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Adobe Launches Flash Player 10.1 Prerelease Build

kockgunner said:
Wow. What a difference. I can watch HD Youtube videos without my Macbook Pro processors shooting up to 90% and 80 degrees Celsius. Now the temperature goes maybe 5 degrees higher and the CPU load goes to around 40%.
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biblicabeebli said:
Got the 10.1 beta installed for a little while now and haven't noticed any problems at all.

Youtube works, Hulu works, didn't think it would effect Netflix (it's not flash but Silverlight), but I checked anyway and that works too.
ClickToFlash also runs fine.

I ran Machinarium, a big flash game with beautiful art made with lots of layers, on my macbook pro, and it was running 20˚C cooler with half the cpu usage than it did with the previous version. Didn't even need to turn the fans up.

Absolutely worth the risk of bugs for running a beta.
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I agree with these guys (and the others on the other 9+ pages). My CPUs run at 20-30% when watching Youtube and my temp doesn't rise to 80 deg C anymore! Yay me!

As to the argument about Flash: Why turn this thread into a battleground? No, Flash isn't going to die anytime soon. Yes, its a recourse hog (at least on Mac and Linux). Yes, Adobe seems to hate anything that doesn't run Windows. Hopefully, they get over it so Mac and *nix users can get a proper Flash release that runs as well as the Windows releases.
 
MorphingDragon said:
You have to use Firefox and GreaseMoneky
http://netsharc.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/youtube-via-vlc/
http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=14793

and make sure you install the browser plugin!
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html

Or if you don't want to go thorugh all that trouble, copy the youtube URL into VLC. "Open - Network"
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Hm.... interesting. Does it still not work with the newest version of VLC? I watch a lot of youtube and wonder if this is a viable option to getting better playback. Would also help out my GF as she has an old PowerBook that has issues with Flash.
 
gumbyx84 said:
Hm.... interesting. Does it still not work with the newest version of VLC? I watch a lot of youtube and wonder if this is a viable option to getting better playback. Would also help out my GF as she has an old PowerBook that has issues with Flash.
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I can try on my G4 see if it runs the latest version properley on PowerPC.
Apparently MPlayer has controlls with this hack but not VLC. :S
 
MorphingDragon said:
I can try on my G4 see if it runs the latest version properley on PowerPC.
Apparently MPlayer has controlls with this hack but not VLC. :S
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Appreciate it.

Also, so we (OS X users) won't have control of the video? It will just play automatically?
 
ungraphic said:
Yeah! Who needs websites like youtube and all, right? Flash is sooooooooo useless. :rolleyes:
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HTML5 video tag supporting browser + h.264 codec on your system = no need for Flash to play video or audio (or any other plugins).

/me points at http://www.youtube.com/html5

Code: 
<video width="640" height="360" src="/demo/google_main.mp4?2" autobuffer>
    <div class="video-fallback">
        <br>You must have an HTML5 capable browser.
    </div>
</video>
 
The New Flash looks promising, but perhaps not ready for prime time.

Just a WARNING -- the Adobe "Uninstaller" just hangs on 10.6.2. Then I cannot re-install the original Flash, because a "newer" installation exists...

Anyone else have that problem?

UPDATED: Operator Error -- accidentally downloaded the "original" uninstaller, which does freeze. The proper uninstaller for 10.1.x works correctly.
 
mytdave said:
And Apple has OpenGL & OpenCL APIs, and yes they are available to everyone. Adobe could offload code to the GPU on a Mac if they really wanted to, they just aren't putting forth the effort..
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What does OpenGL and OpenCL have to do with hardware accelerated GPU decoding? The point of GPU video acceleration is not to try to run video in the shaders which is doubtless inefficient. It's that GPUs have dedicated video decoding hardware that are separate from the shaders and the rest of the graphics pipeline. ATI calls there's the Unified Video Decoder (UVD) which is based on the Xilleon video processor that used to be for separate embedded applications like set-top boxes. UVD decodes everything from MPEG2, to MPEG4, VC-1, and H.264. As far as I know, the UVD is not expose via OpenGL, OpenCL or Direct3D. It requires driver support separate from the graphics pipeline. nVidia's dedicated video decoder is called PureVideo.

In the case of Windows, Microsoft has made things easier by defining a standard interface in DXVA for programs to access hardware video acceleration and GPU makers write drivers against DXVA. Which is why Adobe's hardware accelerated Flash video support works for ATI, nVidia, and Intel GPUs and even on special Broadcom dedicated video decode hardware. In contrast, it seems that Apple doesn't provide a means for programmers to access the video acceleration hardware. I think it's a valid concern to wonder why that is.

mdriftmeyer said:
Then again, Microsoft giving you access to their private APIs and injecting your code level at a higher priority is not surprising--they fundamentally have a different philosophy.
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http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms799545.aspx

I didn't know DXVA was some super secret Microsoft API that they only give to select friends. I thought DXVA was specifically designed to allow any program to provide hardware accelerated video decoding.
 
