Adobe Goes To Flash 10.1, Forgoes Security Fix For 10

An anonymous reader writes "The recent critical zero-day security flaw in Flash 10 may have fast-tracked the release of Flash 10.1 today. Adobe 10.1 boasts the much anticipated H.264 hardware acceleration. Except for Linux and Mac OS (PDF): 'Flash Player 10.1, H.264 hardware acceleration is not supported under Linux and Mac OS. Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs.' Your humble anonymous reporter, who is using Fedora Linux with a ATI IGP 340M, is very pleased that the developers of the OSS drivers have provided hardware acceleration for my GPU ('glxinfo : direct rendering: Yes,' 'OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R100 (RS200 4337) 20090101 NO-TCL DRI2'), but even if Adobe did provide hardware acceleration for H.264 on Linux, they wouldn't provide it for me because they disable it for GPUs with SGI in the Client vendor string. Adobe 10.1, with all its goodness, now gives me around 95% CPU usage as opposed to about 75% with the previous release. Good times. I anticipate my Windows friends will have a much better experience."

Comments

well, of course.

[turkeydance]

see above.

Re:well, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess slashdot's goal is to make troll first posts irrelevant by having the summary beat them to it?

Re:well, of course.

[WrongSizeGlass]

Do you mean "well, of course Apple should take a stance against second-class treatment by Flash"? I think that guy named Steve beat you to it.

Re:well, of course.

[eihab]

Flash/Acrobat and even Java are a serious headache if you are small enough to not need or can afford an enterprise-level software management tool, yet big enough that patching machines individually can take quite sometime.

Does anyone know of a good (hopefully low-cost/free) central patch management software/tool for things like Flash?

I found ManageEngine's Desktop Central today (which is free for 25 or less machines), but I'd love to hear how other people are dealing with patching non-MS stuff.

Re:well, of course.

[logjon]

We don't let people use it.

Re:well, of course.

[h4rr4r]

Have you considered using FOG, which is free, do to images and just rolling out new images when this sort of PITA software updates?

FOG also includes the ability to deploy installations without doing a reimage, just seems like a good time to do it.

Re:well, of course.

[eihab]

That looks like an interesting solution. By quickly scanning their site I'm not sure how would something like this work for patch management.

I'll take a closer look at its documentation later today, thanks for the lead :)

Re:well, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Chromium. Who needs to manually update Flash anymore?

Re:well, of course.

[h4rr4r]

They are called snapins and you can have them do pretty much whatever you need. In this case most likely you would want to make a snapin that did the install. Then you would deploy that to all the clients. Their user guide is quite good.

If you have questions feel free to email my gmail, same username.

Re:well, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know of a good (hopefully low-cost/free) central patch management software/tool for things like Flash?

Sure!

Re:well, of course.

[eihab]

Thanks! I'll probably be ok, but if you don't mind, welcome to my Slashdot friend's list :)

Re:well, of course.

[eihab]

*Friends list. Go ahead, use your off-topic mod, or let me be ;)

Re:well, of course.

[blackraven14250]

Man, it's so shitty that Adobe targets their actual audience and doesn't give a shit about people who don't want to use their product. Bummer.

Re:well, of course.

[Dogers]

If you are already using WSUS, then why not try SCUP?
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0446cce9-94a4-4fb0-b335-e7516044063d&displaylang=en

Add in the Adobe Flash repo once configured:
http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/licensing/win/AdobeFlashPlayerCatalog.cab

Re:well, of course.

[socsoc]

If you do any sort of login scripts, just roll your own with batch files that query the registry for version and install the new one off your network if the registry doesn't return what you have defined as the latest version for your environment. That's what I do.

Re:well, of course.

[HermMunster]

Just installed 10.1. Watched one video. Then another. Clicked the back button in Firefox. Crash!

Re:well, of course.

[eihab]

I did not know that SCUP existed, thanks for the links :)

Re:well, of course.

[iwandesign]

Apple is my choice :-)

!News

[should_be_linear]

Adobe programmers are lamest bunch of losers since forever. Noting to see here, move along.

Re:!News

[PotatoFarmer]

What do you mean? Who else would have to foresight to include embedded executable code and a javascript engine in a print document format? It's genius, I tell you!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go look at a PDF that has pictures of someone's vacation emailed to me by an unknown perso

Re:!News

[melstav]

Who else would have to foresight to include embedded executable code and a javascript engine in a print document format?

It's even worse than that. Take a good look at version 1.7 of the PDF spec

From section 7.11.4.1 of chapter 13, which is titled "Multimedia Features"

If a PDF file contains file specifications that refer to an external file and the PDF file is archived or transmitted, some provision should be made to ensure that the external references will remain valid. One way to do this is to arrange for copies of the external files to accompany the PDF file. Embedded file streams (PDF 1.3) address this problem by allowing the contents of referenced files to be embedded directly within the body of the PDF file.

And worse yet, quoting from one of the descriptions of flags in table 44:

(Optional; PDF 1.2) A flag indicating whether the file referenced by the file specification is volatile (changes frequently with time). If the value is true, applications shall not cache a copy of the file. For example, a movie annotation referencing a URL to a live video camera could set this flag to trueto notify the conforming reader that it should re-acquire the movie each time it is played. Default value: false.

In other words, you can ALSO embed the LIVE feed from your webcam in a PDF document.

Re:!News

[Anonymous Coward]

That's fucking awesome.

Re:!News

[billcopc]

The way I see it, Adobe is taking a cue from Sony and trying to supplant a perfectly usable and cost-effective technology (e.g. HTML, CD-Audio, HD-DVD) with a perfectly moronic proprietary cost-prohibitive overlicensed substitute (e.g. PDF, MiniDisc, BluRay).

