Apple Opens Door to Hardware-Accelerated Decoding of H.264 Video in Flash

[blackhand1001]

That's true. But if people learn how to use Open CL for this job, then they won't have to wait for the GPU manufacturers to incorporate new hardware for newer codecs. For example when H.265 emerges some day, the GPU you have today won't have the Nvidia PureVideo hardware to decode that. But stream processors through CUDA/Open CL can do it even with the old GPU.

So going through Open CL would enable old GPU's to accelerate the newest codecs.

You clearly don't know what Open CL is. Open CL is doing math calculation with the GPU, anything picture related as in 2d or 3d is ran in the video cards native mode not using the opencl. Windows has had 2d acceleration dated back to back in the NT days, like 1993. Apple used to have some in OS9 but since osx its been gone.

 

[kiljoy616]

I hope the fanboys take note of this. Flash sucks on OSX because of Apple. I've used it on Windows for years, and it runs perfectly. Hopefully this will go to alleviate some of the differences.

What are you babbling about, yes it is true that Flash works well on PC, We all know that, but that was not always the case.

And no Flash has not always been stable or fast. But yes its true over the past 2 version it has been doing very well. I give Adobe kudos for making it better and better. I solute you Adobe, here here.

That said it still hogs resources its just that now its using well,l well GPU's, yes those little chips that can process data like no CPU can and have dedicated hardware to boot.

I have nothing bad to say about flash, if you have the hardware it will do what its suppose to. But I for one do not care that Apple is not letting Adobe put it on system like the iphone or ipad.

And I solute Steve the Messiah Jobs for not letting crappy software built for other phones OS be ported over to the Iphone, I solute you Steve.

Considering how its gotten in the PC gaming arena I am glad we don't have to deal with that junk on my iphone, ipod, or soon to have ipad.

Also I would love to see an open standard that is as good or better than Flash, why, simple open is better, Flash is Adobe and Adobe controls it.
But I do appreciate that Apple and Steve are allowing Adobe to optimize it on the Mac finally. There is no reason for that to not have happen sooner.

Some people here tend to talk all the time about how Apple hardware tend to be a close system, yes they are and that fine, I for one do not have time to play with something I am using for work, or when I want to hear music or make a call, yes I am talking to you MS and your Phone software.

The system I am running now has had to be redone 2 times since I purchased Windows 7 and as for Windows Vista, don't get me started. These problems are not an issue for me , but they can be for lots of people and the last thing I want to play with when I am in front of a client is why my computer that was doing fine an hour ago is not doing so good now.

Soon to use an ipad rather than laptop.

Oh the stories of flying cross country to set up a clinic only to find out that my laptop has crashed and now I have to spend the next hour either trying to fix it or just doing a full ghost install. ahhhh.

Remember the old days when IBM PC was the serious people computer and Mac where well toys, or that what people said. For at least since OS X came out I can say that a Mac is a work horse that just does not stop working, but Windows has gotten better but still is a joke.

I was at a screening of Windows XP haha, now that was .

No flame war here, just saying that Flash is good, but I can also see why I rather not see it on a low power system like iphone and ipad. But have never understood why those nice powerful video card where going to waste.

 

[blackhand1001]

Wrong. Flash performance on OS X is an Adobe problem. VLC, and any number of 3rd party video players use way less CPU power on OS X to play back H.264 then Flash, without hardware acceleration. And h.264 is only a small part of the Flash problem. Flash is also not h.264 accelerated on Windows either, until 10.1, currently in beta form.

The h.264 acceleration is only part of the whole picture anyhow. Adobe was free to use OpenCL, an open standard for GPU acceleration that works on even more cards, and they didn't. Adobe was free to use various Quicktime calls to accelerate Flash, and they didn't. Adobe was free to use any number of new APIs Apple has added to OS X over many versions, and they haven't. Hell, Photoshop and their other creative products were still using Classic Mac OS era APIs until CS5.

OpenCL is not for video acceleration. it is for doing large calculations. General purpose calculation on the CPU. The acceleration adobe needs should be available but isn't because apple has cruddy video drivers. The same open gl games run like crap on OS x but on the same machine run smooth on windows. Feature like accelerated painted of overlays that cards have supported for quite some time just aren't available on apples drivers.

 

[spencers]

about damn time!

