A Skeptical Comparison of HTML5 Video Playback To Flash

gollum123 writes "Think we'd all be better off if HTML5 could somehow instantly replace Flash overnight? Not necessarily, according to a set of comparisons from Jan Ozer of the Streaming Learning Center website, which found that while HTML5 did come out ahead in many respects, it wasn't exactly a clear winner. They did find that HTML5 clearly performed better than Flash 10 or 10.1 in Safari on a Mac, although the differences were less clear cut in Google Chrome or Firefox. On the other hand, Flash more than held its own on Windows, and Flash Player 10.1 was actually 58% more efficient than HTML5 in Google Chrome on the Windows system tested. As you may have deduced, one of the big factors accounting for that discrepancy is that Flash is able to take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration in Windows, while Adobe is effectively cut out of the loop on Mac." gollum123 also links to additional tests indicating that Flash "does not perform consistently worse on Mac than on Windows."

Comments

GPU acceleration and Opera

[sopssa]

The second test seems to forget that Flash added GPU acceleration in Windows, which dramatically drops CPU usage. It's not even small amount, it's 60%->12% with YouTube 720p video and most likely even more with 1080p. They've been working a lot with NVIDIA on it, which means more bad news for HTML5. I also installed those new NVIDIA drivers and newest Flash beta and full screen video is considerably smoother.

And where's Opera in this test? They added HTML5 support in 10.5 final too and their whole drawing engine will be hardware accelerated, with websites also. Their canvas implementation is also faster than with any other browser.

Re:GPU acceleration and Opera

[Runaway1956]

From the submission: "On the other hand, Flash more than held its own on Windows,"

"When was the last time Performance and better quality became critical in deciding which tech will be widely deployed?"

Personally - I wish that SECURITY were the primary criteria in deciding which tech will be widely deployed. I'll sacrifice a bit of "performance", if HTML5 proves to be immune to all the exploits that Adobe products are open to. Yes, of course, HTML5 will have exploits, but Adobe seems to be wide open today.

Yes, HTML5 supports "super cookies" - that's a potential exploit IMO. What else is there?

Security, security, security. If a new technology opens an entire new class of exploits, then it's not worth having, even if it increases "efficiency" by orders of magnitude.

That said - I favor HTML5, because it is "open", and people can manage their own risk. With Adobe being closed, the open source crowd isn't free to search for the exploits that the black had people keep finding.

Re:GPU acceleration and Opera

[cheesybagel]

No need to bother. All that needs to happen is for someone to add CUDA or OpenCL acceleration to the codec playing and it will still be offloaded to the graphics card.

Re:GPU acceleration and Opera

[Runaway1956]

Well - maybe it's not a direct equivalent, but yes, HTML5 has the potential to keep such persistent cookies, as large as or larger than flash now uses.

http://completosec.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/html-5-persistent-offline-storage-as-a-risk-management-challenge/

Or, you can just google "html5 persistent cookies" for more, and better hits. It's the "persistent" part that I'm concerned about, and the ability to find them, sort them, and manage them. Normal cookies aren't a problem for anyone with even minimal computer competence. These new Super Cookies are a problem for even moderately computer savvy people.

Re:GPU acceleration and Opera

[Bert64]

Well if you look at web browsers on the Amiga platform, they typically had no built in support for any image formats whatsoever. The OS provided a facility called "datatypes" which allowed any application supporting datatypes, to load any format for which a valid datatype was available. Amiga browsers were among the first able to display PNG images on the web simply because a PNG datatype already existed.

How much of a perfomance hit for open standards?

[symbolset]

How much of a performance hit am I prepared to accept for open standards? 100%. The performance of the open platform will double every 18 months, but the DRM'd content will be forever limited.

Anecdotal evidence

[Ma8thew]

Obviously this is anecdotal, but the fans on my Macbook pro often spin up playing full screen flash video, but never while playing video in Quicktime. But even if HTML5 performs no better than Flash currently, HTML5 still wins because it doesn't rely on Adobe to issue security and performance updates.

Re:This is early days for the video tag

[BeardedChimp]

Many system on chips such as the omap3530 have a dsp. These are general purpose and for example the omap3530 can do 720p h264 and mpeg4 decoding.
However adding theora or vp8/6 decoding is a matter of writing a codec for the dsp as opposed to having to create a whole new decoder chip.
Devices that use something similar could add this functionality through patching even after either vp6/8 or theora get some support.

Re:I've yet to see HTML5 video work

[hairyfeet]

I don't know about him but I tried your link on my netbox, a 1.8GHz Sempron running XP Home, and it kept the CPU redlined while the video was a slideshow, even though the video was just a tiny slice on the screen, while only having two tabs open (this page and the video). Meanwhile Youtube H.264 in SD plays just fine full screen and plays nicely even with multiple tabs open.

Was that the point you were trying to make? Or was it that the link you provided was to a "better" HTML5 player? Because if I'm gonna have to fire up my quad just to watch a video in HTML5 I'll stick with Flash, thanks anyway. I can always slap a cheap 4650 into the AGP slot if I want to get HD on this single core PC, thanks to hardware acceleration. Can I do that with HTML5?