Adobe Releases Flash Update Incorporating H.264

[dashiel]

Slightly off-topic, what do people think about Apple supporting Adobe/Flash technology in the face of competition in this arena from MS?

silverlight is stillborn. it will carve out a niche, especially where microsoft funds development, but in general in offers no compelling reasons for content developers or end-users to use it.

as for apple helping adobe - i don't think they need to. apple seems to be going along with the firefox/google route and betting on DHTML, local/offline storage. at best apple/firefox/google need to avoid actively competing against them. microsoft's lock-in and half-assed efforts will continue to tread water as newer developers (especially of web apps) loathe microsoft's weak support for the cutting edge web technologies.

 

[TitoC]

It will not mean that you can play flash games on your iphone. h.264 encoding in flash is simply a movie codec, as far as I can tell, and does not offer the interactivity of flash that games would require. Essentially, i believe, it is like flash now has the ability to be a media player of h.264 video, but any interface/interactivity elements will still be subject to .swf files?

Can someone who knows more about the technical side of this clarify? I'm just beginning to do flash programing and don't quite understand all the ins and outs.

You are absolutely correct on this. All this means is that Flash can now support an alternative from an FLV file (i.e. Flash video file) to another type of Movie codec (i.e. h.264). This has nothing to do with actually playing a SWF file (Shockwave File) which all Flash sites contain. A Flash site contains the SWF file (where your menus, vector animations, artwork, etc. all live). Then, these SWF files can call up any number of "external" files, such as an FLV video, XML file, PHP, etc. and now of course, h.264 video file.

The main problem with Flash as far as the iPhone is concerned, is that Flash can be quite a bit of battery drain (regardless of any video a Flash file does or does not have). Files such as an h.264 video for example, is that these types of files grab a majority of there energy requirements and some video playback requirements from hardware, compared to a typical Flash file, which grabs most of its energy requirements from software and/or a video card. Until Adobe rewires a new type of Flash file that can grab its energy from hardware and not software/video card (something sort of like Flash Lite, which is used primarily for Mobile device interfaces) nothing is going to change this obstacle in getting Flash sites and games on the iPhone.

 

[jasonfj]

does this mean I can now embed h.264 QuickTime movies in my Flash projects and not have to convert to .FLV?

 

[chris200x9]

Sweet! Do you think YouTube will be migrating to H.264 for its website (I know they do this for iPhone/iPod Touch already)?

I'm pretty sure they are, but wouldn't this make youtube downloadable?

I mean right now it's VERY easy with safari to download youptube if it's already h.264/mp4 wouldn't it be that much easier.


or is it just the h.264 codec? so still won't play in quicktime?

 

[TitoC]

does this mean I can now embed h.264 QuickTime movies in my Flash projects and not have to convert to .FLV?

Well you wouldn't actually "embed" an h.264 video as much as having Flash "call for" an external h.264 video (as opposed to an FLV file). What I'm trying to say is that right now, you can have Flash either EMBED an FLV file into your SWF or have Flash look for an external FLV file that it is "calling for." With this newer version, you can not EMBED an h.264 video, but rather have Flash link to an external h.264 video instead.

 

[winterspan]

I'm pretty sure they are, but wouldn't this make youtube downloadable?

I mean right now it's VERY easy with safari to download youptube if it's already h.264/mp4 wouldn't it be that much easier.


or is it just the h.264 codec? so still won't play in quicktime?

Although I'm not exactly sure how those websites/software rip the actual video from the SWF file, It doesn't seem like it would matter what the actual codec of the movie file is. Current websites that use flash to stream video use the Flash Video format "FLV". FLVs are usually encoded in the H.263 format which is similar to DivX/Xvid and also is the predecessor to H.264.

Quicktime shouldn't be able to directly play youtube videos. But as i said before, I'm not quite sure about the technical details involved with ripping a FLV stream, but unless Adobe and/or Youtube makes changes to their streaming process now, It seems like you'll still be able to download youtube videos that are H.264 as you do now with H.263/FLVs.

Can someone comment on this... How do these youtube 'ripping' tools work? I assume they can't get access to the original media, they must somehow grab the bitstream from the flash player somehow? On a similar note.. How does DRM work with the flash media server? Will sites like Hulu.com be able to block these flash video rippers from working?

 

[ezekielrage_99]

All I can say is that it's about time Adobe releases this.... it's seems to take Adobe sometime to get onto some industry requirements.