 

[kiljoy616]

Really? That must explain then why Adobe has a so much bigger software portfolio than Apple - and that on more platforms than Apple.

I think this is just another stupid Steve Jobs marketing statement being parroted everywhere.

So a bigger portfolio hahaha, for a software company is not normal. Read my lips. Apple is a HARDWARE company.

Adobe is a SOFTWARE company.

MS is a WHAT? Thats right a SOFTWARE company.

Apple makes cool want to have hardware that runs software, its true they build a bit of the software, but they are not a, what that, oh yes SOFTWARE company. Actually its when the SOFTWARE just does not cut it that Apple comes in and builds something for the Mac.

So how is Adobe PORFOLIO for hardware?

 

[kiljoy616]

about damn time!

Apple can be a bit slow, but that not always bad, I still rather have stability than raw power. I leave raw unstable power to windows and pc's.

 

[kiljoy616]

OpenCL is not for video acceleration. it is for doing large calculations. General purpose calculation on the CPU. The acceleration adobe needs should be available but isn't because apple has cruddy video drivers. The same open gl games run like crap on OS x but on the same machine run smooth on windows. Feature like accelerated painted of overlays that cards have supported for quite some time just aren't available on apples drivers.

wrong, wrong, wrong, the so called games your talking about are not OS X specific games, they are crude ports, same reason I hate playing even on my raw power PC ported over console games. Graphics detail lags way behind original PC games.

If you put windows in you can see that the hardware is not the problem that is correct, but with games its just that first most games are Directx based games, and even those that are OpenGL are still built for a windows machine and are just crude ports.

As a serious gamer I can say that most games no matter how much they would like to port them optimized for the Mac they can't. The ROI is just not there.

Just check out how games optimized for Nvidia or ATI can have a difference in FPS, though not something a high end system will notice, but a lower system will notice it, when you have a drop of 10 FPS because your not "using the right video card".

Just look at Nvidia and read the description part of the driver, specific games can easily go up 20% or more, but only for those that where initially optimized and say Nvidia advertising. Over the life cycle of a game Nvidia and ATI will make the drivers better optimized for popular games.

I can't really see how apple could do that.

 

[cocky jeremy]

I don't care what they do with Flash, i want it dead.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

You clearly don't know what Open CL is. Open CL is doing math calculation with the GPU, anything picture related as in 2d or 3d is ran in the video cards native mode not using the opencl. Windows has had 2d acceleration dated back to back in the NT days, like 1993. Apple used to have some in OS9 but since osx its been gone.

Quartz/Quartz Extreme is all 2D accelerated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_Compositor

 

[iphones4evry1]

Unless Steve Jobs acts like a complete jerk, like he did with the iPhone, and waits until Adobe has put a lot of time, effort, and money into enhancements for the Mac, and then last minute Steve says "I changed my mind."

 

[MorphingDragon]

OpenCL is not for video acceleration. it is for doing large calculations. General purpose calculation on the CPU. The acceleration adobe needs should be available but isn't because apple has cruddy video drivers. The same open gl games run like crap on OS x but on the same machine run smooth on windows. Feature like accelerated painted of overlays that cards have supported for quite some time just aren't available on apples drivers.

Please tell me what part of computing isn't number crunching, because I'm sure the entire computing industry would like to know.

Unless Steve Jobs acts like a complete jerk, like he did with the iPhone, and waits until Adobe has put a lot of time, effort, and money into enhancements for the Mac, and then last minute Steve says "I changed my mind."

Letting people access H264 decoding directly is an improvement for everybody, not just a ploy to tease adobe with.

 

[azurehi]

I don't care what they do with Flash, i want it dead.

Stevie don't 'low no Flash playin' round here...(X 2)

I don't care what Stevie don't 'low,
Gonna play my Flash any ol' how...

 

[arjaosx]

I see this as Apple's bait.

Adobe has been putting blame on Apple not giving them access to hardware acceleration and this act by Apple I feel is sort of like "there you go show us what you got!"

The ball is now on Adobe's court. Smart Apple, I believe this is analogous to letting the Opera browser on the app store.

 

[commander.data]

The Video Decode Acceleration framework is a C programming interface providing low-level access to the H.264 decoding capabilities of compatible GPUs such as the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M. It is intended for use by advanced developers who specifically need hardware accelerated decode of video frames.

