Adobe Releases Flash Player 10.1, But Hardware Acceleration on OS X Not Supported

[matticus008]

@matticus008 ...
The Flash Player has it's own graphics rendering engine and stack which is why content looks the same across all devices. This is accomplished by NOT using OS dependent graphics libraries.

But that's not accurate. Flash for Windows does offload to Media Foundation, which is why Windows performance is so much better than other platforms.

It is not true to claim that the manner in which Flash is written is OS-independent. They wrote it for Windows to achieve the best performance on their largest platform. That's fine.

But don't go and claim that on Linux, Solaris, and OS X, that someone else is preventing you from delivering that same level of performance.

For example if Adobe where to use the quicktime framework in Flash, they would have 2 different rendering experiences one on Windows and one on Mac.

That's already the case. The difference is that on Windows, the Flash renderer integrates beautifully with the platform frameworks and APIs. On OS X, Linux, and Solaris, it does not, and performance suffers because of it.

It's disingenuous to claim that Adobe writes a fully OS-independent renderer. They write a hardware-accelerated player optimized for performance under Windows, and then port it over to other platforms without doing the hardware acceleration work for them.

THIS CANNOT BE DONE USING OS DEPENDENT RENDERING LIBRARIES!!!

Hope that is simple enough.

Of course it can. It just takes a lot more work on the other platforms than Adobe is willing to invest. Case in point: rewriting for Cocoa; using Apple's H.264 API. Hope that is simple enough.

VLC tried to implement hardware acceleration of H264 and also found it to be unusable.

No, they found it to be impractical with their cross-platform codebase, but they were honest enough to admit that that was because they didn't have the resources to make an OS X native version to take advantage of it. They did not dishonestly pretend, as you and Adobe do, that there was any roadblock to doing so except their own priorities.

Name one app that uses the old APIs to do H264 acceleration for something more than just a little window with a Quicktime video playing, not made by Apple.

Every application that uses QTKit. That's sort of the point of having system-wide APIs.

 

[chuckm1020]

Please elaborate by what you mean by lag? Any URLs for examples? Thanks

Cheers.

ya sure, http://vimeo.com/hd#12358381 . Only when i turn on full screen mode though. Pretty choppy using the Intel HD integrated video card but completely smooth using the dedicated GT330M video card though. Ive tested this with many HD videos on vimeo and youtube . Im pretty sure HD video on full screen was smooth using the intel video card before the 10.1 flash update

 

[Apollo21]

The number of negatives on this article really shows the level of intelligence of MacRumors visitors Not only did Apple just allow acceleration to be included and so we wouldn't expect a stable release already, but IN SPITE OF THAT you can RIGHT NOW go download the Gala preview which has acceleration and works fine (from my experience with preview 2). If anything this shows that even after Apple says "f you" to them, Adobe's still nice enough to put in the work to make Flash better on OSX... ironically for all the ungrateful people posting here.

 

[Amdahl]

No, they found it to be impractical with their cross-platform codebase, but they were honest enough to admit that that was because they didn't have the resources to make an OS X native version to take advantage of it. They did not dishonestly pretend, as you and Adobe do, that there was any roadblock to doing so except their own priorities.

I won't argue in circles, except to say I disagree and stand by my previous statement.

Every application that uses QTKit. That's sort of the point of having system-wide APIs.

You named zero apps.

Second, the plugin framework is just for the plugin executable itself--the associated processes and media can and do pass through separately if built correctly, just as the many PDF plugins from the early days of Firefox demonstrate. Even Firefox's QuickTime plugin triggered the system processes in 2005. If the limitation were the browser, that wouldn't have been possible.

It absolutely matters. You do realize that Flash has the ability to paint on ANY part of the browser window, to expand & push down other content, and supports transparency? It has to do this using the same APIs the browser is using. Until the browser supports a particular drawing method for plugins, Flash can't use it, either.

These benefits could have been realized long ago.

