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Interview With Linux Flash Player's Lead Engineer
An anonymous reader writes, "Ryan Stewart of ZDNet has an interview with Mike Melanson, the lead engineer behind Adobe's upcoming Flash Player 9 for Linux. It covers what the plans are for the player, what kinds of things won't be in the Linux player that are in the other players, and ways to give Adobe input on the Linux player."
Good, no need to start my browser with alsa-oss anymore if I want the mixer to work (So that multiple sound sources can play at the same time), or having the flash hogging the sound device.
Is there a flash 9 for Linux, where?
So tired of shit not being developed for x86_64. Get with the times. Didn't RTFA but I assume they'll ignore it like they always have...
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I got into Linux when I wanted to use a free relational database called MySQL for a web project
Why does this quote remind me so much of Data (from Star Trek, an obscure TV show):
Data: "It is from an obscure language known as French"
Picard: "Data, the French language for centuries represented civilization"
"Didn't RTFA but I assume..."
that aside, it's a valid point.
That's not a comparable situation. The PDF format specifications are freely available for anyone to use. Not so with Flash. The specifications are available, sure, but the license to get them includes a provision about not creating a player. Therefore the only way Open Source players can exist is through reverse engineering. Some do exist though, like GNUFlash, but it's not an easy task.
It's like giving nine women the task of gestating a baby in one month.
Click here or here.
You can get in-sync audio by using alsa-oss. I'm sure if you Google around, you'll find the solution to your problem.
/at/all/ and hit the forums--sure enough, there was a solution to that /and/ the sync issue. I was ecstatic!
The out-of-sync sound on Linux annoyed me to no end until I installed Ubuntu on a notebook to see what all the fuss was about. I was having problems getting Flash sound to play
Gee I didn't know you represented the needs of everyone. I had no idea Flash was completely useless as I've often enjoyed watching documentaries, news clips, home brew animations and interacting with stimulating websites that utilized Flash as a delivery medium.
I better uninstall that useless piece of junk right away!
-Derick
Change the license on the Flash spec to allow it to be used players as well as generators. I don't care about their plugin, but I do care about using open formats.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The only problem I have with the current Linux Flash is that the sound is out of sync with the picture. This makes using Google Video or You Tube a bit a hassle. So my question is
Has the sound synchronization problem been fixed?
On a side note, if you don't like flash ads with screaming sound, just install Flash Block.
But install Firefox first
Summation 2
Stopping? No, you're right. However it's not the same as PDF, PDF was (is) an open standard, they told people how to make viewers on various platforms with various tools, it's the main reason it caught on so quickly and so strongly.
As a friend of mine explained, the computer world is much differrent now, there isn't umpteen different OSs that companies have to deal with, in fact, they could (and do) get away with only supporting one. The percentage of Windows users is so high as to make everything else not even appear on many charts. The second and third places are covered by OS X and Linux, but those are so small compared to Windows that many companies don't even take a second glance.
I think this is very bad as it only makes people gravitate towards Windows more, thus making a vicious cycle. I think it would be wonderful if more companies started seeing the advantages of open standards and open source. Apple doesn't make the money on iTunes, it makes it from the store and iPods, so why not make the pprogram open source?
I got really pissed at Adobe recently for their idiotic canned support emails ("You seem to be having trouble with , you can find help with that at our FAQ, if you need more help please reply to this email" Dude, if your FAQ had the answers I was looking for I wouldn't have emailed you...). It sucks that a) there hasn't been a new flash player for linux for quite a while and b) there has never been one for AMD64. Having had several back-and-forth emails with Adobe support I got the sinking impression that the Linux versions had been dropped and were never going to be updated. I'm glad this is not true, and I applaud Adobe for doing the (mostly) right thing in releasing a Linux version of their player. Of course, if they opened the standard we'd get better flash players quicker and they wouldn't have to pay as many people to do it, win-win, if you ask me.
I don't understand why more companies aren't seeing the advantages of open source, but at least some of them aren't ignoring us completely.
There is a open source flash player, though it doesn't work too well.
...I've got to say that this long-winded dragout of the next Linux version of Flash Player (hey, isn't both 8 final and 9 beta out for Windows already - neither of which we've seen in *any form* for Linux?) is getting rather tiresome. Sadly, the current Linux Flash development "team" (who is involved exactly in writing the Linux-specific code? The article doesn't really spell it out - you do suspect only one person has been assigned to do that and Adobe don't want to publicly admit that) haven't helped by spinning things out with their blog.
I find it amazing that "obvious" steps haven't been taken by the Linux Flash team, namely:
* Some sort of release schedule announcement - don't care if it slips by a few weeks here and there.
* A set of pre-releases (heck, have them time-bomb out if you don't want them being used in the long-term) coming out to showcase its current alpha/beta/RC status. Note here - Windows gets beta releases, why can't Linux?! It's utterly shameful there is no pre-release version for Linux, especially since the latest Linux Flash blog entries brag how stable the player now is at all the major sites it's been tested on!
