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

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I'm not biased. You are. I'm agnostic.

I don't know how you can believe this and then offer something like the lowest quote below: there are more mac buyers than windows buyers, because Windows is forced upon them by their employers, etc. Yikes. I like Apple too, but not enough to imagine such stuff and then take it as true.

My point is that I refuse to cry about Apple not giving us access to a unicorn, because I'm not sure a unicorn exists. To the extent a unicorn exists, I'm not sure it's not a lame unicorn. So when someone shows me the unicorn, and shows me that it can run on all four of its legs, at that point I will expend my energy being sad/angry/whatever that Apple won't let me have it.

But you will expend your energy arguing the other side: that wishing we at least had the OPTION for the "unicorn" is a waste of people like my time. Even if your logic makes sense (to you), it doesn't adversely affect you in any way if support for Flash could come to iDevices. You are apparently happy that it is not there. But just because that stance works for you doesn't mean it works for everyone else (for example me). I'd actually BUY one of these devices if that OPTION existed. Instead, Apple doesn't get my money. Is that good for Apple? Is that good for you? Is that good for me?

Yes, this is true (to the extent that all of the people you mention are actually making purchasing decisions. i don't think that's quite true. I think people who use macs generally want to use them. I think that most people who use windows machines generally want to use them, but there are millions who would rather use macs but can't, because their workplaces supply them with pcs. still, more purchasers vote against macs then for it. I am making a consistent argument here.

You are a true Apple fan to believe that 1 in 10 Apple computer buyers are buying their computer by their own choice but more than 8 out of 10 computer buyers are having Windows forced upon them. There's an awful lot of computers in people's homes that were not supplied by their employer. Unless they've stolen those machines, it seems that they are choosing to purchase one platform over another. Apparently, when arguing against Flash, it makes sense to suggest that iDevice numbers show people showing how they feel about Flash, but then when the same basic argument is framed to show them voting against OS X, we can't believe those numbers. That is one of the signs of a true Apple fan: believe the math when it supports Apple, reject it when it doesn't.

 

[cmaier]

I don't know how you can believe this and then offer something like the lowest quote below: there are more mac buyers than windows buyers, because Windows is forced upon them by their employers, etc. Yikes. I like Apple too, but not enough to imagine such stuff and then take it as true.

Now you're lying. I said that many windows users would rather use macs, that's true. But I also clearly said that regardless, more people CHOOSE windows than Mac.

But you will expend your energy arguing the other side: that wishing we at least had the OPTION for the "unicorn" is a waste of people like my time. Even if your logic makes sense (to you), it doesn't adversely affect you in any way if support for Flash could come to iDevices. You are apparently happy that it is not there.

Again you are making things up. I said quite clearly - I am not currently concerned that it is not on iPad, because it isn't on ANY mobile device. No mobile version apparently yet exists. As soon as it exists, and assuming it actually works, I will join you in railing against apple.

You are a true Apple fan to believe that 1 in 10 Apple computer buyers are buying their computer by their own choice but more than 8 out of 10 computer buyers are having Windows forced upon them.

You are again making things up. I never said that. Go re-read what I actually said:

Yes, this is true (to the extent that all of the people you mention are actually making purchasing decisions. i don't think that's quite true. I think people who use macs generally want to use them. I think that most people who use windows machines generally want to use them, but there are millions who would rather use macs but can't, because their workplaces supply them with pcs. still, more purchasers vote against macs then for it. I am making a consistent argument here

The fact that I said that some portion of windows users would rather use macs doesn't negate the fact that I said that more purchaser vote against macs than for them.

There's no point in discussing anything with you if you're going to simply lie about what people say.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I asked a columnist (WW) who writes a weekly pro-Apple blog about Flash on the iPad and iphone. He responded thusly:

"The main problem with Flash is that it doesn't reliably recognize touch gestures. So if you could view a Flash site on an iPhone or iPd, you wouldn't be able to control it and people would mistakenly believe the Apple product is at fault when it's really Flash that is at fault. Since most people can't tell the difference between a Flash site and an HTML or Javascript site, they'd wrongly blame Apple for Flash's limitations. Hence it's easier to block Flash completely rather than allow it to wreck the user's experience with an iPhone or iPad.

