Unfortunately there is not much that we can do to control how much CPU Flash uses. You can try doing a Firefox Reset, Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings, though I doubt that will have much impact on Flash performance.

Did you see the uploaded image? I actually did a test with another computer running the same firefox version and this did not happen. I checked the task manager and I did not find flashplayer running in the background.

No, there wasn't an uploaded image before, thanks for posting that :)

Basically, this seems to be a Flash issue (there have been many lately). You can try uninstalling then reinstalling Flash, resetting Firefox, updating your graphics driver, etc. But this is looking like a Flash issue.

I have uninstalled and re-installed flash but the same thing happens everytime I launch firefox or a webpage that has flash content in it. should I go to the adobe forums and get a solution there?

You see two Flash processes because the Flash plugin runs in a sandbox environment.
One process is for communicating with Firefox and the other to run the Flash plugin in protected mode.

• http://blogs.adobe.com/asset/2012/06/inside-flash-player-protected-mode-for-firefox.html

But it is because of this that if I go into a site with lots of Flash content that the FlashPlayer process starts to consume more RAM and then it crashes Firefox and itself. Any solution around this or do you have the same scenario?

Never mind, I have found a solution. It seems that this is a new feature implemented by Flash called Protected Mode. To Disable it, you need to go to C:\WINDOWS\Macromed\Flash and then open up a text file called mms.cfg and add the following text: ProtectedMode=0. That should disable it.