This is true... Many of the internal 10.1 improvements were just waiting for a fire under Adobe's ***. But H264 accel on OSX was not one of them.

 

[openhammer]

No, H.264 specialized is new for Flash 10.1, across the board (Windows included).

The problems with Flash Player's relative performance compared to Windows have nothing to do with the recently-released API, because the Windows version of Flash wasn't using the Microsoft equivalent, either. Adobe's failure to provide general hardware acceleration or to update their codebase are completely unrelated to a relatively minor feature that was just added for Windows. The whole H.264 issue is nothing more than a distraction.

It is imperative that people stop mistakenly conflating GPU offloading and general hardware acceleration with specialized acceleration of individual codecs.

Yes, based entirely on the long-overdue Cocoa rewrite, thus giving them access to the Core technologies, including OpenGL texturization in full screen mode.

These benefits could have been realized long ago.

*Sigh*
Ok... Here we go....

1. I do not know where you get your information but you are mistaking. Flash Player 10.1 on Windows from the get go had support for H.264 hardware decoding. You know why? Because Microsoft exposed the API's and even provided a Video Acceleration Specification for Chip makers. I believe it's called DVXA ( forgive me it's been a while since i've worked with MS development technologies ). This is what made it possible for Adobe to easily integrate h.264 hardware decoding in the Flash Player. This was unavailable for Mac because of a comparable version of Microsoft's DVXA specification and API.

The reason Adobe went public with that reason was a good one, and guess what it worked! Apple released the API's to initially make that possible.

2. They did not re-write all of flash to be in cocoa, a Flash Player written solely in cocoa would be god awful slow. Flash Player is still C++ with bindings to the cocoa frameworks when needed and a fallback on carbon for the browsers that don't fully support cocoa yet ( like Firefox ).

Take a few moments and think past your hatred of Adobe and realize that unlike Apple, Adobe HAS to support a multiple of platforms with their own quirks and issues. On top of that they have then compensate for browser variances accross all of those browsers and they have to do that while keep the plugin in the 10MB range. Fact is it's easy to be an armchair software project manager but these technical hurdles are a lot more difficult to solve than what a few typed sentences might suggest.

It's all about perspective my friend.

 

[openhammer]

The number of negatives on this article really shows the level of intelligence of MacRumors visitors Not only did Apple just allow acceleration to be included and so we wouldn't expect a stable release already, but IN SPITE OF THAT you can RIGHT NOW go download the Gala preview which has acceleration and works fine (from my experience with preview 2). If anything this shows that even after Apple says "f you" to them, Adobe's still nice enough to put in the work to make Flash better on OSX... ironically for all the ungrateful people posting here.

Beautifully said.

 

[matticus008]

I won't argue in circles, except to say I disagree and stand by my previous statement.

That's fine, except that you're not actually disagreeing.

We're both saying that if a developer chooses to forego using a system framework in favor of something custom, he loses the advantages of the system framework. The difference is that you seem to be saying that that somehow isn't the developer's fault.

You named zero apps.

No, I named every application for the platform that uses video without a hand-written renderer. You named two non-native cross-platforms apps.

You want some examples using QTKit? Plex,

It absolutely matters. You do realize that Flash has the ability to paint on ANY part of the browser window, to expand & push down other content, and supports transparency? It has to do this using the same APIs the browser is using.

And it can do it on any content the browser can load. Every major browser from the past 4 years at least can load QTKit content for plugins to act on, rendering your point moot.

Until the browser supports a particular drawing method for plugins, Flash can't use it, either.

That excuse stopped being an excuse at least five years ago.

This is true... Many of the internal 10.1 improvements were just waiting for a fire under Adobe's ***. But H264 accel on OSX was not one of them.

No one's saying any different. H.264 specialized acceleration is new to Windows in version 10.1--it's not part of the equation with regard to any issues about Adobe "waiting" for anything to fix the longstanding issues.

