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Adobe Releases Flash Player 10.2 With 'Stage Video' Hardware Acceleration

Dear All,

A stupid question. But must flash updates always be installed manually? Or is there any "auto update" option for it? If not reading Mac Rumors I would't even know there is an update. And I think with me many mac users.

With kind regards,
Bas
 
manu chao said:
Rather, Apple had to provide an API that was so easy enough to use that Adobe could include it in Flash with minimal effort.
Core Video already allowed third-party developers to include hardware acceleration into their apps for years already, it was just that the way Flashplayer was programmed that accessing Core Video would have required some serious re-coding. So, Apple was nice enough and provided a special API directly for Adobe (though other developers naturally could also use it).
There have been third-party apps with hardware acceleration for years on the Mac.
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To pantomime Justice Alito, "Not True."

VLC developers noted the same issue. CoreVideo APIs are only good for accelerating QuickTime playerback -- no frills. They are not suitable for decoding a video stream, and returning it to the app for further compositing.
 
Magrathea said:
I assume we don't have to re-encode the video files
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You do if they are not in a format supported by the video decoder of the GPUs. From the article:
The first step is encoding the video so as to take best advantage of the hardware acceleration available on the target platform
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If you have classic flash video from years back then it most likely is not in H.264 or even the previous MP4 format. So FLV files probably not. F4V files encoded in last 12-18 months probably not.






but what if I'm using something like flowplayer or JW player on my website,
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Looking at the description of JW Player, I have doubts . They offer features of composting over the underlying video. That is exactly what this does. It may would in simple set ups but in more complicated sites where Flash is compositing over the video I don't see how that works.

.
I assume YOutube and Vimeo will support this soon.
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Yeah largely because they have already been re-encoding their video.
This is just an incremental change.
 
Sound Evolution said:
Dear All,

A stupid question. But must flash updates always be installed manually?
Click to expand...

Since this involves changing browser plug-ins ..... yes. If Flash were purely an independent program, perhaps it could prompt the user, quit and restart itself. If there can be 2-3 browsers to update that is rather hard to do "automagically". I think Google Chrome does proactive checks along with updates for itself.


If not reading Mac Rumors I would't even know there is an update. And I think with me many mac users.
Click to expand...

Been to a couple of sites today which informed me had an older flash installed. The alternative is some adobe daemon that runs periodically on your machine that probes for updates.
 
BRLawyer said:
So let me get this straight: does Flash now benefit from GPU acceleration in every Mac with 128Mb of VRAM or more? Os is it still the same crap about NVIDIA 9400 and a few others?
Click to expand...

Nope, still only works with what Apple has decided to support. Email sjobs@apple.com if you have a suggestion.

BRLawyer said:
GPU acceleration is only available on the NVIDIA 9400M and a few others instead of what has been advertised (any discrete GPU above 128Mb). I could replicate that as much as you want, but 160% out of 200% it is...RIDICULOUS for a C2D 2.8 iMac with a 512Mb NVIDIA GPU.
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sjobs@apple.com

tbrinkma said:
Here's the thing. That's exactly how an API is *supposed* to work. It's supposed to be a hardware-agnostic interface between the application and the machine. You feed it the required data, and you get the expected output. That's what an API *is*.
Click to expand...

That is how it still works. The app does not have direct access to the hardware. The data is provided frame-by-frame to the GPU (instead of as part of a Quicktime file), and the frames are returned to the app (instead of played directly onto the screen). Apple just chose to only support a small number of GPUs.
 
Flash? Not for iPhone

So, what're the issues for sites to use the HTML5 conversion tool? Why don't they just do it to have access to these devices?
 
Well, updating to 10.2 was a mistake. Everytime I load ANYTHING running Flash on ANY internet browser it says"Flash Plugin unexpectedly quit."
 
deconstruct60 said:
Since this involves changing browser plug-ins ..... yes. If Flash were purely an independent program, perhaps it could prompt the user, quit and restart itself. If there can be 2-3 browsers to update that is rather hard to do "automagically". I think Google Chrome does proactive checks along with updates for itself.




Been to a couple of sites today which informed me had an older flash installed. The alternative is some adobe daemon that runs periodically on your machine that probes for updates.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your answers ;)

It is clear now. In that case I think many people still running old Flash versions.

With kind regards,
Bas
 
deconstruct60 said:
If you have classic flash video from years back then it most likely is not in H.264 or even the previous MP4 format. So FLV files probably not. F4V files encoded in last 12-18 months probably not.
Click to expand...

Note that ".FLV" and ".F4V" don't mean anything - they're just the last four characters of the file/URL name.

I frequently run across files with the last four characters ".FLV" that are in fact standard MP4 files and not Flash files (the Flash player plays them just fine, and rename them to end in ".MP4" and mp4 players are happy as well).

So, your claim is right, but it really has nothing to do with the last few letters of the file/URL name. It's what the internal structure/metadata of the file claim that's important.


