Adobe Enables Mac Hardware-Accelerated Decoding in Updated Flash Player 10.1

[MacRumors]

As noted by project manager Thibault Imbert, Adobe's Flash Player 10.1 for Mac has been updated to enable hardware-accelerated decoding of video content, offering smoother playback, lower system resource usage, and longer battery life for portable devices.

We just pushed a few minutes ago a new version of the Flash Player 10.1.82.76 containing a nice feature that was in beta until now called "Gala". Yes, H.264 GPU decoding in Mac OSX is now officially enabled in the Flash Player.

You should notice now a nice difference when playing H.264 content on your Mac in terms of CPU usage. We rarely enable new features in security releases but we really wanted to enable such a cool feature.

Adobe released Flash Player 10.1 in June, but did not include hardware acceleration for the Mac OS X platform in that release. Users willing to run a beta version of Flash Player have, however, been able to access the feature with a pair of "Gala" preview releases pushed out over the past several months.

According to Adobe, hardware acceleration is supported on the following models:

- MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009
- Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009
- MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008
- iMacs which shipped after the first quarter of 2009

The new version of Flash Player is available through Adobe's download site.

Article Link: Adobe Enables Mac Hardware-Accelerated Decoding in Updated Flash Player 10.1

 

[Eidorian]

What about all that fancy new ATI powered hardware?

 

[Chaszmyr]

Not available on any Mac Pro models?

 

[tmt345]

What do the compatible computers all have in common?

Thanks

 

[Brinkman]

According to Adobe, hardware acceleration is supported on the following models:

- MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009
- Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009
- MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008
- iMacs which shipped after the first quarter of 2009

I wish they did it based on model number not release date.

When were the 4,1 MBP's released?

 

[O and A]

Strange complatibility list.... what exactly enables the GPU?

 

[definitive]

nice. gonna go try it out right now. hopefully it won't choke firefox like the previous version.

 

[KnightWRX]

What do the compatible computers all have in common?

Thanks

Strange complatibility list.... what exactly enables the GPU?

They are those that Apple supports in their provided API :

https://www.macrumors.com/2010/04/2...coding-of-h-264-in-flash-and-other-platforms/

Blame Apple for the limited hardware support.

 

[saxon48]

Sweet. Guess it's safe to get off the "Gala" preview I've been using for the past few months.

 

[inlovewithi]

What do the compatible computers all have in common?

Thanks

Apple has allowed GPU acceleration on only the GPUs in those models.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Just downloaded and installed the update. Don't notice anything different - probably because my computer's GPU is not on the supported list.

 

[SLR2009]

Not available on any Mac Pro models?

I'd like to know this as well. I own an early 2009 Mac Pro. I'd be disappointed if my Mac wasn't supported.

 

[alphaone]

Noticed about a 20-40% drop in cpu usage when playing a 720p video on youtube after installing the new version on my 13" MBP w/9400m. Note: very unscientific testing.

 

[RRmalvado]

So no GPU acceleration on older models... will CPU utilization still be lowered?

 

[Brinkman]

I highly doubt my 8600m couldn't handle this acceleration.

 

[jayducharme]

Forbidden

When I went to Adobe's site, a pop-up told me that I was randomly selected to participate in a survey about my satisfaction with Adobe's products. So I clicked okay, and here's what popped up:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /www.adobe.com/js/foresee/tracker.html on this server.

Yeah! Go Adobe!

EDIT: I just browsed to some Flash-heavy sights, and I noticed a big difference. Scrolling my cursor over any Flash element used to stop the scrolling dead, but scrolling is really smooth now. And there's no lag in loading videos. So far I'm a happy puppy.

 

[kinless]

Not available on any Mac Pro models?

Right below the list of machines it says:

(Mac Pros are not supported as of today)

This confounds me for some reason.

 

[Vanarak19]

avg'ing 40% usage on a youtube flash 1080 video on my i7 330m enabled.

Normal?

 

[Žalgiris]

This reference describes the Video Decode Acceleration framework available on Mac OS X 10.6.3 and later with Mac models equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M.

Great, leave all Macs with ATI cards in the dark. Can Apple get it right once and for all? I think not.

 

[kevink2]

I bought the upgraded video card (8800?) when I bought my Mac Pro 2008. I would have thought it was more than capable of supporting this.

 

[SPUY767]

Apple has allowed GPU acceleration on only the GPUs in those models.

Hardware acceleration is not difficult on anything that supports corevideo, but adobe refuses to leverage already available libraries. Apple writes new libraries essentially for Adobe, and you're still blaming apple for Flash's performance?

 

[oliversl]

Adobe lazy programers, how come that flash is hw accelerated in almost every video card in windows and not in osx?

If you look at it carefully, adobe started it all. For example there is no cheap Adobe Acrobat in osx, only in windows. Adobe abandoned the osx platform quite a while, so why should Apple be so friendly with adobe?

Anyway, enjoy the release if you can ...

 

[jontech]

Wil this help the Desktop version of Hulu?


Or does the App need to be updated?

 

[KnightWRX]

Hardware acceleration is not difficult on anything that supports corevideo, but adobe refuses to leverage already available libraries. Apple writes new libraries essentially for Adobe, and you're still blaming apple for Flash's performance?

Not everyone can just use Apple's high level stuff. Sometimes you just need to feed encoded frames and receive decoded frames so you can apply other overlays/processing to them.

It's quite disingenious to suggest this is not an Apple problem. Why doesn't Apple expose all the hardware that support H.264 acceleration to their new API ?

Adobe lazy programers, how come that flash is hw accelerated in almost every video card in windows and not in osx?.

Read the thread, the reason is simple : Apple. This is the compatibility Apple provided. This isn't Adobe being lazy.

Of course, this will need much repeating in the next few pages as the Apple Defense Squad tries to trash Adobe over an Apple created problem.

 

[nicroma]

Are the ATI iMacs supported from late 2009? I can't find anything mentioning ATI hardware. The "gala" releases only supported a few specific graphics cards.