Until the Cocoa rewrite, the H.264 API, whether VDA or QTKit, would have been utterly useless to Adobe, whether released in 2003 or yesterday. This one minor feature had nothing to do with the timing of that rewrite (since it was already completed when Apple announced the break-out API).

 

[macsmurf]

You want some examples using QTKit? Plex,

Interesting. According to Plex, they've just recently been able to incooperate hardware accelerated H.264 decoding:

"It’s been just a few days since Apple finally released their Video Decode Acceleration Framework Reference, but Ryan has been working hard and we have some exciting news to share with you. He has managed to get Plex integrated with the framework, and for the first time, your GPU is used to decode H.264 video. The results are incredibly impressive, with 720p and 1080p video decoding smoothly with much reduced CPU utilization."

http://elan.plexapp.com/2010/04/27/hardware-accelerated-h-264-decoding-on-plex/

That post is dated April 27, 2010

Of course, I might have entirely misunderstood your point, but in my understanding, you were trying to assert that hardware accelerated H.264 decoding has been available in OS X for ages. True?

 

[matticus008]

1. I do not know where you get your information but you are mistaking. Flash Player 10.1 on Windows from the get go had support for H.264 hardware decoding.

Um, that's exactly what "new in 10.1" means.

I believe it's called DVXA ( forgive me it's been a while since i've worked with MS development technologies ).

Trust me, you don't want to go there. This has already been discussed to immense depth in other threads.

For the last time, the H.264 issue is a distraction. Microsoft's implementation provided a one year head start on Apple for acceleration. It does not explain Adobe's eight year delay.

2. They did not re-write all of flash to be in cocoa

"Yes, Flash Player 10.1 is a true Cocoa app now (with a Carbon fallback to support Firefox and Opera which are not Cocoa yet)." - Flash developer's blog.

Take a few moments and think past your hatred of Adobe and realize that unlike Apple, Adobe HAS to support a multiple of platforms with their own quirks and issues.

And for the 10,000th time, that's fine, but don't pretend you didn't do the legwork because (a) it wasn't possible at all or (b) someone else was withholding something from you.

The H.264 API explains why H.264 wasn't specially accelerated in OS X--it wasn't in Windows before, either, so it's a non-issue; neither platform has had that specialized acceleration in the past. It does not explain what took them so long to do anything about how terrible Flash itself is on non-Windows platforms. The rewritten version was just now released, and not because one little video codec suddenly made the whole thing possible or because H.264 decoding was the reason performance was so terrible.

 

[openhammer]

But that's not accurate. Flash for Windows does offload to Media Foundation, which is why Windows performance is so much better than other platforms.

I don't see where I was wrong. Adobe is NOT using WMF to draw pixels on the screen, it's used for Math like bezier calculations anti-aliasing, etc. At the end of the day Adobe blits the pixels to the users screen using their own on screen renderer.

It is not true to claim that the manner in which Flash is written is OS-independent. They wrote it for Windows to achieve the best performance on their largest platform. That's fine.

Adobe does built the majority of the Flash code in Windows ( mainly Visual Studio ), but the code is mainly written in OS independent C++ and a lot of processor specific Assembly ( ARM, Intel, PPC, etc. ). The big technical obstacle for Adobe has always been the Assembly code which is partly why Adobe was happy to see Apple embrace apple, they where able to finally use a lot of their optimized Intel Machine code.

It's disingenuous to claim that Adobe writes a fully OS-independent renderer. They write a hardware-accelerated player optimized for performance under Windows, and then port it over to other platforms without doing the hardware acceleration work for them.

This is just so wrong that it made me chuckle. You do understand that the player and the renderer are two different things. The renderer is indeed written to be reused as much as possible when possible it is to put it bluntly more economically viable to do it that way. They are not the only software company to this. Many other companies to the same.... Name an Example? I will... Autodesk.

Of course it can. It just takes a lot more work on the other platforms than Adobe is willing to invest. Case in point: rewriting for Cocoa; using Apple's H.264 API. Hope that is simple enough.