I find it interesting that the GT330M in the new MacBook Pros is mentioned as supporting H.264 acceleration, but the lower power integrated Intel IGP isn't. And before people jump to blame poor quality Intel IGPs, Arrandale's IGP fully supports H.264 acceleration, it's actually the 2nd generation Intel IGP with this feature. It's simply that Apple doesn't implement the drivers to support it in OS X. If the point of dynamic IGP switching is to apply the right IGP/GPU for the specific task to save power, something that is now as basic as H.264 acceleration should not require powering up the discrete GPU and using more power.

In terms of GPU support, besides the nVidia 8xxx, GT1xx, and GTX285 supporting full H.264 acceleration in hardware, all ATI GPUs from the HD2xxx series and up also can do full H.264 acceleration. Even the ATI X1000 and nVidia 7000 series have partial hardware H.264 acceleration ability. Just that Apple doesn't write the drivers for it.

On another note, does the Video Decode Acceleration framework having a C programming interface imply that Carbon isn't dead after-all and that it is useful for these lower-level functions?

 

[Maserati7200]

This is good news, however, people are saying that it has been Apple's fault for flash sucking on the Mac because they not allowing Adobe to use this API.
There are a few fallacies with this.
1) Apple didn't allow any 3rd party developer to access this API until very recently. Why should Adobe get special treatment?
2) There are API's Adobe could have used before to optimize for the Mac, such as CoreVideo and CoreAnimation. Instead, they choose to make it a poorly-done port of the Windows version. I understand they are working on fixing it but it doesn't change the fact that there are useful OSX API's available to them.
3) Even if Flash wasn't a resource hog, and had access to these API's in the first place, it's buggy as f**k. Winni said that flash never crashed his browser (or in some cases, the plug in alone crashes, because the SL version of safari has crash resistance). I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and believe that never happened to you. But you must do really light web browsing on light-flash/ no flash sights, because flash crashes ALL THE TIME. Just an hour ago, I was watching a youtube video, and I wanted to collapse an animated ad (which was flash, btw) and flash crashed (luckily my windows stayed in tact, because of crash resistance). Most of the I'm not as lucky, and flash crashes the web browser I'm using entirely. I think most people can agree flash is buggy on the Mac. And having access to more API's won't fix those bugs.
Therefore, we can conclude it is Adobe's fault that flash on the Mac sucks, period. Summary, if for some reason you didn't comprehend my post: There were already API's available on OSX that Adobe could use to make flash more efficient, and even if it ran efficiently, having access to API's won't fix it's bugginess.

 

[kiljoy616]

Unless Steve Jobs acts like a complete jerk, like he did with the iPhone, and waits until Adobe has put a lot of time, effort, and money into enhancements for the Mac, and then last minute Steve says "I changed my mind."

Steve did not change his mind, yes he may be a Messiah in his mind, but that not the reason for what he had done. You really think that he just comes up with this stuff. He has top people all around him, they don't just yes him all the time. Apple for the most part has always with and without steve been a very controlling company not to exclude paranoid.

But its what has allow the company not to only survive all the attacks it has had over the years to its credit, but actually flourish, and its only because of this that we have a lot of what we see around us today. I am not saying they where the only ones but I do give kudos to apple for changing the way we see technology and the possibilities. I like to see more apple like companies, but most just don't really care, they sell even when their products are not up to par.

If apple os x was what Microsoft windows has been for many years , apple would have been dead long ago. Keep going Apple, and thanks for the Stock price increase, very sweet.

Apple and Steve are not going to change their mind, actually its possible they did this because of how they told Adobe no Flash and no Flash middleware on our low power products, we want them stable and responsive.

 

[commander.data]

2) There are API's Adobe could have used before to optimize for the Mac, such as CoreVideo and CoreAnimation. Instead, they choose to make it a poorly-done port of the Windows version. I understand they are working on fixing it but it doesn't change the fact that there are useful OSX API's available to them.

I don't see the relevance of Core Video or Core Animation. If I'm not mistaken neither provide any hardware acceleration for the actual decoding of video or image data, which is the point of this MacRumors article. Core Video seems to be used for compositing and applying filters to existing decoded video frames while Core Animation takes as inputs the start and end scenes and interpolates the transitions.

Similarly, OpenCL is also not the optimal solution for accelerating video decode. GPUs have dedicated fixed function hardware specifically included to accelerate the decode of video, which is what this new API provides access to, and which is faster and uses less power than trying to emulate this functionality on the Stream Processors.