 

[Jphillippe]

I support the fact that they want longer battery, but option to have flash should be up to the user. There should be a switch in settings that would give the option of turning flash on and off. I just want xtube on my phone...lol

 

[wizard]

Fingers crossed.
Cannot wait for Flash to make it to the iPhone…

This is really what I was hoping for when I saw the word FLASH! Without flash there is little sense in buying an iPhone. It is not that I like FLASH either but sometimes you don't have a choice.

Dave

 

[MrCrowbar]

Sweet. I want those H.264 youtube videos on my Mac. Looks so mucht better on an iPhone right now, it's ridiculous.

 

[sockdoggy]

Flash supports h.264

Correct me if I'm wrong here (probably am, don't know much about video codecs etc), but from what I understand, Flash now supports H.264, but H.264 doesn't support flash...

I don't see how this benefits the iPhone...

Unless YouTube converts all its videos to h.264 because then anyone with flash on can watch them and anyone on an iPhone can watch them.

Anyone see what I'm saying?

 

[twoodcc]

sounds like good news to me. looking forward to flash in my iPhone

 

[FreeState]

After this update I can not play any DVD's with DVD Player - I get a black screen with a few small artifacts - the sound plays only. Its the only update I have installed in the last few weeks and I have played DVD's yesterday on my Mac....

Anyone else experiencing this?

 

[nologo]

Well you wouldn't actually "embed" an h.264 video as much as having Flash "call for" an external h.264 video (as opposed to an FLV file). What I'm trying to say is that right now, you can have Flash either EMBED an FLV file into your SWF or have Flash look for an external FLV file that it is "calling for." With this newer version, you can not EMBED an h.264 video, but rather have Flash link to an external h.264 video instead.

I was hoping that the implementation of this would be an update to flash cs3 that supported h.264 as an .flv codec (instead of on2 or vp6 of whatever the current Flv codec conversion options are). So essentially this allows external calls for m4v files encoded with h.264?

 

[jasonfj]

Well you wouldn't actually "embed" an h.264 video as much as having Flash "call for" an external h.264 video (as opposed to an FLV file). What I'm trying to say is that right now, you can have Flash either EMBED an FLV file into your SWF or have Flash look for an external FLV file that it is "calling for." With this newer version, you can not EMBED an h.264 video, but rather have Flash link to an external h.264 video instead.

What I'd like to replicate is the fixed video window in my current site:
www.jasonfisherjones.com

I used to have an HTML site and I'm not as happy with the playback smoothness from .FLV as with .MOV (everyone I show THINKS the clips play fine, but I see slight jerkiness and frame dropping in all the clips. It's subtle but very important in my business).

 

[ppc_michael]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A110a Safari/419.3)

Correct me if I'm wrong here (probably am, don't know much about video codecs etc), but from what I understand, Flash now supports H.264, but H.264 doesn't support flash...

I don't see how this benefits the iPhone...

Unless YouTube converts all its videos to h.264 because then anyone with flash on can watch them and anyone on an iPhone can watch them.

Anyone see what I'm saying?

They do that already.

 

[5630745]

>>sounds like good news to me. looking forward to flash in my iPhone

So do I. I hate not being able to go to ESPN and not view the site properly on my iPhone...

 

[TitoC]

I was hoping that the implementation of this would be an update to flash cs3 that supported h.264 as an .flv codec (instead of on2 or vp6 of whatever the current Flv codec conversion options are). So essentially this allows external calls for m4v files encoded with h.264?

Exactly.

Adobe is trying to slowly phase out their proprietary FLV system and start relying more on straight codecs such as h.264 (and eventually what the next "new" MPEG system might be - h.265, etc.). But in doing so, it will use more "external" video repositories since none of these codec systems can be embedded within a Flash SWF file. But actually embedding an FLV video directly into a Flash file should be strongly cautioned anyway (unless the video file is short and not too large in size). Doing so in this manner only makes your video sluggish and would begin to play the video out of sync with the audio. Having your SWF file call an external video file works best and what is highly recommended within the industry.

 

[TitoC]

A couple of notes to some:

sounds like good news to me. looking forward to flash in my iPhone

I said it before, but I'll say it again to those who missed it:

All this means is that Flash can now support an alternative from an FLV file (i.e. Flash video file) to another type of Movie codec (i.e. h.264). This has nothing to do with actually playing a SWF file (Shockwave File) which all Flash sites contain. A Flash site contains the SWF file (where your menus, vector animations, artwork, etc. all live). Then, these SWF files can call up any number of "external" files, such as an FLV video, XML file, PHP, etc. and now of course, h.264 video file.