They probably figured Acrobat would replace Internet Explorer at some point, you know, because HTML sucks in their mind. Why else would they embed code and video into something that started life as a (shudder) "Portable Document Format" ? The whole point of PDF was to have a faithful, device-independent representation of a print-ready document - PostScript to go! How they fucked it up is just classic Adobe narcissism.

Re:!News

[Anonymous Coward]

Make sure to cc everyone in your address book!

Hmmm, or a virus will!

Re:!News

[jo_ham]

Not that I disagree with your point in general, but MiniDisc was never a replacement for CD, even though some marketing people tried to make it - what it really replaced was cassette tapes; a role that it excelled at, and continues to do so. MD is still used *heavily* in the professional area, especially in radio.

MD was awesome, it's serial copy management was not, but Sony eventually dropped that.

Re:!News

[thegarbz]

From a security standpoint it's a horrible idea. But yet it is a vision of the future. People want computers to do everything in one go. I haven't ever seen a futuristic movie depiction of someone waiting for a loading screen. No they just send an email, or do a video call as if by magic like no other applications have existed.

As someone who has seen a legitimate use of the 3D PDF features (a drafter sent me proposed changes to piping as a model embedded in a PDF file) I was in awe. Here was the text, a complete explanation, and not only a full isometric drawing of what was changing but a bloody model of the pipework! Forms are notes are some of the less impressive features I've used, but it would be awesome in our new utopian future where the entire world can run inside a PDF container. Acrobat will be the new operating system.

Re:!News

[Anonymous Coward]

So the linking books in Myst were really book-like iPads showing PDFs showing live feeds from the linked worlds? Man, Cyan were even further ahead of their time than I thought!

Re:!News

[Eerikki]

In other words, you can ALSO embed the LIVE feed from your webcam in a PDF document.

That is excellent. Soon I can embed a live feed to a PDF doc, print it and then I can watch the live feed from a handy a4, instead of needing the cumbersome internet or computers!

Re:!News

[Anonymous Coward]

PDF is open, anyone can implement it from the published documents. If you want documents published precisely, this is your best option, particularly if they need to be printable. HTML printing is and always has been pure garbage.

blu-ray existed by HD-DVD because HD storage solutions were needed. Toshiba and MS cut all the corners they could to give us DVD2, they failed.

Mini-disc was a digital recording format, you could not record onto CDs without a computer and appropriate software, let alone have a portable solution. There was little available at the time. DCC was a piece of shit and DAT was way too expensive for consumers. Mini-disc also flopped, mainly because it was too low quality in a world where CD quality was expected to be the minimum.

HTML standard? Not quite. Ask anyone with real web developer experience the number of inconsistent implementations they've had to work around, and bugs that are never fixed. Your gripe with PDF is one company's reader. Don't using it you don't like it, durrrr! Guess who invented the open post-script format, yes, the company you zealotry hate. Get over yourself.

Re:!News

[delinear]

Then malicious users will be able to launch DoS attacks with nothing more than a sheet of paper and access to a photocopier.

Re:!News

[PincushionMan]

I haven't ever seen a futuristic movie depiction of someone waiting for a loading screen. No they just send an email, or do a video call as if by magic like no other applications have existed.

Ah, you must have missed Independence Day, then. Then again, he was using a 4-5 year old PowerBook to upload that virus. Pretty sure it had a bronze keyboard so that makes it a Lombard or Pismo.

Re:!News

[mr exploiter]

WOW that's amaising... the same points that were in the specs 1.3 and 1.2 are stilll in 1.7!

Re:!News

[Skuld-Chan]

Well except you can't do either of those things without tripping the trust manager in Acrobat.

Re:!News

[Skuld-Chan]

Acrobat was originally intended (and still used to a large extent) as a print production tool. I had a customer a long time ago praising Adobe for the amount of money they saved him on courier fees because he no-longer had to mail pre-press samples to customers before going to print.

I no longer work for the company, but I was still able to show a student on how to use Acrobat to change and verify a file to PDF/X format so she could take it to a print shop across town - it really does work wonderfully for this still.

Re:!News

[Gizzmonic]

PDF is for printed documents. It was never conceived as a replacement to HTML. Bloat comes-as it does in most cases-at the request of their consumers, who were stretching PDF to be used in a manner than was never intended. Rather say "use Flash for that," Adobe caved and tried to be all things to all people.

Re:!News

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you, but just so we're clear, PDF is an open standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format

Re:!News

[ploxiln]

Please god, no.

We have things called operating systems. They can run multiple applications reliably, securely, and fast (well, those not made by microsoft), and they can be extended by anyone with new applications without getting any permission. I could go on but you get what I mean.

Every time I have to use adobe flash or acrobat reader, I get very very angry. These are horribly made applications! With no 64 bit versions for linux systems which otherwise have had no need for 32 bit support for 5 years! Which infect windows systems with background updating services and a reliably horrific stream of security vulnerabilities, and the worst performance available! Luckily, excellent alternatives to acrobat are readily available for use with proper PDFs on all operating systems.

I don't want computers to "do everything in one go". And the people who do are already getting their asses handed to them by malware and hackers on a daily basis, while running antivirus and a plethora of independent updaters which renders their super-fast system no better than one 8 years old. Frankly, they're going to need to use Acrobat as their new operating system if they want the next decade's computers to run as slowly and unreliably as current ones.

New Apple API?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Apple published a new API in the latest Snow Leopard.

Re:New Apple API?

[gyrogeerloose]

I thought Apple published a new API in the latest Snow Leopard.

They did. The summary is incorrect.

Re:New Apple API?

[0100010001010011]

XBMC has it integrated. 10.6.3 came out on March 29th. and XBMC had it a week later. Come on Adobe.