Your right... like the guys from VLC why should apple invest all of that time in money retrofitting a high-level API into a code base used only by 10% of the computing market at best? C'mon that's just plain pie in the sky unrealistic. Apple has to realize that in the desktop world they are the minority and they need to provide the API's needed so people can build stuff on their platform quicker. Forcing developers to invest way to much time and effort on a platform that is not even 10% of the market is just not feasible.

Look I'm a Mac user and I love my Mac and I wouldn't change it for nothing in the world; but I don't live in a dream world... I do realize that their our other Operating Systems out their with considerable market share

 

[KnightWRX]

Interesting. According to Plex, they've just recently been able to incooperate hardware accelerated H.264 decoding:

"It’s been just a few days since Apple finally released their Video Decode Acceleration Framework Reference, but Ryan has been working hard and we have some exciting news to share with you. He has managed to get Plex integrated with the framework, and for the first time, your GPU is used to decode H.264 video. The results are incredibly impressive, with 720p and 1080p video decoding smoothly with much reduced CPU utilization."

http://elan.plexapp.com/2010/04/27/hardware-accelerated-h-264-decoding-on-plex/

That post is dated April 27, 2010

Of course, I might have entirely misunderstood your point, but in my understanding, you were trying to assert that hardware accelerated H.264 decoding has been available in OS X for ages. True?

Burn.

 

[JackAxe]

Can someone tell me why Apple only allows support for the 9400m, 320m, and 330m?

This baffles me. Why has Apple limiting the choice of GPUs when EVERY Intel Mac released has a GPU capable of hardware decoding h.264?

Not only have they cut off support for all other GPUs, only 10.6.3 or higher is allowed to access the few GPUs allowed.

I have hardware acceleration on my unibody 17" via the 9400m, but my Aluminum, which has a x1600 XT -- which can decode h.264 via hardware, is no longer supported by Apple under 10.6.


Here are some reference links just to show it's Apple that has limited the GPUs and essentially dropped ALL support for all of their existing GPUs;
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2010/tn2267.html#TNTAG1

Under "QuickTime H.264 hardware acceleration";
http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

 

[matticus008]

Of course, I might have entirely misunderstood your point, but in my understanding, you were trying to assert that hardware accelerated H.264 decoding has been available in OS X for ages. True?

No.

I was saying that QTKit has been hardware accelerated since the introduction of CoreVideo and CoreImage in 2005. All applications built with QTKit can take advantage of that for video playback, including H.264 video playback.

Flash Player has not taken advantage of any of that, because QTKit is unavailable except if your application is written in Cocoa. Adobe rewrote Flash in Cocoa for version 10.1 this year.

Flash Player has taken advantage of generalized acceleration in the Windows version starting with Media Foundation in Windows Vista (2006).

H.264 specialized acceleration has been available in its modern form since DXVA 2 and VP2 on Windows (2007). H.264 specialized acceleration has been available since the 9400M MacBooks and VP3 (2008). Both have been integrated for the first time in Flash player 10.1 (final for Windows, beta for Mac). It's a welcome addition to both platforms, but its absence in prior versions of Flash player on the Mac is irrelevant, because it was also absent in Windows.

 

[Flyinsquirrel]

"Yes, Flash Player 10.1 is a true Cocoa app now (with a Carbon fallback to support Firefox and Opera which are not Cocoa yet)." - Flash developer's blog.

I'm happy enough here. Still have ClickToFlash but only because I have ads that are also flash.

...On second thought I think I might as well disable clicktoflash considering Safariadblock works perfect since the extensions update to safari.

I just like to talk to myself I think

 

[doug in albq]

I have never replied to a MR article with these three powerful letters...until now:

WTF (adobe)

 

[boko]

I just upgraded my flash player to 10.1, and one thing i notice is that when i open a website that contains flash, my GPU switches to the 330M, unlike the previous version (10.0.45.2) where it does not switch from intel to the 330m when i open a website that contains flash.