The problem with Flash lies with Adobe, but Apple would get the blame."

Is his statement correct?

It is a problem for touch devices, but not an insurmountable problem for a touch-based player. Basic HTML- the stuff that runs fine on iDevice Safari now- also features functions like "hover over" and similar (functions designed to do something with interactions other than an explicit mouse click). In iDevices, the finger touch is a variation of the mouse click. A similar function has to occur: get over an actionable link or button and tell the computer that you want it to execute what is supposed to happen when you click/tap.

Flash also offers lots of this subordinate interactive functionality like "hover over." But a lot of the interactive functionality of Flash is still about clicking a spot on the screen to trigger an event. In the interactive presentation I shared as an example a few pages back, the sole bit of interactivity is clicking something on screen when it appears. Recognizing a tap as the equivalent of click is not an overwhelming challenge... just like it is not an overwhelming challenge to do the same in iDevice Safari "as is". It's all about a variation of how the player interprets actions- be they a mouse click or a finger tap.

 

[Anuba]

I think that most people who use windows machines generally want to use them, but there are millions who would rather use macs but can't, because their workplaces supply them with pcs.

The workplace thing is a much more insignificant factor than price. Most people "who would rather use Macs" dismiss Macs because they've seen the pricetags, and the further away from the US you come, the more this is true. Macs are disproportionately expensive in some countries, and in yet more countries the average budget for a computer purchase is way below the average in the US. And it's not necessarily because they can't afford Macs, it's often because they don't think of computers as something so valuable. To them, a $1500 computer is like a $1500 vacuum cleaner, why blow that amount of money on a lowly household appliance?

Companies like Dell, HP and Acer are also much more 'omnipresent' internationally than Apple is. If you live in the US you're probably under the impression that Apple is as well represented abroad as they are at home. That they have Apple Stores everywhere, that they're running TV ads and so forth. I live in Sweden, and Dell + HP are as present here as they are in the US, if not moreso. Massive sales, massive advertising campaigns, TV ads, the works. But I've never seen a TV ad from Apple, and we have no Apple Stores, only Apple Premium Resellers. iPhones/iPods are popular but Macs have little penetration outside the world of creative professionals.

Also, their support sucks over here. Dell and others offer next business day on-site support for peanuts, even if you live in some tiny village in a remote part of Sweden, while Apple wants a fortune for AppleCare, i.e. the permission to pack up your computer and drive it 60 miles to the nearest Premium Reseller, who will then take weeks to fix the machine. Their organization here is like some damn banana republic.

And if that's the Mac situation in Sweden, one of the richer countries in the world, imagine how it is in places like Poland, Ukraine, The Philippines, Albania...

Mac is simply not on the map for most people in the world, for completely different reasons than "help, my employer crammed a PC down my throat".

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Now you're lying. I said that many windows users would rather use macs, that's true. But I also clearly said that regardless, more people CHOOSE windows than Mac.

Then by offering it as you did, apparently trying to hit me with numbers as I "like numbers", I misunderstood what you were saying. The "many windows users would rather use macs" is completely subjective. How many? For several years now Macs can run Windows- even natively. A person could buy a Mac and get both OS X and Windows on the same platform. It would seem reasonable- if we want to be subjective- that if "many" people wanted to choose Macs when they are buying a computer for themselves, they would by buying Macs at a much higher volume than Windows sales. Every single computer buyer could kill 2 birds with one stone. But even with this option, that's not what the numbers show.

I'm with you in liking Macs much more than Windows. I have several Macs myself. But I believe "many" would buy Macs if they wanted to use Macs would be a smaller number if I called "many" than if you called it.

Again you are making things up. I said quite clearly - I am not currently concerned that it is not on iPad, because it isn't on ANY mobile device. No mobile version apparently yet exists. As soon as it exists, and assuming it actually works, I will join you in railing against apple.

