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

[goosnarrggh]

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.

I'd like some clarification on that point, because there appears to be conflicting information.

Can the QTMovie class (and QTKit in general) deal directly with compressed video data in its raw, uncontainerized form? Or does it depend upon that data being passed into it encapsulated within a .mov/.mp4 container file?

If the former is true, then I suppose Adobe may have no excuse for not obtaining its video data in whatever container seemed most appropriate, and passing it into QTKit for decompression/rendering.

If the latter is true, then QTKit would have been out of the question for the majority of Flash video, carried by the .flv container which is incompatible with .mov/.mp4.

Adobe actually supports two different container formats right now - .flv and .f4v - one of which is proprietary and the other is based upon the MPEG-4 part 12 base container with proprietary extensions (that may or may not confuse QTKit -- I don't know). Either .flv or .f4v can be used to contain H.264 video, but only .flv can be used to contain their older legacy codecs.

Given the containerization used for .f4v files might be compatible with QuickTime (depending on whether QuickTime can handle, or at least graciously ignore, the proprietary extensions), and the fact that Adobe only allows a limited set of audio and video codecs within .f4v files, I suppose they might have separated out .f4v files from the .flv files right from the start and passed .f4v files directly to QTKit... Except, when the time came to execute the proprietary extensions embedded within the .f4v container such as ActionScript and still images, how would the Flash Player take care of synchronizing those actions with the QTKit's movie player?

They probably would unavoidably need to have their own code for decontainerizing any video provided in .flv files due to the proprietary nature of the container -- and then, depending upon the codec within the .flv, they might have been able to pass any video in a compatible codec on to QTKit as well, and only render the incompatible codecs themselves... Presuming QTKit allows decontainerized data to be supplied directly...

 

[Max(IT)]

Awesome update!

10.1 is making hell of a difference

Looking forward to further updates!

many thanks Adobe and keep up the great work!

Great work ?!?
Are you a shareholder ???

 

[macsmurf]

Can we all agree that Adobe clearly doesn't give a crap about performance on any platform, other than Windows?

No, but we can certainly agree that Adobe prioritizes the platform where 90% of their users reside.

This has probably been a mistake from a PR point of view.

 

[Apple 1984]

Lame

Same old, same old. -Except that no one cares anymore.

 

[KnightWRX]

I'd like some clarification on that point, because there appears to be conflicting information.

Can the QTMovie class (and QTKit in general) deal directly with compressed video data in its raw, uncontainerized form? Or does it depend upon that data being passed into it encapsulated within a .mov/.mp4 container file?

Let's ask Apple :

http://developer.apple.com/mac/libr...Kit/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001164
http://developer.apple.com/mac/libr...ogrammingGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

QTKit is very limited. It is very much a high level API, not something to be used for any kind of serious multimedia frameworks. This is for devs who want a simple movie player control or movie capture control in their applications like maybe a game or HTPC front end.

It's also very new. It deprecates the older Quicktime API. HW Accel for video decoding was added late in the game and Adobe didn't even have time to implement it even if they could've used such a high level API in the first place. Matticus is just wrong here, he's just too proud to admit it.

Apple is responsible for lack of hardware decoding this round. They dragged their feet compared to Microsoft. Adobe did ship a beta with the feature though, barely a month or so after Apple gave them the API. That's far from what I call "lazy".

 

[Augure]

I like Flash, for games, animations, videos (but not ads, so I'm happy with Adblockplus), and I support Adobe against the hypocrisis of Apple, and the threat to free choice of coding language.

But I'm starting to think that some Adobe executive are plain stupid: how can they release THE update that was supposed to change perspectives on the plugin, and add no HW accelaration to the plateforme that is at the center of the controvers (Mac) ?

 

[KnightWRX]

But I'm starting to think that some Adobe executive are plain stupid: how can they release THE update that was supposed to change perspectives on the plugin, and add no HW accelaration to the plateforme that is at the center of the controvers (Mac) ?

Because they had 2 months to do it in, while 10.1 has been in the works for 2 years ?

They'll ship it when it's ready. Plus, it's false to say Flash has no HW acceleration at all. They just didn't ship HW accelerated video decoding on OS X (API has been available for 2 months) or Linux (because of lack of a standard. libVA or libvdpau ?).