Oh yeah, I'm using Chrome by the way...

 

[matticus008]

I don't see where I was wrong. Adobe is NOT using WMF to draw pixels on the screen, it's used for Math like bezier calculations anti-aliasing, etc. At the end of the day Adobe blits the pixels to the users screen using their own on screen renderer.

Just see your own comments below...

This is just so wrong that it made me chuckle. You do understand that the player and the renderer are two different things.

It seems to be the point you're not getting.

Flash Player for Windows is tightly integrated with the OS using modern technologies written for Windows Vista/7, offloading much of that rendering to system-provided frameworks and APIs. Flash Player for Mac OS was not very well integrated until 10.1's major rewrite, and still has a lot of work to do. It's not because of the cross-platform rendering differences (i.e., your entire argument about the need to make things look exactly the same), because it's not the renderer that needs to be rewritten, but the player's execution of that rendering. The rewrite was not because they were waiting on any particular technology, it was because they chose not to invest resources in it sooner.

Forcing developers to invest way to much time and effort on a platform that is not even 10% of the market is just not feasible.

And if Adobe had said that, that would be altogether a different discussion.

Can someone tell me why Apple only allows support for the 9400m, 320m, and 330m?

Because Apple did not implement support until VP3-era hardware, so only those decoders with full VP3 featuresets are supported. The list is larger on Windows, because Windows built support during the VP2 era (and so supports VP2 and VP3 featuresets, but not VP1).

 

[macsmurf]

No.

I was saying that QTKit has been hardware accelerated since the introduction of CoreVideo and CoreImage in 2005. All applications built with QTKit can take advantage of that for video playback, including H.264 video playback.

So why do the Plex guys state that "for the first time, your GPU is used to decode H.264 video." only after Apple released Video Decode Acceleration Framework Reference? I can't see any way you can both be right.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Apple's complaints have been, from the beginning, that Flash isn't ready for mobile devices.

Try to keep up.

Oh I dunno. Steve has blamed Adobe's Flash for the vast majority of OSX crashes. It's funny how I've never had Flash crash any of my Macs EVER in the past three years. I have had Apple's Safari crash quite a number of times, though. I've also had Final Cut Pro crash. I can't count the number of times I've had kernel failures on both my PowerMac and my MBP. I suppose those were from having Flash installed even though it wasn't being used.

Me thinks Steve likes to blame everything else on other companies just as much as his fans do.

I'll translate that to English: No non-MOV containers need apply, with the old API. All parties welcome, even Enemies of Steve, with the new API.

VLC tried to implement hardware acceleration of H264 and also found it to be unusable. Now that 10.6.3 has exposed true container-independent APIs that work on ONLY the raw H264 stream data, they will be able to do it. Same with Adobe.

I agree completely, but you are wasting your time trying to win an argument with certain people. They will NEVER admit they're wrong under any circumstance even when it's obvious to everyone else.

I keep seeing someone say that Quicktime has hardware acceleration since Tiger and so it's not Apple's fault. Um.... Sorry, but WHAT hardware support specifically? There is *NO* H264 acceleration even in Snow Leopard and even in Quicktime for older (as in late 2008 NVidia GPUs and even some current Mac Pro chipsets) in Quicktime or anything else. ZERO. I know. I have a late 2008 8600M GT set in my MBP and I don't care if I'm using iTunes or Quicktime or Plex, I get NO off-loading of H264 by GPU hardware from OSX PERIOD. Certain people (or person) on here keep trying to mislead people in this regard, as if Apple has provided adequate APIs for years now and it's just not true. Apple doesn't even update their graphics drivers in OSX to get anywhere near the response that the same GPUs get in Windows.