But you are on here arguing against my points, expending energy pro Apple's stance. What's it matter to you if I am pro-Flash OPTIONS on iDevices? If they were there, YOU wouldn't have to use them if you don't like Flash. But since its not there, NO ONE can even see if it is a good "unicorn" or a "lame" one. If it turned out to be lame for everyone, then everyone would just leave that OPTION turned OFF. If it burned up a 10-hour battery in 10 seconds, everyone would just leave that option turned OFF. If it crashed iDevice Safari every time a person visited a Flash site... (I bet you can guess).

I'm not asking you to join me in railing against Apple. I just don't think you should be railing against a popular BUYER wish of a fellow consumer(s) in support of Apple either, especially with comments implying "Flash is just ads" or that it is somehow "raping our childhoods" by not having Flash on iDevices.

Bottom line: I appreciate the very popular (on this site) stance of "Flash is bad" because Apple says so. If you are with that crowd, that's just fine. But, if Apple would let those of us who would at least like the user OPTION for Flash have it, you and yours could just ignore that OPTION and carry on "as is". No loss to you at all. The flip side though is supporting an argument against such an OPTION for no reason other than YOU don't care for having that OPTION, so no one else should have it either. Or because Apple has decided the issue for all of us, and thus it is right.

 

[cmaier]

Hey, once again, I merely said that there are millions of people who would rather use macs at work. I think that's fairly indisputable. Nowhere did I say that it was the majority of people (after all, billions of people use windows) or even a sizeable percentage. It is probably something like 3-5% - people who have macs at home typically would prefer to use them at work, and most do not have that option. That's all I'm saying. Whereas I think the percentage of mac users who would prefer to be using windows is probably much smaller, because the cost of entry is higher so people using macs probably are using them because that's what they want to use.

The workplace thing is a much more insignificant factor than price. Most people "who would rather use Macs" dismiss Macs because they've seen the pricetags, and the further away from the US you come, the more this is true. Macs are disproportionately expensive in some countries, and in yet more countries the average budget for a computer purchase is way below the average in the US.

Companies like Dell, HP and Acer are also much more 'omnipresent' internationally than Apple is. If you live in the US you're probably under the impression that Apple is as well represented abroad as they are at home. That they have Apple Stores everywhere, that they're running TV ads and so forth. I live in Sweden, and Dell + HP are as present here as they are in the US, if not moreso. Massive sales, massive advertising campaigns, TV ads, the works. But I've never seen a TV ad from Apple, and we have no Apple Stores, only Apple Premium Resellers. iPhones/iPods are popular but Macs have little penetration outside the world of creative professionals.

Also, their support sucks over here. Dell and others offer next business day on-site support for peanuts, even if you live in some tiny village in a remote part of Sweden, while Apple wants a fortune for AppleCare, i.e. the permission to pack up your computer and drive it 60 miles to the nearest Premium Reseller, who will then take weeks to fix the machine. Their organization here is like some damn banana republic.

And if that's the Mac situation in Sweden, one of the richer countries in the world, imagine how it is in places like Poland, Ukraine, The Philippines, Albania...

Mac is simply not on the map for most people in the world, for completely different reasons than "help, my employer crammed a PC down my throat".

 

[cmaier]

But you are on here arguing against my points, expending energy pro Apple's stance.

No, I'm not. At one point I even said "you're right." All I have said, once again, is:

1) there is no such product yet as mobile flash
2) when the product arrives, it would be impossible to run on any existing iDevice other than iPad, due to Adobe's own limitations
3) I am not going to waste my time complaining about lack of flash on iPad until:
A) it actually ships mobile flash to SOMEONE
B) mobile flash actually is shown to work properly

That's all I've said! I haven't taken Apple's side. And I've only argued against you because you keep twisting what I've said, and I pointed out some of the weaknesses in your arguments (for example, putting too much weight on Adobe's reports of attempted downloads).