Amdahl said:
Nope, still only works with what Apple has decided to support. Email sjobs@apple.com if you have a suggestion.

sjobs@apple.com
Click to expand...

Didn't you get the news? He's not there anymore....
 
deadkennedy said:
Same here, never any issue. In fact I can't think of anyone complaining about Flash issues until Steve told them there's an issue :/
Click to expand...

Same here. In addition, Flash has been fine on the old Windows platform (ok, no 720p video with GMA950 graphics, but still).

Security issues - yes it's had lot of those and Adobe should rightfully be berated for those.

Ever since SJ started propagating the meme that "Flash sucks", everyone is dogmatically repeating it.

I've had more crashes with Quicktime on the Mac. As for Quicktime on the PC- that's the worst PoS since RealNetworks anno 1999.

Now, if only Adobe would release a 64bit player...

ITM
 
Azathoth said:
Ever since SJ started propagating the meme that "Flash sucks", everyone is dogmatically repeating it.
Click to expand...

Gee, could you be any more condescending?

It couldn't be that he was giving voice to something a lot of us were already thinking but thought was impossible to change. Does that sound even remotely possible?

I've hated Flash almost since its introduction but it seemed there was no stopping it, especially as advertisers and marketing people piled on and discovered what a joy it was to have lots of ridiculous "rich" media elements flying around on screen.

Is it hard to believe that when someone like Steve Jobs comes along and actually has the nerve to not only point out how much Flash sucks but to omit it from his company's products that there might be more than a few people out there happy to jump on board with it?
 
Safari freeze fixed!

Holy Samolians! The new Flash player fixes that annoying bug where scrolling in Safari would freeze on any Flash-based video player! Woohoo!
 
AidenShaw said:
Note that ".FLV" and ".F4V" don't mean anything - they're just the last four characters of the file/URL name.

I frequently run across files with the last four characters ".FLV" that are in fact standard MP4 files and not Flash files (the Flash player plays them just fine, and rename them to end in ".MP4" and mp4 players are happy as well).

So, your claim is right, but it really has nothing to do with the last few letters of the file/URL name. It's what the internal structure/metadata of the file claim that's important.
Click to expand...

What is the relationship with .swf files and Adobe Flash? I thought Flash compiled .swf files for web usage. I know .swf files don't contain the full structure for editing/Flash usage, but the few times I've work with Flash, I uploaded projects for clients as .swf files. Curious as to the differences. Thanks! :)
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

On Mac computers, hardware decoding of H.264 video in Flash Player is available with Mac OS X 10.6.4 and later on hardware supported by the Mac OS Video Decode Acceleration Framework (such as the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M, and GeForce GT 330M). Whether hardware decoding will engage for a specific video is determined by the Mac OS Video Decode Acceleration Framework. View hardware used by different Mac models
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Would help if APPLE supported older (capable) GPU's that it rolled out over the past 5 years rather than just the latest gear. IMO guys with slower dual-core machines will notice the difference in the real world. Guys with 8-core machines will only notice when they look at the CPU monitor and realize 15% of 1 CPU is being uses instead of 30%. Big deal when you have 2 cores... merely an academic difference when you have 8 and no speed issues!

Flash is rubbish and I'm all for canning it, but Apple does itself no favours by dropping support for ATI cards and only supporting new Nvidia cards, when Windows can do the same thing using ANY card.

You'd think since Apple has such tight control over its hardware configurations (only machine where you can choose is the Mac Pro!) they'd be ahead on this one... not M$ who have to cater for the full range of bastard systems.
 
kaplanfx said:
This isn't correct. ALL currently shipping iMacs contain an unsupported ATI GPU. Only a handful of Nvidia GPU's support any flash acceleration on Macs.
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This is also a problem for the High-End Mac Pro. It is mostly sold with ATI-graphics and has been sold with this for the last couple of years.

I think it is too bad that Apple don't support their high-end and expensive Mac's with their API.
 
Anyone have black and white YouTube videos?!!
 

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Anyone else noticing that even tho the Flash and web browser processes doesn't use that much cpu anymore, kernel_task still seems to use quite a bit. Which makes total cpu usage a lot higher than the 15% promised:

Try setting Activity Monitor to show All Processes, on my Mac(13" MBP 2010) kernel_task seems to be using lots(15-25%) of cpu when playing back Stage Video. Let youtube finish downloading the file so its not using any cpu for downloading, then try pause/unpausing the video, and you'll see its the video playback thats causing kernel_task's cpu usage to increase. This needs to be fixed if we want good battery life while playing video.
 
Steve121178 said:
Dead? Hundreds of millions of people use Flash on a daily basis.
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Yes, but iPeople can't think beyond me, myself and I and therefore think that I = entire world :)

Of course, it has nothing to do with reality and the fact that Flash has never been stronger and in better shape than now - specially considering recent mobile advancements and upcoming 3D APIs
 
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