Apple has no interest in providing state-of-the-art graphics performance. If they did, they wouldn't be selling mobile chipsets in so-called "desktop" machines like the iMac. It's pure crap compared to a real desktop GPU (and CPU for that matter in most cases). And these machines cost 1.5x more than a really good micro-tower desktop using a real desktop CPU and GPU would cost you and they would come with a Quad-Core desktop CPU. You just cannot get OSX (unless you hack them) and the only way you can get a "quad-core" from Apple is to buy a Mac Pro that starts at $2500 (again, you could easily build a desktop PC for half that with 16GB of ram and a couple of 2TB hard drives). Steve places "thin" above EVERYTHING else and unfortunately, this has made most Mac hardware (perhaps notebooks excepted since they're competing with mobile chipsets) a joke compared the stuff you can get for Windows and Linux. Steve doesn't care. He's making lots of money off his phone and pad lines and people are eating them up.

Never mind that Windows7 has already caught up in most areas with Leopard and Snow Leopard. They'll keep steaming ahead now while Steve fiddles with this phone line and lets everything else fall behind. Just look at the Mac Pro. For $2500 you get a 640GB hard drive (when 1.5TB drives cost $99 at RETAIL!?!?) and 3GB of ram when 4GB for my notebook cost me $40!??! WTF!!?!? That's "Pro" alright. Pro prices for sub-par hardware. Their notebooks come with more ram standard. It would take Apple a few minutes to update their specs online to 8GB ram with twin 2TB drives and they wouldn't even have to raise the price because it's already WAY overpriced for what you get. No no. Apple does everything right. They don't need any competition for hardware for OSX based computers. They do very well screwing over their user base because short of a Hackintosh, they know the average Mac users has NO OTHER CHOICE. I think it sucks.

I like OSX better than Windows or Linux, but I'm sick of no hardware choices (which forces me to go the Hackintosh route in the future) and bad driver support. Getting some level of 3rd party API support is a step in the right direction, but Apple has a long way to go, IMO. I doubt they care very much, though. I think iOS and the iPhone/iPad are the only things Steve cares about in the long run. He's obsessed with THIN and iMacs just aren't thin enough (he's already comparing them to "trucks" and telling people they don't need any real computing power; the iPad should be good enough for the average consumer; you tell me what that is hinting at for the future). I don't think he'll be happy until the iPad is the same thickness as a sheet of paper.

Yes, certain people can tell me to go buy a Windows machine if I'm so unhappy, but Apple (formerly Apple COMPUTER) should be about more than just Steve. It is a corporation, after all, and some of us are stock holders as well and maybe we'd like to see more computers and less phones at developer conferences. Put the Power back in Macs. They used to be called PowerMacs for a reason. Now they're iMacs in that price range which are more like Ugh-Macs since they're little more than a notebook with a big screen around them. The truly SAD thing is Apple has MORE than enough cash on hand to hire more people and ramp out more powerful desktops, etc. The problem is that Steve has no interest and he has to have his nose in EVERYTHING. The BEST updates I saw to things like the Mac Mini, etc. were while Steve has away with his liver operation. We haven't seen a major Mini update since. Coincidence?

Name one app that uses the old APIs to do H264 acceleration for something more than just a little window with a Quicktime video playing, not made by Apple.

I surely cannot think of one. There is a REASON that VLC, Plex, etc. have not implemented hardware acceleration up until now. Expecting them to using the Quicktime libraries (which are not friendly to anything but Apple formats like .mov and .mp4) is just not practical. Quicktime itself has been dead since its inception. NO ONE uses it except Apple and yet you have these threads on here that complain about Flash and how Apple says that standards like HTML5 should be supported. Yeah right. That's why they tried to ram Quicktime and then Firewire down everyone's throats. That's why they used Appletalk for years. That's why they held back on supporting USB 2.0 LONG past the point where everyone else had it standard (Tiger USB 2.0 drivers STILL run literally at 1/2 the speed of Leopard and Windows drivers). It's because Apple supports OPEN standards.