The main problem with Flash as far as the iPhone is concerned, is that Flash can be quite a bit of battery drain (regardless of any video a Flash file does or does not have). Files such as an h.264 video for example, is that these types of files grab a majority of there energy requirements and some video playback requirements from hardware, compared to a typical Flash file, which grabs most of its energy requirements from software and/or a video card. Until Adobe rewires a new type of Flash file that can grab its energy from hardware and not software/video card (something sort of like Flash Lite, which is used primarily for Mobile device interfaces) nothing is going to change this obstacle in getting Flash sites and games on the iPhone

This is really what I was hoping for when I saw the word FLASH! Without flash there is little sense in buying an iPhone. It is not that I like FLASH either but sometimes you don't have a choice.
Dave

Really? Without Flash, there is little sense in buying an iPhone? Really?

Hey, I love love Flash like a lot of people. Heck, I even make my living doing Flash interfaces, Flash web sites and even Flash Lite content for several Cell Phone clients. I work in Flash all day long. But even I have an iPhone and see a whole lot of benefits to owning one. Let's see: A phone, visual voicemail, an email client, the best web on ANY Mobile device, all of my Calendar events, quite a few 3rd party apps, an amazing iPod and video device . . . . . the list goes on and on and on.

Do I wish it had Flash? Sure why not. But NOT at the expense of my battery life. So if you ask me "What would you rather have on your iPhone, Flash or a very good battery life?" I would most definitely say "Battery life!" (and this is from someone who makes his living off of Flash).

We could all do with some "Flash-less" sites in our day.

 

[TitoC]

What I'd like to replicate is the fixed video window in my current site:
www.jasonfisherjones.com

I used to have an HTML site and I'm not as happy with the playback smoothness from .FLV as with .MOV (everyone I show THINKS the clips play fine, but I see slight jerkiness and frame dropping in all the clips. It's subtle but very important in my business).

Nice site BTW.

Yes, using an h.264 should work fine for you. All you would have to do is to make your external videos in the h.264 codec rather than FLV files.

The videos look very smooth and nice to me (of course I only watched a few). I am also in a similar line of work as you (I'm a graphic designer working mostly in the interactive and rich media field of the web). It looks like we have even worked with some of the same companies (such as Razorfish).

The main problem I am seeing with this site is that the video seems to want to start to play before it has had a chance to buffer enough into the cache.

P.S. I watched a few more, and did see some that might possibly have a few dropped frames in them (hard to tell without watching the original file). These seemed to be videos that were quite fast and had very quick moments. But overall, I think the videos look very well.

 

[phillc]

A Video Gallery already using this

Here's an example of an online video site already using Flash to display H.264 content:

http://www.kapitalmototv.com/flash/

All these videos are QuickTime .mov files, encoded using H.264.

 

[agwah]

having the codec be the same across a lot of different platforms is great, now we just need to adjust the colors to be same on mac and windows gamma

just discovered that quicktime adjusts for the gamma of the system icc profile when it is displayed inside of safari (similar to how photoshop takes the icc into account before displaying the colors)

i wish that flash would do the same thing, then we could have our stuff look the same on windows and mac no matter what gamma people had their monitor displaying

 

[lectro33]

It's not the battery life!

Hasn't anyone actually stopped to think about this?

While certain Flash apps may be CPU hungry, that's not the reason there is no Flash Player on the iPhone. It's the interface.

If you click a drop-down menu on a web page, you get this fancy custom drop-down thing on the iPhone. Drop-downs and similar elements in Flash are created by each app's desinger, so there's no standard for the iPhone to recognize. Furthermore, there's no dragging on the iPhone (just look at Google Maps in Safari on iPhone - there's a reason Apple made a custom app). Flash apps also rely on being able to detect hover states and things like mouse-down and mouse-up events, as well as keypresses. How are you going to press a key on the iPhone when they keyboard is only on screen if a text field has focus?

The only Flash files that would operate within the iPhone's interface would be the annoying banner ads that just blink and bob around without any user input, and nobody likes those. Sorry, but Flash on the iPhone just isn't going to happen. I wish it would, as I'm a Flash developer and I have an iPhone, but I'm sure Apple doesn't want a bunch of non-functional applications sullying its slick little browser.

 

[TitoC]

Hasn't anyone actually stopped to think about this?

While certain Flash apps may be CPU hungry, that's not the reason there is no Flash Player on the iPhone. It's the interface.