But you're obviously the kind of person who thinks that anyone that doesn't completely adopt your argument, or who adopts your argument but phrases it differently, is your enemy.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

No, I'm not. At one point I even said "you're right." All I have said, once again, is:

1) there is no such product yet as mobile flash
2) when the product arrives, it would be impossible to run on any existing iDevice other than iPad, due to Adobe's own limitations
3) I am not going to waste my time complaining about lack of flash on iPad until:
A) it actually ships mobile flash to SOMEONE
B) mobile flash actually is shown to work properly

That's all I've said! I haven't taken Apple's side.

What? Who wrote about lame unicorns? Who wrote about raping our childhood? And on and on. Is someone else accessing this site with your ID and posting other content as you?

And if that's all you've said, I can pretty much agree with all of that, though I have great confidence a variation of the player for iDevices could solve the problem in #2.

But that's far from all you've said. Perhaps you should go back and read your own posts.

And I've only argued against you because you keep twisting what I've said, and I pointed out some of the weaknesses in your arguments (for example, putting too much weight on Adobe's reports of attempted downloads).

What? Our debate here started with you responding to a post I was making toward someone else. I didn't twist something you said: you jumped in arguing against points I made toward someone else.

But you're obviously the kind of person who thinks that anyone that doesn't completely adopt your argument, or who adopts your argument but phrases it differently, is your enemy.

Apparently you are the Pot calling the Kettle black.

I don't feel that way at all. I keep saying over and over that if we had the OPTION to play Flash on iDevices, all those that even detest Flash could still have what they want by leaving that option TURNED OFF. They can kill the Flash player out of their laptop & desktop Safari as well if they like.

The "wrong" is for Apple to decide something as simple as this for us, and then having a bunch of people that may not care less about it rip into those of us that finds fault with that... especially with "facts" posted over and over about "Flash uses 100% of the CPU", "Flash crashes Safari 4 times a day" and so on. While that may be some peoples experience, it is not ALL people's experience. And while some may be fine with not having Flash on iDevices, not ALL people should be fine with that if they don't wish to be.

 

[Headrush69]

When the GPU and CPU share the workload the video flows better, the computer remains more snappy and doesn't get too hot, so you avoid the fans revving up to jet engine mode.

If you think dumping all the workload on the CPU is a good idea, you ought to have loved Windows XP and every Windows version before it, since they utilized an ancient graphics engine that hogged the CPU while the powerful/expensive GPU was just sitting there twiddling its thumbs. It was horribly jerky and sluggish, and you'd often have to sit by and watch while the computer was painfully redrawing windows after maximizing or moving them.

Flash before and after hardware acceleration is like Mac desktop graphics before and after the Quartz engine. Flash has to draw stuff MacOS 9/WinXP style when it can't utilize hardware acceleration.

I don't think you understand how it all works. Things are not that simple. On windows when I play a flash video all the work is done on the CPU, when I play it of my computer the work is done on the CPU and GPU. Hardware acceleration simply means that it's going to play the video the same way it plays when you play it from your computer. In other words, you might not know this, but when I play a video of my computer, it's hardware accelerated. Without it, it would require as much CPU power as a flash video.

PS, I kept using Windows, and referring to myself playing it on Windows, because from what I'm hearing things might be different on OSX. Not sure if OSX uses just the CPU to play videos, from what I've read on this thread. Else I would have said, "When you play a video on your computer, it uses hardware acceleration..."

You're both missing the point entirely.
I never said or suggested that using hardware acceleration was a bad thing.
The issue is there is already something seriously wrong with Flash on OS X and everyone thinks hardware acceleration is this magic pill that will fix everything, wrong.

The EXACT same flash video will play in Quicklook or VLC on my iMac with very minimal CPU usage. The same video using the flash plugin is using a minimum of 35%-40% of both cores on a Core 2. Obviously it isn't just in pure video decoding because the other apps aren't even close to that kind of CPU usage.

 

[cmaier]

What? Who wrote about lame unicorns?

The unicorn thing was me saying that "it doesn't yet exist, and when it does, it may not work." You get hung up on how I say things and ignore the meaning.