* A definitive statement on whether they'll support 64-bit (i.e. "it'll be released at the same time as the 32-bit version" or "it'll be released X months after the 32-bit version" or "it'll never be released"). Sadly, Adobe are somewhat pig-ignorant w.r.t. the 64-bit platform and don't even have a 64-bit version for XP!
* Explain the exact differences between, say, Windows Flash 9 and Linux Flash 9 - there's some woolly stuff on this in the article really. After all this time in incubation, you'd have thought that the two platforms would have identical version 9 players, but I wouldn't it past Adobe to release a half-baked Linux Flash 9 player, since they have not yet demonstrated to anyone at all that they take Linux seriously (does the word "vapourware" mean anything to Adobe? That's exactly what Flash 8/9 on Linux currently are).
* Start a merge of the Linux development environment and the Windows one, so that ultimately they work from the same codebase to avoid the ridiculous delays in platform releases we've seen in the past. It's not clear to me if the Linux effort is fragmented - have we been told how much code is common on all platforms and how much is specific to Linux (and how they keep the specific code to a minimum)?
* Open Source the player! If Adobe have coded the entire player in-house (which I believe they have), then why not Open Source it...it's a free download after all! Even if they've patented some methods used in the source code, they own the patents and the copyright on the source code, so that shouldn't stop them open-sourcing it surely? Just exactly what is Adobe's objection to open sourcing the player? Sheer bloody-mindedness?
why does flash 9 for linux suck horribly compared to all the earlier releases?
There *isn't* a flash 9 for linux, sucky or not. It doesn't exist. That's what the dude is working on.
When are you going to release a fixed version that actually works right or at least comperable to the mac or windows versions?
TFA said "early 2007." That's what he's working on right now!
Sheesh.
Software Wars
He's a troll because the article specifically mentions at one point exactly what to do if you want a 64-bit player. You keep pounding the adobe wish list with requests.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You can get in-sync audio by using alsa-oss. I'm sure if you Google around, you'll find the solution to your problem.
9 4
In case anyone is interested, or just too lazy to look themselves, here's the link
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1865
Summation 2
There are 2 big reasons why it is unlikely that Macromedia will change and allow the spec to be used to build players.
Firstly, just like with Sun and Java but much more so, flash truely is "develop once, run anywhere". Any web browser on any platform running the relavent version of the flash player plugin for that platform can play any shockwave flash file out there. (which is probobly why web designers love it so much...)
And, just like Sun and Java, if Macromedia goes open source or open specs, how can they be sure that "GnuFlash" can play ALL the flash files the same as how the Macromedia player can.
The other reason is the mobile devices space (PDAs, cellphones, smartphones etc). Right now, Macromedia is pushing heavily into the mobile space and trying to convince mobile device manufacturers to ship "flash for mobile devices". I dont know details but I imagine mobile device makers have to pay Macromedia to ship "flash for mobile devices" in their device (especially when a source code licence is required and its not just a binary provided by Macromedia). If the specs or code were open, the mobile device manufacturers wouldnt need to pay macromedia.
Is this GNUFlash the same as Gnash?
factor 966971: 966971
The current (but outdated) Flash player 7 for Linux has big problems with audio/video synchronization. They are hoping to solve this by getting rid of OSS support and using ALSA exclusively. This is a good move. But I also see that they do not plan to support the current version of Video For Linux (V4L2), although the older V4L is being phased out of the kernel. And in that engineer's blog, I saw a brief statement about the fact that the Flash player will not use Gstreamer. This is bad.
Why don't they use Gstreamer? This would solve the synchronization issues (the current gstreamer-0.10 is very good at keeping everything in sync, unlike other multimedia frameworks) and it would also provide good support for both V4L and V4L2. In addition, it would provide a good cross-desktop integration, because Gstreamer will be supported in KDE4 (through Phonon) and in GNOME.
Currently, Gstreamer allows me to configure multiple sound cards correctly and decide in one place which one is the default one. If the new Linux Flash player ignores Gstreamer and codes for ALSA and V4L directly, then I bet that it will have problems picking the right sound card automatically. And it will probably ignore my gstreamer filters as well, which is a pity. Not to mention that it would force me to keep the obsolete V4L code in my kernel instead of using V4L2 (gstreamer would do the switch transparently), just like Flash Player 7 forces me to keep the OSS API (alsa-oss) while all other programs have moved to a more mature interface (ALSA).
By the way, I have read some comments in the blog saying that Gstreamer should not be used because its API or ABI is not stable. I say: bullshit. There were some incompatibilities while moving from gstreamer-0.8 to gstreamer-0.10, but this was a long time ago and the interfaces have been stable since then. If I remember correctly, the Gstreamer developers stated that they intend to keep the interfaces stable now. So those who reject Gstreamer for that reason are just spreading FUD.
factor 966971: 966971