They also manage to have acceleration in linux with both VDPAU and VAAPI.

Re:New Apple API?

[westyvw]

Yeah I call bullshit. Adobe please DIE already. I praised you when you made a Linux flash client, I thought you were at least trying, but with the new Adobe spec, and now this utter crap, I wish you would just go away.

Re:New Apple API?

[cronius]

They also manage to have acceleration in linux with both VDPAU and VAAPI.

Yeah, I see how this is supposed to work, especially the VAAPI part. I am amazed at what Linux can do these days.

To actually think, here I am thinking that it's Linux' fault that they don't have the proper API for Adobe to use, when in reality Linux enables them to use, wait for it: Solar Cooking and Food Drying to achieve hardware acceleration of H.264 media! Who can match that? At the time of writing you're voted "3, Informative," so it must be true. Linux is freaking awesome.

Re:New Apple API?

[ultranova]

The summary is incorrect.

The relevant part of the summary is simply quoting Adobe's Flash release notes. Those might be incorrect or simply lying.

I've never really understood why it seems so extremely difficult for Flash to render some simple 2D vector graphics and run a script or two in a VM without maxing CPU usage on just about anything. Is it a disguised version of Batik or something?

Re:New Apple API?

[0100010001010011]

Oops: VAAPI

Copy must not have taken and of course I don't proof read.

Re:New Apple API?

[amn108]

The trouble with Slashdot is that one has to use half of ones brain capacity to filter sarcasm, irony and other well-cloaked references to information completely unrelated to the discussion, leaving another half to useful application.

Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[betelgeuse68]

That's what they sound like, i.e., leaf blowers, when watching Flash video. It's welcome but Adobe/Macromedia should have done this *years* ago.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[SimonTheSoundMan]

For a start, Adobe could at least try and do YUV to RGB using OpenGL, that would help, but they wont do it. Little things like this Adobe refuse to do, it will only take someone a day to write the code, this will make your computer go from a leaf blower to a vacuum cleaner. *sigh*

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[ink]

Adobe cant't do that, because Flash is not designed to play video. Think about it. Flash mixes MovieClips with vector and timeline content, all with z-axis alpha-blended content. It must transfer video into RGB in order to mix it with the bitmap data from vector sources, bitmap sources and from the font renderer. Flash can use sophisticated codec helpers for some tasks, but it will never be as good as dedicated devices like the iPad, which can only play one video format with specific limitations. This isn't to say that Flash is some kind of failure -- only that it was designed to solve a different problem.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[keeboo]

this will make your computer go from a leaf blower to a vacuum cleaner.

There's a Flash version for VAX?!

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[quixote9]

(Hey! Mod parent hilarious! You guys asleep or something?)

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[beakerMeep]

Thank you. As much as I defend Flash on this site, it really is for a lack of rational comments. Yours however, points out flaws, and understands the meaning and context. To say it simply, spot on.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[Voyager529]

this will make your computer go from a leaf blower to a vacuum cleaner. *sigh*

So my computer will now suck instead of blow?

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Finally my Mac won't... wait, shit. Well at least my Dell m1330 running Ubuntu won't... well, shit again. So basically NEITHER of my laptops will stop doing this. Thanks Adobe. Asshats.

When can we kill Flash? We've almost got IE dead. When can we kill the other unholy beast of the internet?

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[BlakJak-ZL1VMF]

Yeah, what he said. Nice to see a sane comment on the subject. I'd have modded you up...

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[am 2k]

Flash mixes MovieClips with vector and timeline content, all with z-axis alpha-blended content. It must transfer video into RGB in order to mix it with the bitmap data from vector sources, bitmap sources and from the font renderer.

Besides the fact that you could do all that via OpenGL nowadays, it'd be easy to detect a simple situation (no overlays etc) and provide an optimized code path for those situations. Just like in Windows XP, where you could boost your 3D performance by going fullscreen.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[dingen]

This is just all the more reason to stop putting video on web pages inside a Flash player.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[gmueckl]

You can do all of the compositing and some of the vector rendering in OpenGL, too. Take the new OpenGL cairo backend as an example. And if there's something you can't do directly in OpenGL, you can still upload a texture and do a final compositing pass on that including the video texture. I think Flash even does some of that in the OpenGL accellerated rendering they have. So yes, maybe Adobe is bitching a bit too much here.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[Burpmaster]

The penguin.swf blog is just an endless stream of excuses. Adobe absolutely can accelerate YUV->RGB. It's standard practice in software development to create a special fast path for a common scenario when performance matters. They can fall back to the slow path if the swf is trying to do something incompatible with the fast path.

Anyone writing a flash-based video player would opt for the fast path and follow whatever rules are necessary. But thanks to Adobe's laziness, that option isn't available. Flash is just a dinosaur that doesn't want to evolve.

FYI, here's how to accelerate video: Flash draws the scene in layers, back to front. For alpha blending or anti-aliasing of edges, it must read the RGB value below the layer currently being drawn to blend it with the current color. This is the problem, and there's a fairly simple solution. After rendering a YUV layer, render the layers above to an RGBA surface that starts out 100% transparent. Then send the output layers (RGB below video, YUV video, RGBA above video) to the video card for final compositing. The only scenario where this wouldn't work is if the player uses filters above the video. Have you ever seen a flash-based player that uses filters?

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen a flash-based player that uses filters?

Sure I have.
Oh, Flash. Nevermind, then.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost got IE Dead? Here are my Google Analytics from the past month, IE is still #1. Browsers without Flash represent a tiny fraction of the market.