If you click a drop-down menu on a web page, you get this fancy custom drop-down thing on the iPhone. Drop-downs and similar elements in Flash are created by each app's desinger, so there's no standard for the iPhone to recognize. Furthermore, there's no dragging on the iPhone (just look at Google Maps in Safari on iPhone - there's a reason Apple made a custom app). Flash apps also rely on being able to detect hover states and things like mouse-down and mouse-up events, as well as keypresses. How are you going to press a key on the iPhone when they keyboard is only on screen if a text field has focus?

The only Flash files that would operate within the iPhone's interface would be the annoying banner ads that just blink and bob around without any user input, and nobody likes those. Sorry, but Flash on the iPhone just isn't going to happen. I wish it would, as I'm a Flash developer and I have an iPhone, but I'm sure Apple doesn't want a bunch of non-functional applications sullying its slick little browser.

You're absolutely right! Many of us in the Flash developer community have focused so much on the battery drain issue of Flash as it concerns the iPhone, we have almost forgotten about the most obvious issue: mouse interactions.

This is why I believe that if Adobe & Apple want Flash on the iPhone, they are going to have to come up with an entirely new form of it. One that would have a lot more limitations than the current version (menu RollOvers, etc.), but still have some of the basic functionality, interactions and effects of Flash.

As a Flash developer who has designed quite a few interfaces, I can see many of the obstacles that would need to be overcome before anything "Flash" can end up on the iPhone.

One possibility would be a way to export a traditional Flash format, but also have it export a format that can be iPhone friendly. Something sort of like Flash Lite, which is used a lot with many cell phone interfaces. Of course this would mean sites would have to carry more than one version of their sites - one for traditional Flash, and one for Flash "iPhone." Just a thought. But you make a very good point.

 

[WICKEDfour]

Everybody, I think it'll go something like this. Thanks to phillc for providing the KapitalMoto link, because that site more or less proves that this is extremely realistic. Adobe's H.264 support is quite brilliant news, but in my eyes, it has everything to do with video and nothing at all to do with Flash, ironically.

First off, YouTube/Flash video rippers are really quite simple. I haven't built an automated one, but grabbing the video yourself is pathetically easy. Just load up a YouTube video and open Safari's Activity window (Cmd+Opt+A). Take a look at the resources for the page you're viewing:

See the 13.0 MB file that's still loading? That's the video file the Flash object is streaming. It's a "Flash video," that is, a .FLV file, or a video encoded in H.263, according to winterspan. (By the way, just drag that URI from the Activity window to Safari's Downloads window to grab the movie. Then you can play it back in VLC or QT with Perian. You may also convert it with whatever utility you like that supports .FLV.)

The only thing changing with Flash Player 9 Update 3 is that the Flash object can now do the same thing it's already been doing with an H.264-encoded video file, such as a QuickTime .MOV file. If you take a look at the KapitalMoto page with Safari's Activity window, you'll see that this is indeed the case - the Flash object now streams a .mov file instead of a .flv file. With regards to playing video, Update 3 makes Flash nothing more than a bloated QuickTime plugin, which is actually really good news...

Now, where's the brilliance? Simple. Instead of building a version of Flash for the iPhone/iPod touch just to play back "Flash video," MobileSafari could effectively bypass the need for Flash altogether by detecting the HTML element of a Flash file that streams H.264-encoded video files and loading the QuickTime file in place of the Flash object. Heck, we could do this on the desktop if we wanted with a little JavaScript or maybe even a Safari plugin.

Of course, doing something like this is unnecessary for YouTube on iPhone/iPod touch since it has its own separate application. Another option might be something like allowing an updated YouTube application to tap into other video sites and then stream those "Flash videos" that reference an H.264 video file.

If anything, I'd guess that my previous proposal would be more likely, but the point is that Adobe's H.264 support will really make things interesting if it catches on. Potentially this means that Apple doesn't need Flash on the iPhone/iPod touch. Well, not for videos anyway.

This makes a lot of sense considering the amount of development time Apple has given to WebKit - why build an interface in Flash if you can build it in HTML/CSS/JavaScript? There are definitely Flash-based interfaces that could never be built with the current versions of HTML, CSS, & JS, but if Safari supports the right number of future improvements to the latter three languages, such as animation or the <canvas> tag, then there's an even greater chance of making Flash obsolete.

Maybe I'm crazy, but this move might very well make the web less Flash-dependent than it's been since the advent of .FLV. Meanwhile, as detailed above, Flash's most useful bits continue to be replicated in HTML/CSS/JS + hardware support. Apple is certainly taking aim at eventually eliminating the need for Flash altogether.