 

[ranReloaded]

Great! Now Apple has to allow Adobe access to its DirectX/GDI APIs so that vector animation won't suck eith- ...WAIT!

 

[macintoshtoffy]

From the actual technical reference documentation:



The structure of that sentence does not give me hope that this is the case.

10.6.4 development is in the process of being developed so one might see along with a driver refresh with Nvidia is extending the functionality further; at the end of the day the ball is in Nvidia's court and whether they upgrade their drivers for older hardware to support video acceleration; blaming Apple for Nvidia's laziness is hardly fair.

 

[aiqw9182]

10.6.4 development is in the process of being developed so one might see along with a driver refresh with Nvidia is extending the functionality further; at the end of the day the ball is in Nvidia's court and whether they upgrade their drivers for older hardware to support video acceleration; blaming Apple for Nvidia's laziness is hardly fair.

What about ATI? Hopefully the 4670, 4850 and 4870 don't get left in the dark. (I also wouldn't mind the x1600 so my Core Duo MacBook Pro from early 2006 wouldn't choke so often playing flash video)

 

[commander.data]

10.6.4 development is in the process of being developed so one might see along with a driver refresh with Nvidia is extending the functionality further; at the end of the day the ball is in Nvidia's court and whether they upgrade their drivers for older hardware to support video acceleration; blaming Apple for Nvidia's laziness is hardly fair.

It's hard to tell who's to blame in this case. I believe Apple usually writes or directs the higher level portions of drivers to try to make things more common between Intel, ATI, and nVidia drivers so it's easier to programmers, while GPU manufacturers write the lower level code.

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

Really? That must explain then why Adobe has a so much bigger software portfolio than Apple - and that on more platforms than Apple.

I think this is just another stupid Steve Jobs marketing statement being parroted everywhere.

We all might not like the fact that Adobe's products are expensive, but strangely enough, the same people that hate Adobe for that still buy expensive, over-priced Apple products.

You might not like to pay the upgrade prices for small evolutionary improvements, but at the same time, people are paying for a new version of iLife, iWork and OS X every 18 months. And Apple's software also only has small evolutionary improvements and no quantum leaps.

What were the great new features of Snow Leopard again? Dropping PowerPC support? Oh. That's actually LOSING a feature. Oh, they increased the performance. Wow. At least they broke almost every application ever written for OS X with Snow Leopard - including most of their own software.

Apple obviously was too lazy to run its software through some serious QA testing.

We have a saying in Germany: "Wer im Glashaus sitzt, sollte nicht mit Steinen werfen." (Who sits in a glass house shouldn't throw stones.)

But I keep forgetting that Apple is more like a sect than a company. Facts are not welcome here.

You sir are genius!

I have been following your posts on this forums for some time and only because of people like you (and few others) do I still hang around this place...

Needless to say that I agree 101% with everything you are saying...

It is just so funny to see so many brain washed and almost possessed people here who simply can't see the truth and facts even when they are thrown right at their face...

I love OS X and am Mac USER for quite some time but am not blinded brainless fanboi who can't see huge amount of draconian corporate bullcrap that's coming out of SJ last couple of years >_<

Keep up the great posts man and greetings from Berlin

 

[NickK1066]

Interesting. XBMC have already picked this up with "Hehe".

This means the apple platforms are split. On the desktops you have H.264 hardware acceleration but on the iPhone/iPad you don't.

So if the iPhone/iPad are there to browse the web then this really shoots them in the foot. So going HA doesn't make sense.

Seems the Adobe line of "so long apple we're switching to android/Google" has called Apple's bluff.

It has all the hallmarks of a emergency change in direction..

 

[ScottishDuck]

Apparently Adobe has decided no more products for Mac. I can't help but think this is Apple responding.

 

[macintoshtoffy]

It's hard to tell who's to blame in this case. I believe Apple usually writes or directs the higher level portions of drivers to try to make things more common between Intel, ATI, and nVidia drivers so it's easier to programmers, while GPU manufacturers write the lower level code.

Well, considering that the video acceleration framework is merely just the Nvidia library but made available for Mac OS X - Apple is more reliant on the vendors than I think people here realise. About the only explanation I can think of is Apple having a contract which limits Nvidia as to what their responsibility is.