Who wrote about raping our childhood?

Again, what does that have to do with the argument I've now repeatedly made?

And if that's all you've said, I can pretty much agree with all of that, though I have great confidence a variation of the player for iDevices could solve the problem in #2.

But that's far from all you've said. Perhaps you should go back and read your own posts.

I have. Please tell me specifically where it is that you think I've said anything OTHER than that?

What? Our debate here started with you responding to a post I was making toward someone else. I didn't twist something you said: you jumped in arguing against points I made toward someone else.

Yes, i took issue with your discussion of requested clicks. Just because I agree with your argument doesn't mean I have to agree with your rationale.

The "wrong" is for Apple to decide something as simple as this for us, and then having a bunch of people that may not care less about it rip into those of us that finds fault with that... especially with "facts" posted over and over about "Flash uses 100% of the CPU", "Flash crashes Safari 4 times a day" and so on. While that may be some peoples experience, it is not ALL people's experience. And while some may be fine with not having Flash on iDevices, not ALL people should be fine with that if they don't wish to be.

And, again, I say you're being premature because (once more, with feeling):

1) there is no apple mobile device that can run flash, except ipad. Apple is making a decision for you ONLy with respect to ipad. BUT:
2) there is no such thing as mobile flash that would run on ipad. It doesn't exist. No manufacturer is shipping such a thing. There is no proof such a thing functions.

Once those two issues are taken care of, then it would be appropriate to be angry at apple.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

OpenCL has no relation to h.264 hardware video playback decoding.

Good luck convincing the fanboys of that. I pointed that out weeks ago in a different thread and you still see the same BS nonsense on here. Anything to make it Adobe's fault. This still doesn't solve all the problems even with this one API, which only handles H264. What about all the other hardware/graphic functions? Not everything flash is H264 video. MOST of it is NOT.

Then there's the matter of this only handling a select few cards. My 1.6 year old MBP has the 8600M GT in it and it's fully capable of H264 acceleration and Apple doesn't support it at all! That's just plain ridiculous. Meanwhile "lazy" Adobe has even supported two-bit GPUs like the Intel GMA 500 for H264 HD video decoding ($250 Netbooks can show 720P HD video without taxing the CPU!). Apple has a LOT of Macbooks and Mac Minis out there that use that same chipset. Frankly, I'm tired of Apple claiming to have the "most advanced operating system in the world" when they don't even have basic modern GPU function support for the vast majority of the Macs out there. Don't even get me started on their BS excuses for not supporting Blu-Ray....

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

Instead of pretending to have knowledge you clearly don't have, why don't you actually read about OpenCL and learn the difference.

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

It's not even close to "everybody", I'm afraid. Apple is only supporting chipsets that are just over a year old. That means about 5-8% of the Mac population. My MBP is 1.6 years old. It gets no driver support from Apple for H264 and that's a crock of poo. If anyone is "lazy" (more like greedy as in trying to force you to buy new hardware in less than 2 years) it's Apple!

No, i use that hardware and i know how to use wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacBook_Pro#Technical_specifications_2

The only thing you did was convince me you're probably a teenager. I don't know whom else would use Wikipedia to decide what is "late 2008" FOR them instead of looking at the actual date. My MBP was purchased brand new in October 2008 (as in less than 3 months before the end of the year and that's "late" in any reasonable person's book) and it most certainly is not using the 9400M. It is 8600M GT.

Let's see - virtually EVERYONE who uses Flash on a Mac says it's a CPU hog and drives their fans crazy.

I guess my PowerMac must be a "Magic" Mac since it seems to handle Flash just fine 95% of the time. I haven't noticed any issues on my MBP either. Now if you look at Final Cut Pro, it has the opposite problem. I've got two cores in my MBP running Snow Leopard with "Grand Central" (woo!) and it uses 52% of my available CPU power when encoding a movie to Quicktime (despite FCP using 11 threads). Yeah, that's NOT what I want to see from the most advanced operating system in the world and this much touted, but seemingly lacking Grand Central, especially from a professional application like Final Cut Pro. It should be done in almost half the time. Thanks Apple for wasting my time (and we can be talking HOURS here per encode).