Internet Explorer 1599

    Firefox 521

    Chrome 128

    Safari 95

    Mozilla 20

    Opera 15

    Opera Mini 4

    SeaMonkey 4

    BlackBerry9530 3

    BlackBerry9630 3

    Galeon 2

    Nutexplore 2

    BlackBerry9000 1

    IE with Chrome Frame 1

    Mozilla Compatible Agent 1

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[TheRaven64]

Not sure why this is a problem. Apple's Quartz Composer demos do the same thing. They render vector art, raster images, and video frames to layers and then composite the whole thing on the GPU. Modern GPUs aren't like the old graphics cards that used an overlay for accelerated video. They don't render frames directly to the frame buffer, they render them to a texture, which you then composite to the display.

If Adobe is copying the rendered data out of VRAM and compositing on the CPU it is because their design is fundamentally wrong. Not providing APIs to support this kind of stupidity is not a bug.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[delinear]

Flash will cling on either until IE is dead, or at least until MS gets a move on with migrating sufficient existing users to an HTML5 capable version of its browser. Until then most sites will save money by catering to the lowest common denominator, which in this case is Flash.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[ink]

Anyone writing a flash-based video player would opt for the fast path and follow whatever rules are necessary. But thanks to Adobe's laziness, that option isn't available. Flash is just a dinosaur that doesn't want to evolve.

I would take that one step further: Anyone writing a flash-based video player is doing it wrong. We needed flash for web video because there were no universal alternatives, and we will still need it in the very short-term -- but web surfers are savvy enough to install new browsers now, and HTML5 is coming down the tracks full-steam, with or without w3c approval.

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[Anonymous Coward]

But... why not?

The obvious way to do it would be this: Upload video frames to a texture; bind a fragment program to do YUV->RGB conversion; render a quad mapped with that texture. Then bind whatever other fragment program you want and render your other primitives. Clearly Adobe have thought of this, so what's wrong with it?

It's also quite easy to write a little program that asks DirectShow (or I assume ffmpeg; my experience is with DirectShow) to decode video frames, and then uploads them as textures, which you can do whatever you want with (including draw with various blendmodes). I've used precisely this approach to include video in C++/OpenGL programs I've written, and there's no appreciable overhead; you can play video as fast as DirectShow can decode it. Is this not a constructive proof that blending video with other graphics can be done efficiently?

I spent a little time trying to understand the issues with Flash, and thought that this post from the same blog was a little more informative. Still, the conclusion to be drawn doesn't seem to be that you can't use hardware acceleration, but just that you can't use the X-video extension (which isn't that huge a deal).

So, anybody have any insights?

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[Anonymous Coward]

cool, thanks for the stats on your pissant site nobody visits

Re:Laptops turning into leaf blowers going bye bye

[Just Some Guy]

It's standard practice in software development to create a special fast path for a common scenario when performance matters. They can fall back to the slow path if the swf is trying to do something incompatible with the fast path.

A million times yes. Youtube is the third-busiest site in the world, and you'd think Adobe would make a little effort to provide an optimized codepath for that site. I tire of the excuses about how much work Flash has to do to render a video. I guarantee that if they rolled out an optimized function that did without all the cruft not directly related to rendering a video, almost everyone would adopt it overnight.

Apple provided APIs

[ryanw]

Apple has provided the API's to do the hardware decoding, and Adobe has a beta called Gala which has Mac OSX Hardware Acceleration enabled.. Adobe will have a release out soon that will incorporate the hardware decoding in OSX. My guess is Adobe had to fast-track the release of 10.1 to compensate for the wide open security holes they had lingering, and weren't prepared to merge the beta and the final release trees.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[maccodemonkey]

The worst part about this is Apple already had two APIs, QTKit and CoreAnimation, that could both do hardware accelerated H.264. Adobe bitched and moaned until they got low level access for no apparent reason.

It seriously pissed me off every time Adobe whined about "no 3rd party H.264 support" on Mac. Apple even had several sessions at WWDC in years prior about how to enable it in your apps.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[UnknowingFool]

The whole hardware decoding was just a red herring anyways. Adobe is using this as an excuse as to why Flash on OS X sucks. The real problem for Adobe was that they wrote their own codecs instead of using Apple's APIs all this time. By doing so, any Flash content on Macs would require 100% CPU rendering instead of allowing the OS to use any available hardware like the GPU. I think the problem was that Adobe didn't move to the Cocoa framework which has these APIs but instead stayed on the Carbon framework which doesn't.

This is why Steve Jobs called Adobe "lazy" as Cocoa and Carbon were first released back in 2001. Adobe before CS5 of this year didn't migrate their flagship products to Cocoa. That's nine years. Adobe's side was that they were waiting for Carbon 64 which Apple canceled a few years back. I think Apple killed Carbon 64 because it would have been redundant as Cocoa was already 64 bit and more advanced already. That and Adobe may have been the only major developer who wanted it.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[washu_k]

No, the previous hardware acceleration APIs on OSX do NOT work. Check the problems VLC has had. Nothing except officially blessed Quicktime components could do H.264 acceleration on OSX until now despite Apple's claims. Even other plugins working through the Quicktime framework were denied access.

Flash is a piece of crap, but lack of hardware acceleration on OSX is 100% Apple's fault, not Adobe's. Even if you hate Adobe/Flash this new API access is a good thing because VLC and the like now have working hardware acceleration as well.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[maccodemonkey]

"Nothing except officially blessed Quicktime components could do H.264 acceleration on OSX until now despite Apple's claims. Even other plugins working through the Quicktime framework were denied access. "

I'm pretty sure that's just what I said... QTKit is the QuickTime X API, and CoreAnimation works on top of that...

Both of which would have been perfectly suitable for Adobe to use. QTKit can play into an OpenGL context.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[DigiShaman]

Adobe is using this as an excuse as to why Flash on OS X sucks.