 

[Kieranic]

For some reason, it seems slower in Safari now... Honestly whats the point of releasing it without Hardware Acceleration? I would use the beta but the white square really bugs me.

 

[milani]

so it will still be a resource hog...

why even bother installing it until it supports hardware acceleration?

To take that a step further, why not just remove it altogether? Seriously. It's only after I got a Mac that I truly realized how bad Flash really is. For a company that is working so hard to tout the benefits of their antiquated plugin, you'd think they would at least take the time to try to optimize its performance.

 

[Lara F]

It's hard to optimise without cooperation on BOTH sides.

 

[openhammer]

Please learn to stop conflating the player and the runtime. Until you can manage that, there can be no sensible discussion..

HA! Sorry dude, that's how the Adobe Team see's it... as one in the same. They used to carry your mentality of having "the player" & "the runtime" that thinking lead to a lot of problems. Specifically the fact that the AS3 engines on the platforms are comparable but the graphics rendering is not. This effort has been in the works since they started working on 10 and in my opinion has started to bear fruit on OS X. So I'm not conflating the two because the Adobe Engineers themselves when they talk about the Player the talk about it as a whole unit. They don't mention The "Runtime" separately from the "Player".

It's perfectly clear that I've had exactly two points:

As for your points or lack their of.

1. Where did you get it in your skull that Adobe was blaming poorer rendering performance on H.264 decoding acceleration? I didn't read that anywhere? Could you provide a link? You keep pushing that point but where is the evidence? Show me a tech not or anything official from Adobe or an Adobe spokesman that mentions that blitting to the screen and accessing the cocoa timer events was because of the unavailability of the H.264 decoders and I will acquiesce.


2. Your second point is kind of redundant because it goes back to your original point about Adobe claiming that all of the performance gains where because of a lack of a H.264 decoder.

 

[openhammer]

And this is why it is slow? Really. Bad languages? I wonder how come it works just fine on Windows (same languages, same CPU and GPU).

Nope. Performance bottleneck on a Mac running Flash prior to 10.1 had to do with the way Adobe was blitting( or pushing pixels to the screen ). This was done much more efficient in Windows than on a Mac. prior to 10.1. With 10.1 it is much more comparable in and some cases better.

It's important to note that all of these enhancements are only available to Mac users running 10.6 + and Safari( Chrome is coming soon with some updates google is doing to support Core Animation in their browser ).

 

[openhammer]

Better software decoder for H.264 ?!?
C'mon, try to be honest! Do you work for Adobe ???
Better than WHAT ? better than crap Flash 10.0 !!!!!
ANY OTHER H.264 software decoder (try VLC) is far better than Flash 10.1 in playing video content, and this is a FACT.
same exact video from YouTube played from Flash plug-in 10.1 takes about 40-50% of cpu, while downloaded and played on VLC it takes not more than 20-25%.

How can you still defend Adobe is beyond my understanding.

I don't work for Adobe. Do yo work for Apple?

Your example bringing up VLC is just lame. Last time I checked VLC is over 100MB on a Mac. Flash sits a just over 30MB(installed). The trick was and continues to be optimizing the software decoder without making the Player balloon to 50+ MB.

As for defending Adobe, it's not about that at all. Adobe has plenty of issues like every other company including Apple. I believe in criticism where it does and acknowledgement when it is deserved.

 

[supmango]

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.

Don't kid yourself. Adobe is not being "nice," they are trying to keep flash from dying. If they don't make Flash optimization a priority for OSX, they can count on the fact that Apple will never change their position on Flash for iOS devices. It is really that simple. Personally, I think it is a fruitless endeavor, but I really can't blame them for trying.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Great work ?!?
Are you a shareholder ???

So anyone that is happy with a performance improvement over the previous release MUST be a shareholder because we all know Steve ordered all Mac users to HATE Adobe?

