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

[genosseinski]

I have a quite slow Windows Laptop and Flash 2.1 improved YouTube perfomance A LOT! I can finally watch 480p and 720p videos flawlessly and fluently. Before, it was often really laggy.
It's a mobile Geforce 8400 GS btw, I was really surprised that this old Graphic card was enough.
So I can understand your disappointment, because obviously even slow graphic cards could benefit from this Flash Update.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Nostalgia ? newgrounds.com is still around.

Do you know what the word even means ?

Nostalgia of days back when flash was still budding not newsgrounds. From the theme of your posts the only possible explanation is sentimental longing.

Oh, and you can still have nostalgia for something still around. That's why Sonic The Hedgehog still gets a free ride.

 

[Imac&SoShouldU]

i see no difference...

 

[Varchild]

Wait a minute. I thought this update was supposed to make videos play smoother. After the update, Youtube videos are playing a lot choppier for me, especially the 1080p ones.

I'm having the same issue. The videos run choppier when in full screen. This didn't happen prior to the update.

 

[KnightWRX]

Nostalgia of days back when flash was still budding not newsgrounds. From the theme of your posts the only possible explanation is sentimental longing.

Uh ? Nostalgia whatmalgia ? Again, same animations are still up there on newgrounds, they are still funny. Same games are there too, plenty of new stuff. There is no nostalgia. That's just you trying to make an argument against Flash.

Nostalgia is when I install DOSBOX and play through QFG1 to 4 in a weekend. Which I do sometimes. It's also when I startup Exult to play Ultima 7. Stuff that's not around anymore and that I need to hunt down.

I just don't waste time there anymore because it's loss its novelty. It still all ran fine on my P2-333 mhz and it runs fine on my C2D, there is no nostalgia about it. Heck, I could fire up X on the P2-333 and go to newgrounds from there, because I still have the damn computer. Call me when they close down and a few years later someone opens up a site with all the content after I sold my old Pentium-II. Then we'll talk nostalgia.

 

[alent1234]

wow, a $1700 laptop that can't play flash video in full screen without the CPU going crazy

my cheapo lenovo laptop with intel HD graphics and core i5 can do it and one core will be at 0% and the other less than 30%

 

[braintumor]

After I updated, everything worked a bit smoother... but this morning when I turned on the bloomberg livestream, the video was black and I only heard the audio in the background...

Anyone else having these issues?

http://www.bloomberg.com/tv/

 

[Vladas]

With this new update I'm getting 90-100% CPU usage while playing 1080p youtube videos on latest Mac mini with GeForce 320M. What kind of hardware acceleration is that?

 

[sfh]

wow, a $1700 laptop that can't play flash video in full screen without the CPU going crazy

my cheapo lenovo laptop with intel HD graphics and core i5 can do it and one core will be at 0% and the other less than 30%

obviously its not a hardware issue.... Flash is and has been crap... adobe needs to get their act together and write some decent software.

 

[madmax_2069]

After I updated, everything worked a bit smoother... but this morning when I turned on the bloomberg livestream, the video was black and I only heard the audio in the background...

Anyone else having these issues?

http://www.bloomberg.com/tv/

i just tried it on my windows PC and it seems to be working, the audio is out of sync though.

i was running a older version of 10.1 and updated to 10.1.82.76 and it seems to be a bit better, at least my CPU usage is lower and things now play much more smoother. the older version of 10.1 used around 50% up to 70%, and the newer version uses like 30% - 40%, but its still a far cry of what it use to use (15%- 20%).

before with the older version of 10.1 i could not watch http://www.bloomberg.com/tv because it was a slideshow (it used 100% cpu time like around 5fps), but now its at least watchable (around 16fps i would guess) but uses around 75% CPU time to do so.

but since my PC has a Geforce 6800 GT enabling acceleration does nothing but makes things worse for me.

 

[braintumor]

i just tried it on my windows PC and it seems to be working, the audio is out of sync though.

Thanks for testing, but I'm using it on my MacBook Pro and thats quite a different story when it comes to flash

I also tried it with all browser (FF, Chrome, Safari and Opera) that I have installed, but everywhere I'm getting the same result...

 

[TheScavenger]

With this new update I'm getting 90-100% CPU usage while playing 1080p youtube videos on latest Mac mini with GeForce 320M. What kind of hardware acceleration is that?

I have the same system and I'm getting around 30% CPU usage watching an SD video. Thats pretty ridiculous. Is there anyway to rollback to the previous 10.1 version?

 

[madmax_2069]

Thanks for testing, but I'm using it on my MacBook Pro and thats quite a different story when it comes to flash

I also tried it with all browser (FF, Chrome, Safari and Opera) that I have installed, but everywhere I'm getting the same result...

i could try my Mac but they are really old and would not do well (as in Digital Audio G4 533mhz).

I was just testing it to see if it was a issue only with Flash for Macs or both Macs and PCs. so far it seems to be a flash issue on the Mac side. have you tried to disable acceleration to see if it solves the issue.

I have seen where i installed a newer version of flash on my Mac and things just would not work or work with issues, but it seemed to get corrected with repairing permissions, i am not sure if that would solve your issue but it would be worth checking out.

Oh yeah i know that all to well when it comes to flash and Macs.

I have the same system and I'm getting around 30% CPU usage watching an SD video. Thats pretty ridiculous. Is there anyway to rollback to the previous 10.1 version?