See, I don't get it. I thought Adobe was begging Apple to get Flash on the iPhone. Why would they drop the ball on providing proper OS X support? What the hell is going on over at Adobe anyways?

Re:Apple provided APIs

[washu_k]

No, you're not getting it. The APIs like QTKit and CoreAnimation CLAIM to support video acceleration, but they don't. At least they don't to anything except what Apple allows.

For example:
- H.264 video in a Quicktime container played by an Apple player = Hardware acceleration enabled.

- The exact same H.264 stream repackaged in an non-Quicktime container (AVI, MKV etc) = Hardware acceleration disabled.

I'm sure the developers of VLC, Mplayer, Perrian and the like would have loved to use QTKit and CoreAnimation like you suggest. But they can't because those APIs simply do not work.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[UnknowingFool]

No from what I can tell Adobe just hasn't used the standard APIs that Apple provided and at the same time complained that Apple didn't release the APIs.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[washu_k]

Then why didn't VLC, Mplayer, perrian etc use the official APIs? None of them had hardware acceleration on OSX either until this latest API release. Read up on the problem. The old APIs simply do not work.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[UnknowingFool]

I don't know because Adobe has been treating Apple like the red headed step child for many years focusing more on Windows than Linux or OS X. Even though roughly 50% of their CS suites are sold on OS X, they would rather focus on the Windows side of the business because that's where 90% of their Flash business is.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

What bunch BS you are spreading. The Cocoa code migration problem is related to the desktop editing software like Photoshop and Illustrator. The Flash player code base is completely separate and have totally different issues. Most of them require changes in NPAPI and a lot of people at Adobe, Apple, Google and Opera are working on that as we speak. The other stupid comment you made about the codecs - how the hell you are supposed to call APIs that are not public? Apple just recently opened some of its internal video related API and made it available for 3rd parties. Mac fanbois like you are really getting on my nerves.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple released their API this spring. Within a week, Adobe had a beta out that used it, but this was still a good 6 months after their first 10.1 beta came out. When Adobe released the first beta of Gala, they said that 10.1 would be released before Gala, so this is no surprise. I also wouldn't assume Adobe pushed up the release of 10.1 for this security problem. They've been in the RC builds for months now, and they've been holding to their "first half of 2010" stated goal.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

ahhh ginger bashing - the last bastion of socially acceptable discrimination - if only there were more of us like the fags, niggers or gooks (see what i've done there to make the point)

Re:Apple provided APIs

[christopherjs]

I think the problem was that Adobe didn't move to the Cocoa framework which has these APIs but instead stayed on the Carbon framework which doesn't.

This is why Steve Jobs called Adobe "lazy" as Cocoa and Carbon were first released back in 2001. Adobe before CS5 of this year didn't migrate their flagship products to Cocoa. That's nine years...

Adobe is only slightly lazier than Apple themselves then, as Finder and quite a few other parts of OS X were still Carbon until Snow Leopard. That's eight years and they're the ones who developed the frameworks.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Just Some Guy]

See, I don't get it. I thought Adobe was begging Apple to get Flash on the iPhone. Why would they drop the ball on providing proper OS X support?

Yeah, that one's lost on me, too. "Come on, Apple! Let us play on the iPad! I know we've been unable to deliver a non-half-assed OS X version in a decade, but this time it'll be different! I promise!" Will I completely understand and sympathize with the argument against walled gardens, Adobe's done absolutely nothing to help their case.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[nine-times]

It's really pretty simple: Adobe doesn't want to make the investment necessary to make the Flash player efficient, stable, secure, and bloat-free. On the other hand, they want to keep making money selling the Flash development tools.

So when Apple finally calls them on Flash's crappiness and starts pushing for standards, Adobe wages a PR war on Apple, including astroturfing to make it sound like techies and serious web developers all love Flash. Adobe claims they're just about to release some updates that will fix everything (and it doesn't matter if it's vaporware because it's all about PR) and tries to blame Apple for all of Flash's problems (even though it doesn't quite make sense).

In reality, Flash has never been well supported on any platform except Windows. However, if Adobe admits to that, then a lot of their pro-Flash anti-HTML5 arguments fall apart. They're trying to sell Flash as being ubiquitous and platform-independent, but it isn't.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two issues at work here. The first is that the codebase for Flash was written highly platform-specific with a lot of assembler for the stated reason of performance, and likely before Adobe even took it over it was unmaintainable. This is from statements by Macromedia developers on their blogs and the application of a little bit of intuition. Porting it is probably a fucking nightmare. Adobe's stuck supporting a dog codebase (yet) with a massive install base, they are probably also extremely frustrated that porting to 64-bit Intel, Linux and OS X has took forever and resulted in a product that fucking sucks.

Second, regarding Adobe products in general on OS X, it wasn't a remotely mature platform until Tiger, for many reasons. Compare the performance of OS X 10.0 through 10.3 on hardware available at that time, to running OS9. Slow as shit. At the time Apple was still saying they were going to deprecate Carbon, so making a native OS X Cocoa version would have been a huge undertaking. Mac users still weren't switching in large numbers yet. Every single point release had huge additions and some minor regressions. Macs may have been a significant part of Adobe's customer base, but focusing on the larger and more stable (Windows, in terms of API, already with acceleration) platform was a smart business decision.

I'm not denying stupidity and inertia at Adobe, but I think for years (and with the acquisition of Flash) they were stuck in a limbo where any significant push forward in a particular direction would incur very large business costs with very high risk.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[mattack2]

Are you saying that is documented (intentional) or just how it happens to be? If how it happens to be, maybe the developers are doing something that's causing them to not be hardware accelerated. Did they write up bugs with sample code showing the problems?