 

[Headrush69]

Now for all of those who blamed Adobe. I have been saying all along this is what is necessary to make Flash work on the Mac. Kudos to Apple for giving in a little bit.

And we're still all asking WHY is it necessary when HTML5 or even other apps playing the same video in a flash container play much more efficiently?

I keep hearing responses like, "Well Flash is more than about video playing and it has other stuff in there for, ..." Then that is perfect argument as to why Flash isn't the best option for video only purposes.

 

[Anuba]

You're both missing the point entirely.
I never said or suggested that using hardware acceleration was a bad thing.
The issue is there is already something seriously wrong with Flash on OS X and everyone thinks hardware acceleration is this magic pill that will fix everything, wrong.

No, you're missing half the point, or rather one of the two points.

Yes, all versions of the Flash Player for Mac, prior to Flash Player 10.1, are inefficient resource hogs, few if any are disputing this. But many of those issues have been addressed in 10.1. Memory usage is way down, CPU usage is way down, there are mechanisms for 'freezing' off-screen video content to prevent it from using resources needlessly, etc. Both the Mac and the Windows version benefit from these improvements – a lot. And if you d/l the 10.1 RC2 for Mac you'll find that these aren't just empty promises.

But the Windows version doesn't stop there, it also got hardware acceleration on top of the other improvements. HW acceleration not just for video content, but for regular Flash graphics (vector+text+bitmaps) as well - vector content is now tessellated and offloaded to the GPU. Adobe has worked directly with ATI and NVidia on this stuff.

In other words, the Mac version has already been fed the magic pill, but the Windows version got two magic pills.

Having said that, Adobe should still fire whoever thought it was good marketing to label this version "10.1". Compared to the puny differences between earlier versions, this should be called Flash 10,000. 10.1 makes it look like a modest maintenance update.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

And we're still all asking WHY is it necessary when HTML5 or even other apps playing the same video in a flash container play much more efficiently?

I keep hearing responses like, "Well Flash is more than about video playing and it has other stuff in there for, ..." Then that is perfect argument as to why Flash isn't the best option for video only purposes.

Some firms would like a little content management with thier pizza. Flash offers such.

 

[Bytor65]

Bottom line: I appreciate the very popular (on this site) stance of "Flash is bad" because Apple says so. If you are with that crowd, that's just fine. But, if Apple would let those of us who would at least like the user OPTION for Flash have it, you and yours could just ignore that OPTION and carry on "as is". No loss to you at all.

That is ignorant assumption that is absolutely backwards for some.

I don't think "Flash is bad" because Apple says so. As a non Apple owner, I never even knew Apple had issues with Flash until I came here to learn about iPad.

I hate flash because it is an abomination. It makes hideous flashy, annoying and almost unavigable interfaces when used for that, and is the platform for all the most annoying internet adverts. I applaud Apple because they seem to have the clout that is moving more pages away from Flash.

Yes including flash does create a loss for me. It slows down the death of Flash. The more devices Apple sells without Flash, the more Flash is marginalized.

So Go Apple and Die Flash, Die.

 

[iBug2]

I said it is pointless for decoding. h.264 decoding involves lots and lots of little operations, all very much designed not to fit into CUDA. Note that when you decode there is _one_ motion prediction which doesn't work very fast. And you have to do the decoding _exactly_ according to the h.264 rules. When you encode you want to try out _one gazillion_ of different motion predictions to see which one is best. And CUDA is reasonably good at trying thousands of very similar motion predictions. A software encoder would try 20 different predictions because trying 200 would take ten times longer. With CUDA support you can try 100 times more without too much penalty. But the _one_ operation that you need to do for decoding doesn't get speeded up.

I also doubt very much that a _good_ encoder gets a speed up of 10x. You get the 10x speedup if you take handbrake, change it from 20 different predictions to 2000 making it 50 times slower, then using CUDA to make it only 5 times slower.