I have no love for Adobe, but I do get sick of seeing apologetic responses for Apple's poor technological decisions on here all the time by the usual suspects. Yes, they're making lots of money. That won't guarantee long-term Mac sales. But then again, maybe that's not in Steve's plans either. Forget professionals (let them use Consumer Final Cut Express and Garage Band) and forget giant pro towers. You can do just fine with 720p support on your new iPhone and Final Cut Phone editing....

 

[openhammer]

For the last time, the H.264 issue is a distraction. Microsoft's implementation provided a one year head start on Apple for acceleration. It does not explain Adobe's eight year delay.

So what you are essentially saying is that Adobe should've written their own low level OS dependent hardware decoding API? How would that work in the real world? You know the marketplace? How would Adobe get chip makers to adhere to that spec? Easier said than done.

"Yes, Flash Player 10.1 is a true Cocoa app now (with a Carbon fallback to support Firefox and Opera which are not Cocoa yet)." - Flash developer's blog.

This is a matter of semantics, Flash 10.1 has full cocoa support now in addition to carbon, but the whole code was not rewritten in cocoa. They are using cocoa when it makes sense and still using their own Intel Machine code and C++ when that makes sense. I just want to make that distinction clear and not to give the wrong impression that Adobe re-wrote the whole Flash Player in cocoa(for example using the NSBezierPath to draw a line on the screen ). Because they did not. I believe that is an important distinction in understanding the internals of the Flash Player code.

And for the 10,000th time, that's fine, but don't pretend you didn't do the legwork because (a) it wasn't possible at all or (b) someone else was withholding something from you.

No one is withholding anything. If an API is not available that makes it actionable to add a piece of functionality what is one to do? Call on the pixel-fairy for help?

The H.264 API explains why H.264 wasn't specially accelerated in OS X--it wasn't in Windows before, either, so it's a non-issue; neither platform has had that specialized acceleration in the past. It does not explain what took them so long to do anything about how terrible Flash itself is on non-Windows platforms. The rewritten version was just now released, and not because one little video codec suddenly made the whole thing possible or because H.264 decoding was the reason performance was so terrible.

This is something that I don't personally understand. I mean as Mac users we have to realize that we are the short kid on the block so to speak. We are in the minority compared to the rest of computer users that engage the web on a Windows machine with IE. It's no secret that Flash Player has been lagging in performance compared to it's windows counterpart, however this has been steadily improving since Flash Player 8. Versions 9 and 10 made significant leaps in pairing the performance between platforms and curiously enough 10.1 is the first Flash Version that has the distinct possibility of beating the windows player in certain performance benchmarks. Take a moment and realize that all this effort was done for a user base that in the most optimistic of predictions is roughly 10% of the market place. You don't have to be an MBA grad to realize the economics of such a landscape, however I have to give credit where credit is due because not every company would engage in such a matter.

Look their are a lot of reasons why it took so long both managerial and technical. However I'm glad that the Player has made it to this point on the Mac, and I for one embrace it.

 

[matticus008]

So why do the Plex guys state that "for the first time, your GPU is used to decode H.264 video." only after Apple released Video Decode Acceleration Framework Reference? I can't see any way you can both be right.

Because there are two kinds of hardware acceleration and because Plex both uses and doesn't use QTKit (FFMPEG is used in most video playback). It turns out I was mistaken and that Plex is not fully QTKit.

There are tradeoffs to using QTKit exclusively, particularly in a broad-format media player, but QTKit and FFMPEG can exist side-by-side, as they do in Plex. So while the Plex video player uses FFMPEG, it would, like VLC, use the new API to accelerate decoding for FFMPEG. Where it uses QTKit, which for whatever reason Plex didn't before for H.264, it would not need the new API.

There is an excellent post about it here.