Yep go here http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html

run the uninstaller and then find a older version of what you wanted to use by looking here http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/142/tn_14266.html the older version of 10.1 should be the first link.

With this new update I'm getting 90-100% CPU usage while playing 1080p youtube videos on latest Mac mini with GeForce 320M. What kind of hardware acceleration is that?

LMAO its accelerating your minis life towards its death.

 

[braintumor]

...have you tried to disable acceleration to see if it solves the issue.

Actually, I don't know how to disable the hardware acceleration, do you have a link or can you tell how to disable it? Thanks in advance...

Oh yeah i know that all to well when it comes to flash and Macs.

Tell me about it... I'm very happy with my Mac, but this Flash issue is really pissing me off and I still don't get it why this is only a problem on a Mac!? But ok, thats a different story

 

[MacBH928]

I am not sure who's fault is this
but Apple is almost superior over Windows in everything except Flash and Games probably.

So I am having a good feeling that Adobe are screwing Apple users on purpose, maybe Apple should ban Flash on Mac os X too, invent something new, or support silverlight if its really better

 

[German]

i see no difference...

"What is your configuration ? The video you tried ? Remember there are some requirements in terms of OS version and graphics card and the dimensions of the content being decoded.
For now :
Hardware accelerated decode requires Mac OS X 10.6.3 and either NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M GPUs.
Also :
Video clips will a width of 864 fallback to software H264 decoding on the nVidia GeForce 9400M. This is a known limitation of the GeForce 9400M drivers. Unfortunately, YouTube Clips at 480p resolution often use a width of 864. Switch to 720p or 1080p to benefit from hardware acceleration for these clips. The hardware decoder will not be used for video with frame dimensions smaller than 480×320. For video smaller than that size, the cpu/speed improvements for using the GPU rather than the CPU are negligible.
Those restrictions are dictated by NVIDIA and Apple."

http://www.bytearray.org/?p=1957#comment-340315

 

[madmax_2069]

Actually, I don't know how to disable the hardware acceleration, do you have a link or can you tell how to disable it? Thanks in advance...

what you do is go to youtube or another site that uses flash and put the mouse pointer over the player/game or whatever you are using and Hold down Control while you click, that should show a context menu, click on settings.

from within that menu that comes up you click on the first tab (the tab should show a little card) and that should show a check box to enable or disable acceleration. refresh the page you are on (the one that's using flash) and see if that will get the video to work, and to see where your CPU usage is.

hope that helps.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

Everything seems in order with my Macbook Pro i7 and my iMac i7.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

wow, a $1700 laptop that can't play flash video in full screen without the CPU going crazy

my cheapo lenovo laptop with intel HD graphics and core i5 can do it and one core will be at 0% and the other less than 30%

wow and if you restart into bootcamp/windows you can play flash video on your crappy $1700 laptop wow imagine that

 

[Eddyisgreat]

So I am having a good feeling that Adobe are screwing Apple users on purpose, maybe Apple should ban Flash on Mac os X too, invent something new, or support silverlight if its really better

what could adobe possibly gain from crap performance on the Mac OS?

Because if they intentionally made performance weak on OS X, they'd be a legitimate scapegoat for Apple attacks and content providers who use flash for delivery would scratch their heads wondering if they want to leave out any part of their potential user base.

 

[braintumor]

hope that helps.

Thanks again, good to know where to find that setting...

what you do is go to youtube or another site that uses flash and put the mouse pointer over the player/game or whatever you are using and Hold down Control while you click, that should show a context menu, click on settings.

from within that menu that comes up you click on the first tab (the tab should show a little card) and that should show a check box to enable or disable acceleration. refresh the page you are on (the one that's using flash) and see if that will get the video to work, and to see where your CPU usage is.

The funny thing is, I can't control the settings window... Meaning, I right click on the flash item, click on settings and then the settings window appears, but it doesn't react to my clicks (the browser doesn't crash). When I reload the page, everything is back to normal, but I can't change the settings...

Now comes the best part... This only happens with Firefox or Opera... Safari and Chrome work just fine

I will just use Chrome for now until I have time to find a fix for this...

 

[pineapple216]

what could adobe possibly gain from crap performance on the Mac OS?

Because if they intentionally made performance weak on OS X, they'd be a legitimate scapegoat for Apple attacks and content providers who use flash for delivery would scratch their heads wondering if they want to leave out any part of their potential user base.

I don't think it's about adobe.
We've all read Steve Jobs's 'toughts on flash'
( http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ )
About flash on the iPhone/itouch and iPad. And also a bit on macs.

If Apple would allow flash hardware acceleration on the older macs (e.g. MacBook late 2008 unibody (9400M GPU) MacBook Pro (8600 GPU, older iMacs, etc.) they would bite themselves in the tail.

Then flash-performance would suddenly improve on a lot of mac models, which isn't what Apple wants, because Apple doesn't like flash, for a lot of reasons.

 

[docwisdom]

I got a great big kernel panic on this with Safari 5.
Happened 3 times, so I rolled back.

 

[MorphingDragon]

I just don't waste time there anymore because it's loss its novelty. It still all ran fine on my P2-333 mhz

Are you sure it ran fine, or do you just remember it that way?

I don't need to make an argument against flash, its crappy tools that never work how you want them too and less than average runtime argue for itself.

 

[forensick]

Still nothing for the ipad....