Google for CABAC. Learn what it does. And then you come back here and tell us how you would use CUDA or OpenCL to do CABAC decoding.

I just posted that because in VLC developer forum there was a threat about using Open CL to speed up H.264 decoding, and one of the developers said that the X.264 project in total can use that, not VLC as a single application, and then every app that use X.264 will get the acceleration. Although it was only a "plan for the future". So I thought, hey if these guys think it's possible, then it should be possible. But maybe they were just talking hypothetically.

 

[Anuba]

I hate flash because it is an abomination. It makes hideous flashy, annoying and almost unavigable interfaces when used for that, and is the platform for all the most annoying internet adverts. I applaud Apple because they seem to have the clout that is moving more pages away from Flash.

No, Flash doesn't make any of that stuff. People make that stuff. And the same people will produce the exact same content if you take Flash out of the equation and replace it with Canvas/HTML5.

This is all a rather naive case of shooting the messenger. Flashy interfaces and annoying internet ads will never go away. The only remedy for the former is a magic potion that gives everyone good taste, and the only remedy for the latter is an ad blocker. Blocking Flash ads is dead easy, since all it has to do is look for Flash embed tags. But once these ads move to HTML5, ads will become one with the main content, which opens up the possibility for developers to find ways of tricking the ad blockers, just like they've found ways to bypass pop-up blockers. So by chanting "Die Flash Die", all you're doing is wishing yourself out of the frying pan into the fire.

 

[Maserati7200]

aluminum MacBook C2D 2.4GHz.

I find that hard to believe. Because every Mac laptop I've used had the fans on full blast when playing a flash game or watching a 480p youtube video.
I have noticed that the new flash 10.1 turns on the fans a lot less often, and to a lower level, but if I were to watch a HTML5 video the fans wouldn't be above idle. There's no reason a why a video at 640x480 in a low/moderate bitrate should require the fans to go above idle, GPU acceleration or not. I'm impressed with the progress they made but there is still more work to do. And if flash 10.2 refines it's efficiency even more, to the point where it would be as efficient as HTML5, this apple vs. flash war would be over, in my eyes anyway. I'm not one of those people who want to get rid of flash because Apple is having a little cat fight with adobe. I've had very bad experiences with flash for the past 8 years. But if Adobe improves it to the point where it isn't a nuisance, I'll have no problem with it.

 

[Headrush69]

No, you're missing half the point, or rather one of the two points.

Yes, all versions of the Flash Player for Mac, prior to Flash Player 10.1, are inefficient resource hogs, few if any are disputing this. But many of those issues have been addressed in 10.1. Memory usage is way down, CPU usage is way down, there are mechanisms for 'freezing' off-screen video content to prevent it from using resources needlessly, etc. Both the Mac and the Windows version benefit from these improvements – a lot. And if you d/l the 10.1 RC2 for Mac you'll find that these aren't just empty promises..

Partly true.
Sure the new version may be better but all those things you listed weren't magically fixed by just hardware acceleration which is what this thread was about.

P.S. I have tested the latest versions and I didn't see a huge performance difference yet.

 

[Headrush69]

Some firms would like a little content management with thier pizza. Flash offers such.

True but there are options.
I'm not familiar with Flash Media Server but I wonder how tied in it is to the flash container and I wouldn't think the server end of it is the problem here.

Personally I always thought Major League Baseball site video/audio options worked much better when they used Silverlight over Flash that they use now.

 

[andrewfee]

I don't know about VC-1, but MPEG2 is so much simpler than h.264, it works just fine without any hardware support. Also these cards probably have _complete_ support for h.264, that means you plug in the compressed data stream at one end and the uncompressed frames come out on the other hand, without any CPU usage. I don't think anyone does that for MPEG-2 (it was too hard five years ago when MPEG-2 was relevant, and today when it could be done nobody bothers anymore).

