Flash Player 9 Gets H.264 Support

ReadWriteWeb alerts us to the release later today of Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2, codenamed Moviestar, which will support H.264 standard video as well as High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) and other improvements. Adobe engineer Tinic Uro, who works on the Flash Player, has more technical detail on his blog.

Comments

Is this for YouTube?

[Anonymous Coward]

So is this the corresponding software support behind YouTube's earlier announcement that they'll be serving H.264?

Linux

[Trip Ericson]

Now let's just hope it doesn't take an additional 6 months for this to make its way into the Linux version. Flash Player 9 for Linux came out some months after Flash Player 9 for Windows/Mac did.

Meanwhile...

[phrasebook]

Various choices I've recently made (like using amd64, and dumping Firefox for Konqueror) mean that I've not been using a Flash player at all. So far, I've missed out on things like:

* The BMW website
* Countless links to clips on Youtube
* Advertising banners
* Homestar runner

Some of these things might have been mildly useful, but I can't say I really miss any of it. I'm not sure having the Flash player installed is worth the annoyance and distraction it usually ends up driving me to. If I'm honest, Flash player has seen the most use when I've been bored, depressed, procrastinating or similar.

I'm quite enjoying being Flash-free.

not sure if this is true or not

[FudRucker]

Due to a design flaw in ActionScript 3 socket handling, compiled Flash movies are able to scan for open TCP ports on any host reachable from the host running the SWF, bypassing the Flash Player Security Sandbox Model and without the need to rebind DNS.

You can see a proof of concept at the site, and it's quite interesting to watch. This happens inside your firewalled network, just by browsing the internet.

http://hackersblog.itproportal.com/?p=720

Re:What other media players already support H.264?

[DrXym]

Videolan, Nero Showtime and Quicktime do to my knowledge. So does the PS3.

The major confusion is that H264 is not just one standard but a loose collection of features bound up in "profiles". A player might support the H264 "main" profile, but not the "high" profile and so on. Then you've got MPEG-4 part 2 which is an earlier but unrelated stanard that DIVX / XVID are implementations of.

It's all quite confusing before even considering DRM and other implementation details. Still, the format is starting to see widespread adoption so the sooner all devices support it the better for everyone.

It will be a pain for people with lots of DIVX content, but this appears to be the way industry is going and no doubt we'll see DVD players with HD H264 support before long. I wonder if there is a mostly lossless way to convert DIVX content into H264, since they may differ but they must share similarities too.

Re:DHTML audio capability?

[sremick]

I didn't say DHTML could do everything Flash did. I said "Little of what Flash is used for even requires Flash...". Read my comment again.

Most sites using Flash are using it for such mundane purposes as doing mouseover/expanding menus and other simple interface mechanics that not only can be done with DHTML, but can be done simpler with broader browser compatibility and faster page-load times (less bytes on the wire). In fact, a site's basic interface and navigation should never require a plugin. Plugins should only offer added content.

Re:DHTML audio capability?

[Negadecimal]

but can be done simpler with broader browser compatibility and faster page-load times (less bytes on the wire)

I'll agree with you on the first point, but for simple interface stuff, I've actually produced many Flash solutions that required a less bytes than the canned "multibrowserconfigurableexpandingmenus.js" stuff people use.