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Nikker]

Strategy I would guess. Apple has been a big push in the h264 direction and flash on mobile devices would provide an end run on app creation and distribution. Flash on mobile devices would be tricky as well since there would have to be some sort of collaboration between adobe and apple on hardware specs. Right now iOS3/4 splits everything nicely amongst the gpu/CPU going with flash adobe would have to have a say on the API which we know sir jobs wouldn't like. There's much more to silicon valley then tech.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[indiechild]

Steve told the truth all along: Adobe's been lazy.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[ravenspear]

Ok I tested that beta but it only gives about a 2x speedup.

If I look at my cpu while viewing my company's homepage which has a large flash animation, I get the following results on OS X (imac 27" 4x core i7).

10.0: around 150% (1.5 cores)
10.1: around 75-80%

So, while an improvement this hardware acceleration doesn't really change the fact that flash on the Mac still sucks. It shouldn't take 80% of your CPU just to view a webpage.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

Next, they'll release shoddy versions of Photoshop on Mac.

That might actually screw up Apple if they did that.

Other than dicking around aimlessly with your computer, graphics was the only redeemable quality of owning an iMac.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Graymalkin]

What the fuck are you complaining about? Content that goes through Apple's media framework gets hardware acceleration. The same content going through entirely different (non-QuickTime) code paths isn't hardware accelerated. Hardware acceleration isn't disabled for non-QuickTime containers, the plugins or apps that handle these containers aren't using QuickTime's H.264 decoders and therefore aren't getting any hardware acceleration. Do you think Perian and VLC get magic hardware decoding somehow?

Your comment can best be summarized as "I don't know what the shit I'm talking about but I'm cool because I'm complaining about Apple!"

Re:Apple provided APIs

[prockcore]

Many of their apps are still Carbon.

Snow Leopard isn't 100% 64-bit, despite Apple's claims. Front Row, iTunes, Grapher, and DVD Player are all still 32-bit apps. That's because they are written in C++/Carbon instead of ObjC/Cocoa. Apple has had how long to rewrite them?

Re:Apple provided APIs

[bersl2]

There need to be replacement development tools. There are many complex Flash animations which are worth watching, but the people who author them are not programmers, and they shouldn't need to be. I know there are SVG authoring tools, but do they work with animation?

I want Flash dead as much as the next Slashdotter, but I'm not sure the development tools needed to replace Adobe's are there.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[washu_k]

Perian is a pluggin for Quicktime. It most certainly is using Apple's media framework. All it does is pass the SAME video streams you might find in a MOV file to the Quicktime decoders. It doesn't have a H.264 decoder of it's own like VLC, it just passes the data to Quicktime's H.264 decoder. Yet Quicktime disables hardware decoding because it did not come from a "blessed" source.

Still that misses the point. The so-called acceleration APIs are supposed to work outside of Quicktime too. Yet they don't. VLC has tried to use the official APIs and they just don't work. It's not a simple as calling the Quicktime code paths or not. Even basic things like video overlays don't work with the old APIs on OSX.

If the old APIs worked then why did Apple just release a "new" API that does?

Re:Apple provided APIs

[abhi_beckert]

I'm sure the developers of VLC, Mplayer, Perrian and the like would have loved to use QTKit and CoreAnimation like you suggest. But they can't because those APIs simply do not work.

What *you* don't get, is that VLC, Mplayer, Perrian, etc have all been able to play video perfectly fine for years. It's only adobe that can't get their act together.

Personally, i don't give a flying fuck whether or not my video is hardware accelerated. As long as the framerates are smooth I'm happy. Everyone else can do it, why not adobe?

Re:Apple provided APIs

[catmistake]

as Finder and quite a few other parts of OS X were still Carbon until Snow Leopard.

Apple has been quite the busy technology company in the last 10 years. Apple has had to tactically allocate their resources, stretched quite thin at times, to pull off the wins that they have. It's true, Finder has been carbon crap until snow. But it's not much of a wonder why. As for Adobe, just WTF have they done since CS?? Evangelized a web platform that gets more bothersome with every revision, and fleeced their flagship customers with absolute bullshit upgrades. If someone doesn't come out and say it, I will: Adobe is bad for technology, bad for the economy, and bad for America. OK, maybe I got a little carried away. But no kidding Adobe sucks and has for years.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[washu_k]

I'm not going to speculate on Apple's motives or intentions with this. I don't know if it was intentional or an oversight.

The simple fact of the matter is Apple has more than one API that it documents will do video acceleration. Only the one released very recently actually works.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[washu_k]

VLC, Mplayer, Perrian, etc on OSX can play better than Flash, that is not the same thing as "perfectly fine". VLC and Mplayer a quite optimized so with a fast enough CPU they can grunt through playback without help. That doesn't mean it's working fine. Use VLC or Mplayer on Windows or Linux on the same hardware and the CPU use is drastically reduced because hardware acceleration works.

Just because Flash sucks doesn't absolve Apple of the problems that are their fault.

If everything was "perfectly fine" why did Apple release a new API that actually works and why are all the third party players updating to use it?

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Sycraft-fu]

Also you can argue developers have a bit of a right to be lazy, and cross with Apple. Apple thrust a lot of changes on them, and has changed their mind on various things a number of times (like the no 64-bit Carbon when it was originally promised). They were asking people to do a lot of extra work, and you can understand devs might get angry. Especially when there's MS who seems to bend over backwards to try and make things easy and compatible. Now they don't always succeed, nobody but a fanboy would call them perfect, but they do put forth a good effort. Their 64-bit setup was very much designed to provide easy compatibility. The APIs were extremely similar, etc. So a 64-bit port shouldn't be too much work (unless you did things like cast pointers to 32-bit ints or whatnot).

While I'm not saying Adboe is blameless here, you can't lay all the blame at their feet either. Apple has gone through a bunch of changes, starting with OS-X itself and including some major things like a total architecture switch. That generates a lot of extra work.

