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Apple Opens Door to Hardware-Accelerated Decoding of H.264 Video in Flash
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This has nothing to do with Flash games. Adobe still needs to fix their player for OS X in this regard.
If/when Adobe take advantage of this, Flash video on the Mac should play back a lot smoother, using fewer CPU cycles. (Whether it'll improve or worsen battery consumption, I'm not sure.. the CPU will use less, the GPU more).
From the actual technical reference documentation:
The structure of that sentence does not give me hope that this is the case.
You're looking at lower power consumption. There's dedicated hardware on the GPU for hardware video playback acceleration. You're not using the general purpose shaders.
Read it again FLASH sucks because of Adobe "a deficiency that Adobe has noted it is working to address" get it right or go play with your Dell
Flash 10.1 makes a big difference. The framerate in game-like animations almost doubled when I tested before and after installing the 10.1 beta.
Sure, but you're using the CPU & GPU, instead of just the CPU. Maybe you're right, I just lack the grey cells required to make that calculation!
There are several online tests that compare the CPU usage before and after installing 10.1.Sure, but you're using the CPU & GPU, instead of just the CPU. Maybe you're right, I just lack the grey cells required to make that calculation!
No, that ship has already sailed. This is just a stop gap in the slow demise of Flash.
What about every other card supported by OpenCL?
GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX5600, ATI Radeon HD 4670, ATI Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 4870
GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX5600, ATI Radeon HD 4670, ATI Radeon HD 4850, Radeon HD 4870
This is good news. It will be a long time before we'll see online video go all-native. (Too much tied into copy protection, interactivity, overlays, etc..)
The bad news;
"available on Mac OS X 10.6.3 and later with Mac models equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M."
New computers and OS only....
The bad news;
"available on Mac OS X 10.6.3 and later with Mac models equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M."
New computers and OS only....
Am I the only one that understand that the same thing can be applied to browsers like Safari, Chrome and Firefor for hardware-accelerated HTML5 video?
It's not just Flash that's important guys ;P
It's not just Flash that's important guys ;P
Actually I don't think this changes much at all. Flash is unstable often because it wants access to the hardware itself. adobe has been requesting access directly to the video drivers. and apple keeps refusing them because they don't want to give a browser plugin kernel extension access that compromise more than just safari stability but risk kernel panics and everything else. there have been articles on it before. This one makes it all sound like apples fault but the information isn't all there. Apple has always told adobe to find another way to do it then direct kernel access. If you've looked at an apple bug tracker, many safari crashes are from bad flash code. Flash crashes safari more than any safari bug or other browser plugin ever has.
as for windows, of course windows stuff runs better. Windows lets developers access pretty much anything they want, but how many programs have caused entire OS to fail, blue screen, hang etc cause of this access? Apple isn't trying to be a block to developer, they are trying to be pro sandboxing so they can keep a stable OS even if the app goes to crap.
as for windows, of course windows stuff runs better. Windows lets developers access pretty much anything they want, but how many programs have caused entire OS to fail, blue screen, hang etc cause of this access? Apple isn't trying to be a block to developer, they are trying to be pro sandboxing so they can keep a stable OS even if the app goes to crap.
The problem is content in these formats do not need hardware acceleration.
Works fine without hardware acceleration:
mp4
avi
mkv
silverlight
etc.
But somehow flash NEEDS it to perform on par? Could it just be that Flash is a bloated piece of inefficient software?
Works fine without hardware acceleration:
mp4
avi
mkv
silverlight
etc.
But somehow flash NEEDS it to perform on par? Could it just be that Flash is a bloated piece of inefficient software?
You guys are making it sound like Windows users have had hardware decoding for a while and that's why flash was better on windows.
Someone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but...
From the article
Apple opening up the API will allow adobe to make use of it for a feature that's in flash 10.1 which is still in beta and not released yet.
So unless you are using that beta,flash for windows doesn't have this feature either.
Since neither OS X or windows have this feature right now,I don't see how it could explain why flash runs better on windows right now.
...a deficiency that Adobe has noted... due to Apple's refusal to allow third parties access to the required APIs for implementation!
So Flash (and not only it but also mplayer, vlc, plex...) performed worse on Mac because of Apple!
Sure. But I'm wondering about Macs with integrated & discrete graphics.
With no hardware acceleration, the CPU would be busy, but the discrete graphics chip might be powered down. With hardware acceleration, the CPU would be less busy, but the discrete graphics chip would be on.
I don't know if the gain from the CPU being a bit less busy would be offset by having to power on the discrete graphics.