 

[openhammer]

ya sure, http://vimeo.com/hd#12358381 . Only when i turn on full screen mode though. Pretty choppy using the Intel HD integrated video card but completely smooth using the dedicated GT330M video card though. Ive tested this with many HD videos on vimeo and youtube . Im pretty sure HD video on full screen was smooth using the intel video card before the 10.1 flash update

Hmm.... tried it and was able to switch between fullscreen and back no problems. Are you using the Release version for Flash Player 10.1 or are you using the Flash Player 10.1 [Gala Preview]?

 

[matticus008]

So what you are essentially saying is that Adobe should've written their own low level OS dependent hardware decoding API?

For what purpose? H.264 acceleration in Windows became available in 2008; it became available for Macs in 2009. They're implementing it in Windows in 2010; it's only fair to give them until 2011 to do it for Macs. That doesn't have any impact on the balance of the Flash platform.

I'm saying Adobe should have rewritten Flash Player in Cocoa 5+ years ago. Then they wouldn't be in this boat with regard to performance.

This is a matter of semantics, Flash 10.1 has full cocoa support now in addition to carbon, but the whole code was not rewritten in cocoa.

In order to have full Cocoa support, the whole player has to be rewritten in Cocoa. The fallbacks are non-Cocoa, just like the Windows version is non-Cocoa.

They are using cocoa when it makes sense and still using their own Intel Machine code and C++ when that makes sense. I just want to make that distinction clear and not to give the wrong impression that Adobe re-wrote the whole Flash Player in cocoa

Again, you're conflating the renderer and the player, which you went to pains to point out were separate. Flash Player is a full Cocoa app now, just as the developer states, which directly facilitates major performance improvements in both Safari and Firefox because it allows access to hardware-acclerated functions.

No one is withholding anything.

My point exactly.

It's no secret that Flash Player has been lagging in performance compared to it's windows counterpart,

Absolutely right, but some people would have you believe that this isn't because Adobe allowed it to happen, but because their hands were tied.

They weren't. They chose not to invest resources for the Mac platform, as is their right to do. But when they got called on it, fingers are being pointed toward Mozilla and Apple and all over the place except in the mirror. When Windows got a major rewrite of the graphics frameworks in Vista, Flash was updated to take advantage of it in less than a year.

When the same happened on OS X, it took Adobe more than eight years to do the rewrite. The reasons for that are only Adobe's.

 

[openhammer]

(i.e., your entire argument about the need to make things look exactly the same), because it's not the renderer that needs to be rewritten, but the player's execution of that rendering.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying the renderer does not need to be rewritten but the execution of the renderer? Sorry dude but that does not make any sense.

The rewrite was not because they were waiting on any particular technology, it was because they chose not to invest resources in it sooner.

Either you don't fully understand the issue behind Adobe's the H.264 decoding on the apple platform or your trying to be slick. The lack of H.264 decoding on a Mac was because of the lack of available APIs however the decision to support cocoa was an economical one, and not once did Apple say otherwise... so please do not try to conflate the too into one issue for FUD purposes. It's not fair to the readers.

 

[matticus008]

I'm not sure what you mean by saying the renderer does not need to be rewritten but the execution of the renderer? Sorry dude but that does not make any sense.

That the player needed to be rewritten, just like it was. What doesn't make sense?

Either you don't fully understand the issue behind Adobe's the H.264 decoding on the apple platform or your trying to be slick. The lack of H.264 decoding on a Mac was because of the lack of available APIs

No, it was not. The lack of H.264 decoding was because of (1) Adobe's failure to provide hardware H.264 acceleration on any platform until version 10.1, and (2) a Mac codebase that did not use QTKit. They had valid reasons for not using QTKit, but that does not mean the APIs were unavailable. It means only that Adobe didn't want to use them.

however the decision to support cocoa was an economical one, and not once did Apple say otherwise... so please do not try to conflate the too into one issue for FUD purposes. It's not fair to the readers.

You're the only one conflating them. I've said about a thousand times now that the H.264 API has nothing to do with Flash's performance or the delay in Adobe's rewriting of its Flash player to use general acceleration.