Well I agree MPEG2 is probably trivial if you're talking about DVD, but here on my HTPC, Blu-ray discs encoded using MPEG2 can still use 20-40% CPU on my 3.7GHz Pentium Dual Core (overclocked E5200) and this is only video, audio decoding was disabled.

Now while most Macs can probably still cope with those kind of CPU requirements for decoding the video, surely it will be much more efficient to have the GPU handle it, leaving the CPU free for other tasks, or simply to improve battery life on notebooks even if playing back that video is the only task being done.

That sounds weird. Since CUDA is already used to accelerate H.264 encoding by up to 10x, but it can't be used for decoding?

Are you saying that Nvidia Fermi supercomputer cannot play a H.264 video if it wasn't for the specific hardware to simply decode H.264 within the GPU's it uses?

The issue is not whether or not it can be done. These graphics cards have hardware inside them dedicated to decoding these video formats efficiently. Even if you could use OpenCL to do it, it would likely be very inefficient, and while that may not affect video playback performance if you aren't doing anything else on the GPU, it's certainly going to affect battery life and potentially noise/heat. H.264 can certainly be done, as there is a decoder on Windows that uses CUDA to decode it, but it's far less efficient than using the hardware dedicated to the task.

And we're still all asking WHY is it necessary when HTML5 or even other apps playing the same video in a flash container play much more efficiently?

That is not necessarily true. When YouTube first released the HTML5 beta I did comparisons between it and flash in a couple of different browsers, and the HTML5 video consistently used more CPU, and in some cases it was significantly more. (almost 2x) That is probably not the case now, but it shows that clearly HTML5 is not a magic fix for the problem.

Now I'm not saying Flash is great on Macs - it isn't, but anyone that thinks HTML5 is about to replace it soon, and magically fix the performance issues caused by content creators (particularly advertisers) using the tools poorly is sadly mistaken.

 

[Headrush69]

Now I'm not saying Flash is great on Macs - it isn't, but anyone that thinks HTML5 is about to replace it soon, and magically fix the performance issues caused by content creators (particularly advertisers) using the tools poorly is sadly mistaken.

That's not me.
HTML5, VLC, whatever, it's just showing that the overhead isn't directly related to decoding video which many people think is the problem and hence hardware accleration isn't the magic cure.

 

[sinsin07]

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

I am not from Germany, but I agree, great post!

To all the fanboys. May I suggest you READ the actual article first before jumping once again to conclusions.

Apple Opens Door means the door was closed before by Apple not Adobe.

The move by Apple allows Adobe to accelerate Flash.

Apple's refusal to allow access to APIs until now.

Apple's offer not Adobe's. Flash performance on Windows is better because the PCs are generally higher spec than Macs, they allow access to APIs required, 90% of the world use Windows pcs, and PCs are expected to use the CPU and not cry about it.

Well said.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Instead of pretending to have knowledge you clearly don't have, why don't you actually read about OpenCL and learn the difference.

I have read about OpenCL in the Apple Documentation, it could technically do everything, it would just take a lot of code. Just like you could use C in an Object Orientated paradigm, it would just take a hell of a lot of code.

Great and wonderful things happen when people break paradigms.

Rant

Everybody = Developers. You know, since we we're talking the context of Adobe.

 

[commander.data]

You are mistaken. Core Video uses hardware acceleration. See:
http://developer.apple.com/mac/libr...tual/CoreVideo/CVProg_Intro/CVProg_Intro.html

Core Video is specifically recommended ONLY when hardware acceleration is available. If you read through that document, you'll see that Core Video uses OpenGL to actually do the grunt work - and OpenGL is hardware accelerated.

I never said Core Video is not hardware accelerated, I said it doesn't hardware accelerate the decoding of video. It hardware accelerates video compositing, filtering, and placement on OpenGL surfaces. Maybe you could point out the section where it says Core Video actually hardware decodes video? As far as I can see Core Video only accepts already uncompressed video frames so that it can be placed in an OpenGL texture or buffer for hardware accelerated manipulation. Decompression is still done via separate codecs outside the purview of Core Video.