Axemantitan said:
Would I see any improvement on a mid-2007 MacBook with Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics?
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Why don't you just try it out. It's easy to go back. I did not see any improvements on an Early-2006 Macbook, but you might have better luck due to your 64bit processor (pure conjecture on my side) and the fact that plugins on Snow Leopard get their own processes on such architectures.
 
ungraphic said:
Yeah! Who needs websites like youtube and all, right? Flash is sooooooooo useless. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

You can watch YouTube videos in H.264 on ClickToFlash.. so yes, Flash is worthless. Unless you like chasing gophers with a hammer to try to win a free MacBook Pro. ;)
 
tkermit said:
Why don't you just try it out. It's easy to go back. I did not see any improvements on an Early-2006 Macbook, but you might have better luck due to your 64bit processor (pure conjecture on my side) and the fact that plugins on Snow Leopard get their own processes on such architectures.
Click to expand...
Interestingly, Anandtech showed that running Safari in 64-bit mode in Snow Leopard noticeably reduced battery life compared to 32-bit Safari. I think the reason is most likely having to run 32-bit plug-ins like Flash in separate processes and communicating with 64-bit Safari using Inter-Process Communications which is probably less efficient and less optimized.

The Anandtech Flash 10.1 review link on the main page did show that the new version does offer performance improvements in OS X even if hardware video acceleration is not supported. And even in Windows, neither the GMA 950 or GMA X3100 would have hardware Flash video acceleration since they physically don't have H.264 acceleration hardware.
 
commander.data said:
What does OpenGL and OpenCL have to do with hardware accelerated GPU decoding? The point of GPU video acceleration is not to try to run video in the shaders which is doubtless inefficient. It's that GPUs have dedicated video decoding hardware that are separate from the shaders and the rest of the graphics pipeline. ATI calls there's the Unified Video Decoder (UVD) which is based on the Xilleon video processor that used to be for separate embedded applications like set-top boxes. UVD decodes everything from MPEG2, to MPEG4, VC-1, and H.264. As far as I know, the UVD is not expose via OpenGL, OpenCL or Direct3D. It requires driver support separate from the graphics pipeline. nVidia's dedicated video decoder is called PureVideo.

In the case of Windows, Microsoft has made things easier by defining a standard interface in DXVA for programs to access hardware video acceleration and GPU makers write drivers against DXVA. Which is why Adobe's hardware accelerated Flash video support works for ATI, nVidia, and Intel GPUs and even on special Broadcom dedicated video decode hardware. In contrast, it seems that Apple doesn't provide a means for programmers to access the video acceleration hardware. I think it's a valid concern to wonder why that is.


http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms799545.aspx

I didn't know DXVA was some super secret Microsoft API that they only give to select friends. I thought DXVA was specifically designed to allow any program to provide hardware accelerated video decoding.
Click to expand...

Well look at it this way, would you like to use the little piddly UVD chip or the grunty GPU Core?
 
MorphingDragon said:
Well look at it this way, would you like to use the little piddly UVD chip or the grunty GPU Core?
Click to expand...
You're assuming that shaders are always faster than fixed function hardware. That is of course not true as ATI found out the hard way. With the HD2000 series ATI eliminated dedicated Antialiasing resolve hardware and decided to do it through shaders, since they felt with 320 stream processors they had more than enough pure computational power. It didn't quite work out that way and in the next major GPU redesign, the HD4000 series, dedicated Antialiasing resolve hardware returning despite computational power increasing to 800 stream processors. Even the current HD5000 series with 1600 stream processors still has dedicated Antialiasing resolve hardware.

Similarly, the UVD has transistors specifically designed to process video decode sub-routines. You could probably recreate all the algorithms in OpenCL to process on the stream processors but that would likely result in higher power usage compared to the dedicated video processor even it could perform better. And it's not like throwing more stream processors at it improves the video playback experience when the video source already has a set source fps, say 24 or 30fps. Unlike games where you benchmark say 100 fps and that could actually make a difference.
 
Fastshutter said:
I would rather have the option of disabling flash and use it when I need it then not have it at all.

I still haven't used Cut & Paste on my iPhone, but I've really needed flash a few times. Why does Steve get to choose what is important for me? The iPhone will never take off as a mainstream business device if Apple won't allow widely used technology on it.
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So would I.

However, until we've actually experienced the performance of Flash on a cell phone, or lack thereof, I'll be refraining from complaining.

Cut & Paste has proven to be very well implemented, and quite useful for e-mailing, texting, and importing information to 'Notes.'

It's nice to have, as options go - hopefully, eventually, something of the likes of HTML5 Mobile or Silverlight Mobile, will displace

Flash altogether, in the not so distant future. This would be a highly welcome evolution, for all.
 
ClickToFlash is becoming one of my favorite applications

I can't say how much nicer it is to NOT see the flash unless I want to. Not just for the speed but just to see less unnecessary garbage. ClickToFlash is a really good idea - like being able to block popup windows. Like I always say, the stuff Flash does should be built into every browser without adding a 3rd party plugin. Now you get virus emails tricking people into upgrading Flash.

Flash is like a program and now with ClickToFlash you get to choose to run the program or not. I don't mind downloading a Flash program and installing it on my computer (like a game) but everything else is pretty much advertising. If the program is separate from the browser, then maybe performance wouldn't be an issue.
 
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