There's also the fact that Cocoa is all Objective-C. Doesn't matter if you like it or not, it is something developers are not nearly as familiar with. So there's relearning there, plus additional recoding. While cross platform ports will always take a good bit of recoding, if you are having to change languages that just makes it take all the more. So I can understand why they'd want to stick with C++ and Cocoa since that would make it less work in terms of porting with Windows.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[jbravo556]

My version of VLC is from before Apple opened up the new APIs, so is Movist. Playing the exact same HD h264 file in VLC, Movist and Quicktime X player results in the same CPU usage of 37% - 41% on my 3 year old, 2.8 GHz iMac which does not even have hardware acceleration for h264. Playing the same file through Flash maxes out one of the CPUs at 100% and the video stutters and drops frames.

Flash's problem is not about hardware acceleration. If VLC and Movist can achieve the same low CPU usage as Quicktime X player on the same hardware means it's not an API availability problem; it's simply crappy, crappy code used in Flash.

The version of Flash before 10.1 contained PowerPC code still for intel processors!

Re:Apple provided APIs

[mattack2]

Yes, but my point is that even if the API says that it does uses hardware acceleration, there might be certain cases or unexpected usages that might NOT use it - even if they are bugs. Without more detailed info, I am inferring that you are suggesting malice in something that could be a problem on EITHER party's end.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[washu_k]

Now play that same video in VLC on Windows or Linux. Your CPU usage will be way less than in OSX. Just because Flash sucks, but so does Apple's (old) video playback APIs.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Daltorak]

It's really pretty simple: Adobe doesn't want to make the investment necessary to make the Flash player efficient, stable, secure, and bloat-free. On the other hand, they want to keep making money selling the Flash development tools.

Excuse me, but.... huh?

I'm going to assume you haven't actually researched this (i.e. "I went to the source and got the full story for myself" research and not just "I read a Slashdot comment once and got angry" research) and are just running at the mouth because you're angry, not because you're right.

Which you aren't.

Here, let me introduce you to a guy. His name is Tinic Uro, and he's one of the people who actually programs Flash. He's an engineer like us, not a marketing droid (or worse, an executive).

Here are three blog entries you should fully familiarise yourself with before making any further comment on what Adobe is doing in terms of improving Flash on OS X.

Flash 10.1 and Core Animation:
http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=81
(TL;DR: yes, Flash 10.1 uses Core Animation to accelerate overall Flash graphics performance -- not video specifically -- but you need OS X Snow Leopard and a super-new version of Safari)

Flash 10.1 and timing:
http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=82
i>(TL;DR: They rebuilt the timer model in Flash 10.1 to use significantly less memory, however Safari on OS X is less flexible than other browsers when it comes to firing timer events, thus making video playback less smooth)

H.264 hardware acceleration in OS X:
http://blog.kaourantin.net/?p=89
(TL;DR: Adobe has released a post-10.1 beta version of Flash that supports full and proper video H.264 acceleration on Mac OS X, with the caveat that you have to have 10.6.3 and certain current graphics chips)

The real story is this:

Apple has been well behind Microsoft Windows when it comes to providing third parties with APIs to do hardware acceleration, and to do high-performing timer operations that are necessary to run browser plugins smoothly. I know the Slashdotterie will get all worked up over that assertion, but speaking as someone who's actually written browser plugin code, you'll just have to trust me on this. IE has always had the best timer support, which is one reason why video- or timeline-heavy plugins have always performed better than other platforms. As of OS X 10.6.3 and Safari 5, Apple has pretty much caught up.

- Despite the headline-grabbing statements from Steve Jobs and other executive-types, there are actual hard-working developers at Apple and Adobe who actually collaborated to define a good API for high-performance video access for browser plugins. If Apple wasn't so deliriously secretive, you'd hear a lot more about it. Trouble is.... the only people who are allowed to blog at Apple are people who'll make the company look good and forward-thinking -- like the Webkit team.

The problem with performance isn't 100% Adobe's fault. It can't be. Adobe's engineers aren't stupid -- if there had been an easy solution to good plugin video performance on the Mac all this time, they would've fixed it years ago. Why spend several years intentionally using a bad approach?

Lastly.... despite what the article summary says here on Slashdot, overall Flash performance is quite a bit better in 10.1, especially on OS X. Do your own benchmarking; you'll see for yourself. It's still not as good as it should be, but it's a massive step forward. They know HTML5 is coming... they know they have to make Flash as good as or better than HTML5 or they'll be toast by 2020. They know all this.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

The Finder was originally written in Carbon (pre-OS X) when Apple first released Carbon to show that Carbon was a "serious" framework that people should take seriously and use. Apple had the problem that they were going to release a brand spanking new operating system and needed independent (third-party) devs to use an API that worked with the new OS, thus was Carbon born. It worked on both OS 9 and OS X, and Apple used the Finder as an "Eat your own dog food" sort of thing. It continued to do so until it was no longer going to support Carbon.

The only other "parts" of OS X are the DVD Player, Grapher, iTunes and Front Row. These are all user-level applications. iTunes continues to be Carbon because it eases cross-platform development. DVD Player, Grapher and Front Row are not exactly going to benefit from using Cocoa/going 64-bit, etc.

On the other hand, Adobe makes some of the slowest garbage around. Its Creative Suite is comparable to the different kinds of shits you have after eating different food.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow dude. Kudos for sticking with the point in this thread. I never would have thought that brainless fanboyism rose to level of people who at least know what an API was, but I have no other way to explain the blatant retardation of the people so consistently disputing/misunderstanding your point (and the retardation of those mod'ing them up for it).

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Mr Bubble]

as Finder and quite a few other parts of OS X were still Carbon until Snow Leopard...