Honestly, I don't know any other reason why so many Mac users just hate that company. Flash sucks on all platforms IMO. I can do without all that animated crap. At least they're finally trying to improve the Mac version and for that they get crucified? Geeze, no wonder the Mac has had a bad reputation for so many years. I guess it's not just the overpriced hardware. At least Adobe supports the Mac PERIOD (unlike most software). And I don't care what anyone says, Photoshop is the BEST image processing software out there and it's available for Mac and they bothered to do Universal binaries and they're working on future 64-bit functionality. But SOME of you seem to think everything that's not Apple just plain sucks. Well, let's see....have any of you actually compared something like Apple's Aperture to say Adobe Photoshop? I think not. There is no comparison. "Snappy" isn't everything. The software has to be useful as well. Aperture is more like Lightroom. There is nothing close to Photoshop And don't tell me The Gimp because it's CRAP compared to Photoshop; I've used both and a transform in the Gimp is a NIGHTMARE compared to the real-time operations Photoshop has had for over a decade. What has the Gimp been doing all that time? Nothing useful that I've seen, a lot like Linux in general which is still crap from a usability and standards standpoint (no direction at all; it's all over the map) even after decades of development and there's hardly ANY commercial software at all for it and until they get a "standard" method of distribution across all variants, it never will. And yet Adobe supports Linux too. What a horrible company for trying to make software across all major platforms, even mobile ones while even Microsoft hears less whining and they don't support Linux one bit.

Apple doesn't support Linux one bit either. If iTunes were available for it, I could at least make a nice NAS server to run my whole house audio/video system instead of having to leave a Mac on 24/7 because Apple cannot be bothered to support any kind of standards (what the heck is UPnP? Apple doesn't know and it doesn't care and they won't support it PERIOD so it's leave iTunes running on a full blown Mac 24/7 to feed AppleTV and Airport Express units. A PC is a bad choice because iTunes will NOT stay hidden when you remotely access it in Windows. It pops up to the front display EVERY time which is annoying as heck). So basically, what is Apple doing to support "standards" when they ignore everything that suits them??? Apple's fight against Adobe has NOTHING to do with "standards". It has to do with Apple's greed and them not wanting anyone else making money while they file patent after patent after patent on every idea they can think of to touch a screen or move a menu around on a mobile surface. Yes, Apple is a moral giant.


The point is most of you couldn't code your way out of a paper bag and have NO idea what's involved. I'd wager most of you have never even used any of Adobe's professional products. You complain about Flash, but what has been the alternative all these years for that sort of thing? Plain HTML? HTML5 isn't even finalized yet and I haven't seen any real sound support in working product yet. You certainly had NO options up until HTML5 in that department what-so-ever. What did Apple offer to help? NOTHING. And yet you whine and cry that your <10% market share didn't get as much attention as 90% market share. I see that over and over again. You want the Mac to play with the big boys, but yet you staunchly support Apple's position to keep a smaller user base with overpriced and underpowered hardware which means the Mac market share will STAY below 10%. You support iMacs as "desktops" when they are glorified notebooks with GPUs and CPUs that pale next to true desktop versions that cost far less in the Windows world and then you wonder why the Mac sucks next to a PC that costs half as much and why a $250 netbook can run 720p HD video through Flash without a hiccup while your $800 iPad cannot run flash period. It's not all Adobe's fault, not by a long shot. But don't blame Apple. Steve Jobs is a living god, after all. He knows best.

For some reason, it seems slower in Safari now... Honestly whats the point of releasing it without Hardware Acceleration? I would use the beta but the white square really bugs me.

Oh I dunno....some of us don't have 9400M or newer in our Macs and maybe we'd like the OTHER improvements for Flash Adobe has made. My MBP isn't even 2 years old yet and it gets ZERO H264 acceleration support from Apple period despite the GPU having the function fully supported internally. My Dell Mini 10V gets hardware acceleration from Flash under Windows but not OSX for the same reason (Apple provides no API or acceleration support for those chipsets). So it makes zero difference for any of my three computers that run OSX if hardware acceleration is included because none of them get any core level GPU decoding support from Apple in OSX and therefore including it makes no difference here (even brand new Mac Pros have no use for it since they aren't supported either by Apple for H264 hardware decoding). OTOH, my PowerMac can use all the efficiency improvements it can get to remain useful for another year or so until USB3 is common, etc. and maybe Apple will finally update their Mac Pro even?

