

Cause
GPU Hardware acceleration is failing. The GPU acceleration is required by many applications like Chrome, VLC, etc.

Workaround
Go to Advanced Settings of Google Chrome and deselect "Use hardware acceleration when available". Be cautious, by doing this - some other graphics also may stop working.

Solutions

1. Reset the Chrome settings
2. Clear Cookies and Cache
3. Ensure that the Java Script is enabled in Chrome
4. Go to chrome://plugins and ensure that the Adobe Flash Player is enabled
5. If this doesn't work, try a re-installation of Google Chrome
6. Check that you have VDPAU library installed VDPAU is an open-source library and API allows to video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware. 

           $ dpkg -l | grep vdpau

           Install it if not available

                   $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
                   $ sudo apt-get update
                   $ sudo apt-get install libvdpau-va-gl1

 If it's installed, better upgrade it because you have probably upgraded the kernel and so many other packages and you are using it. This may cause problem in communicating with the VDPAU library properly.

Try opening YouTube in chrome. Follow the below steps if it's not working.

$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/adobe
$ echo "EnableLinuxHWVideoDecode=1" | sudo tee /etc/adobe/mms.cfg
$ echo "OverrideGPUValidation=1" | sudo tee -a /etc/adobe/mms.cfg

To enable the driver for system-wide (not recommended):

$ sudo sed -i "s/^# \[/\[/g" /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20vdpau-va-gl
$ sudo sed -i "s/^# export/ export/g" /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20vdpau-va-gl