 

[Burger Thing]

Your example bringing up VLC is just lame. Last time I checked VLC is over 100MB on a Mac. Flash sits a just over 30MB(installed). The trick was and continues to be optimizing the software decoder without making the Player balloon to 50+ MB.

Maybe that has to do with the fact that VLC plays around 20 Video and 30 audio formats and that dreadful plugin plays .. how many again?

 

[Darkroom]

The so-called "Open Screen Project" is consortium of nearly 50 companies looking to bring a consistent Flash experience across all platforms, but Apple is notably absent from the group.]

i couldn't sense fanboy smugness at all from that writing, nicely done.

also, Microsoft is also "notably" absent from the Open Screen Project. like apple, why would they join when they are pushing competing technologies. when the project's partners are major players as you can see from the attached list, missing Apple isn't so notable after all.

 

[Max(IT)]

I don't work for Adobe. Do yo work for Apple?

Your example bringing up VLC is just lame. Last time I checked VLC is over 100MB on a Mac. Flash sits a just over 30MB(installed). The trick was and continues to be optimizing the software decoder without making the Player balloon to 50+ MB.

As for defending Adobe, it's not about that at all. Adobe has plenty of issues like every other company including Apple. I believe in criticism where it does and acknowledgement when it is deserved.

uao, what an impressive example by you !
VLC is just about 60 mega (installed), and it supports 20+ video and 30+ audio format.
And it is FOUR TIMES FASTER than Flash crapware at play videos.
Who the hell cares about disk space occupation ???
BTW VLC player is 9.7 mb of ram usage when launched. Flash plug in is over 30 mb when launched with the same 30 seconds video.
Try another one , dude

So anyone that is happy with a performance improvement over the previous release MUST be a shareholder because we all know Steve ordered all Mac users to HATE Adobe?

I don't give a **** about what SJ said.
I hate Flash because it is a piece of sh*t, one of the worst software ever seen under Mac OSX.
I gave you NUMBERS, not just words. Numbers where Flash requires almost 4 times the cpu cyles of another (non hw-accelerated) player just to play a tiny video.
VLC is free. Mplayer is free. Try on your Mac to play the same video while checking system monitor.
Flash is crapware.
Flash 10.1 is just "less crapware" than previous version.

 

[WilliamLondon]

This place is just rampant with blind faith.... it's like MacRumors is the church of Steve Jobs or something.

Blind faith, hardly. Mention Mac Pro to some of the Apple fans on here and get ready for a torrent of comments to come your way.

The forum is just filled with people who think Apple builds some interesting products. Not all of us like all of them, and some of us don't really give a crap about the comings and goings of Steve Jobs.

Unfortunately, it's also frequented by a venomous group of anti-Apple-ites who find pleasure in coming on here to point out what idiots Apple fans are. The irony is I never find myself compelled to go on to a Windoze or Linux fan forum and berate their choices. Why is that?

BTW, to stay on topic, Adobe has just done nothing to further their cause in this whole Flash war. Epic fail on their part, they have just sealed their own fate.

There's a reason why all of these companies are under Federal investigation for various ways they're handling and delivering content: Apple...

There was an article in the FT on this subject, here. As many predicted here, there is (most likely) nothing that will come of these investigations.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

uao, what an impressive example by you !
VLC is just about 60 mega (installed), and it supports 20+ video and 30+ audio format.
And it is FOUR TIMES FASTER than Flash crapware at play videos.

VLC is a media player. Flash is capable of a LOT more than just playing videos. And even HTML5 is simply incapable of replacing ALL the things it can do right now so all this talk about HTML5 is beside the point for those that want to access ALL web sites. It irks me every time I see the iPad commercial saying it can access "all" web sites. Yeah right. No flash = massive numbers of sites that it simply CANNOT use and all because Steve decided for us whether we can use it or not. It should be the user's choice. Some of us just want to access web sites. We don't care about Apple's profit margins versus Adobe or Microsoft when it comes to that.

I don't give a **** about what SJ said.
I hate Flash because it is a piece of sh*t, one of the worst software ever seen under Mac OSX.
I gave you NUMBERS, not just words. Numbers where Flash requires almost 4 times the cpu cyles of another (non hw-accelerated) player just to play a tiny video.
VLC is free. Mplayer is free. Try on your Mac to play the same video while checking system monitor.
Flash is crapware.
Flash 10.1 is just "less crapware" than previous version.

VLC is fine for saved videos. What good does it do me for animated web sites? None. More to the point, if you "hate" flash so much, just don't use it. You already CANNOT use it with any iOS device, so just delete it and then you won't have to rant about it anymore. I'm not a huge Flash fan, but if it makes a given web site work better, I want the web site to function, not throw back a "sorry, this site requires Flash" warning or miss half the stuff on their site because the plain HTML version cannot do everything the flash version can do.

 

[Darkroom]

Who the hell cares about disk space occupation ???

my guess would be the same people who also freak out when their fans turn up a few RPMs while allegedly running flash content on their $2K macs.

I gave you NUMBERS, not just words. Numbers where Flash requires almost 4 times the cpu cyles of another (non hw-accelerated) player just to play a tiny video.
VLC is free. Mplayer is free. Try on your Mac to play the same video while checking system monitor.
Flash is crapware.
Flash 10.1 is just "less crapware" than previous version.

here's a suggestion: if you want anyone to take what you write seriously you need to at least make a small effort to appear non biased. what you claim are facts are nothing more than personal experiences.

i can't believe how different the mood is around this site these days. what ever happened to the chill, interesting discussions? now it's all psycho fanboys fighting their holy war for steve jobs.

 

[Utop1aa]

Word Press vs Cargo

I wanted to get a website up and I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on using Word Press vs Cargo

 

[Max(IT)]

VLC is a media player. Flash is capable of a LOT more than just playing videos.

yes, a lot more, like showing thousands ads and stupid games ....

And even HTML5 is simply incapable of replacing ALL the things it can do right now so all this talk about HTML5 is beside the point for those that want to access ALL web sites. It irks me every time I see the iPad commercial saying it can access "all" web sites. Yeah right. No flash = massive numbers of sites that it simply CANNOT use and all because Steve decided for us whether we can use it or not. It should be the user's choice. Some of us just want to access web sites. We don't care about Apple's profit margins versus Adobe or Microsoft when it comes to that.

Flash is not an open standard. Actually Flash is NOT a standard at all ...
Flash is a proprietary plug-in, so by not supporting it Apple doesn't deny you to surf the web. Blame web designers who designed those sites ...
I'm surfing the web using iPhone ed iPod touch (and Macs with Click2Flash) since 2008, and I don' t miss ANYTHING about Flash. ACtually my web experience is MUCH better.
And this has NOTHING to do with what SJ said a few weeks ago.

VLC is fine for saved videos. What good does it do me for animated web sites? None. More to the point, if you "hate" flash so much, just don't use it. You already CANNOT use it with any iOS device, so just delete it and then you won't have to rant about it anymore. I'm not a huge Flash fan, but if it makes a given web site work better, I want the web site to function, not throw back a "sorry, this site requires Flash" warning or miss half the stuff on their site because the plain HTML version cannot do everything the flash version can do.

you could have the same result if all the lazy web designers acknowledge Flash's death and start searching for an alternative (HTML5 + CSS + Javascript, as Apple showed us in their demo site).

my guess would be the same people who also freak out when their fans turn up a few RPMs while allegedly running flash content on their $2K macs.

and in your opinion is this the same ? 20-30 megs (on a 250-500 Gb hard disk !) difference is the same as a cpu going crazy just to play a video ?

here's a suggestion: if you want anyone to take what you write seriously you need to at least make a small effort to appear non biased. what you claim are facts are nothing more than personal experiences.

so are you telling me that this behavior is limited to my macs ? So are you telling me that on your mac Flash requires the same cpu cycles of VLC/Mplayer to play a video ?
And I'm the biased one ....

 

[Amdahl]

G4 PowerBook 1 ghz - should I upgrade? Or will this update actually make Flash perform worse?

10.1 supports back to G3 processors, and is the last release that will support G3 processors. Your G4 should be fine, and should benefit just as everybody else will benefit. The older your CPU, the better your perceived improvement, I suspect.

 

[eric356]

what a joke

You really think flash is going anywhere??? what a joke, just because S.J. says some things about flash people just think its going to die off... not anytime soon my friend, 95% of the web is still using flash... Flash has been around for years and will remain so.