Irrelevant. Apple was providing the best service they could to to their customers while balancing internal resources. And Snow Leopard was $29. Apple is doing fine. It was Adobe's place to step up to the plate and show some love to OS X - and they didn't. Instead they fed us crap and charged us thousands of dollars over the years for it. Now they are suffering the consequences. I am looking forward to what's next. If Adobe had one single clue left in the company somewhere, they would bend over backwards to win back my loyalty. I am their bread and butter and I am bored with them.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

na na na nananannanan NOOOO!

YOU'RE NOT LISTENING.

i yearn for the 90s usenet environment.

wrong, little punk ass queers like you would never even open up your traps.

so pipe down.

lurk.

learn.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[horigath]

Now play that same video in VLC on Windows or Linux. Your CPU usage will be way less than in OSX. Just because Flash sucks, but so does Apple's (old) video playback APIs.

Oh yes, I'm sure, especially on a several-years-old machine that doesn't actually support h.264 decoding in hardware, like the one mentioned above.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's really pretty simple: Adobe doesn't want to make the investment necessary to make the Flash player efficient, stable, secure, and bloat-free."

Agreed. I upgraded from 10 to 10.1 just now (due to the /. announcement that 10 had a security issue, and 10.1 was out). It seems the earlier version, while less secure, was more efficient.

I have an older machine (XP SP3, Athlon 1.73ghz). I went to Crunchyroll to test things out, and wow, 10.1 drops frames like crazy. Before, 720p was giving a noticeable video lag/skip every 3 to 5 seconds, but with 10.1, it's dropping bunches of frames every second.

The strange (and a little disturbing) thing with 10.1, the video is smoother, it's not jittery, so it doesn't seem you are missing video. Just that I've seen the animation before and I know a slew of material is being dropped/lost. I changed to SD (standard definition) to confirm I wasn't misremembering things.

I guess when they say 10.1 supports hardware acceleration, they failed to mention it decelerates older hardware more. I'm actually a little stunned at how bad it is; do they not care, or do they just not test their stuff? At least within the same add-on/plug-in version, give similar performance, Adobe.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[MostAwesomeDude]

Is there any reason why Adobe hasn't been talking openly with the Mesa developers about OpenGL compatibility issues and glitches? Hardware acceleration is slower than CPU rendering and much glitchier, on the chipsets I've tested, and it'd be nice if there were even a half-hearted attempt to talk to us about it.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[ryanw]

Does your company's homepage have a flash animation or H.264 video? The acceleration is only for H.264 hardware decoding. There is no acceleration for use of adobe's proprietary animations.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[UnknowingFool]

The difference is that these applications currently work in OS X, and unless there is a real need to upgrade to Cocoa, why should Apple recode?. Flash on OS X is still buggy and by all accounts in need of major fixes. For Creative Suite, Adobe wanted take advantage of 64bit addresses so they needed to move to Cocoa.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

Flash is a pile of bug ridden rubbish. My CPU is almost always at 100% whenever I am browsing a Flash website, why can't these idiots fix the bugs? Can you imagine how much electricity is being wasted all over this planet, because of this bug? Hundreds of millions of CPUs are running at 100% instead of 5%, which equals millions of watts of wasted power, and all because a handful of douchebags can't program properly, and don't care.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

Now play that same video in VLC on Windows or Linux. Your CPU usage will be way less than in OSX. Just because Flash sucks, but so does Apple's (old) video playback APIs.

Oh yes, I'm sure, especially on a several-years-old machine that doesn't actually support h.264 decoding in hardware, like the one mentioned above.

Impressive how insistently people want to avoid the fact that hardware accellerated video on OSX simply didn't work until recently. It's been convenient to blame Adobe so Apple could be let off the hook, but it didn't work for VLC or any others trying either (except Apples own player). Yeah.. I know, the VLC people are probably lousy media player programmers that don't know what they are doing..

Re:Apple provided APIs

[BikeHelmet]

VLC, Mplayer, Perrian, etc on OSX can play better than Flash, that is not the same thing as "perfectly fine". VLC and Mplayer a quite optimized so with a fast enough CPU they can grunt through playback without help. That doesn't mean it's working fine. Use VLC or Mplayer on Windows or Linux on the same hardware and the CPU use is drastically reduced because hardware acceleration works.

Playing 1080 video in Windows XP, my Phenom II X4 faces a staggering 6% CPU usage.

You are correct.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

>The real problem for Adobe was that they wrote their own codecs instead of using Apple's APIs all this time.

Please name the codecs that Adobe has developed.

You might find it hard as flash video uses the following codecs:
  - Sorenson Spark
- On2 VP6
  - H.264

None of which were developed by Adobe.

Please also explain why other software developers have had such huge problems with hardware video acceleration in OSX if the APIs that Apple provided were so great.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

My beef, coming from the animator department and not the programmer department (though I've done programming) is that AS3 (and Javacript+css in html5) is just a non-starter if the animator has to EVER see the code.

That's what made flash easy to use, you never had to see the code. AS2 was fairly straightforward enough, but rather inflexible for amateur programmers. Anyone who wanted to something cool (like 3D engines) with performance pretty much was out of luck until AS3 came along.

That's not to say that flash was ever a crappy product. One of the things that Flash didn't do at all until CS4 was export flash animations to movies where there was script present. If there was script present, up until CS2 it was not rendered, meaning:

The only way to WATCH the animation at anything other than the resolution it was set to was to save the flash file to your hard drive and play it back in the stand-alone player at full screen. You can not simply "convert to quicktime" or "convert to AVI".

As of CS4 the flash professional product actually uses the "player" engine to render the video, unfortunately this results some sometimes questionable output as the flash has to effectively be rendered in real time.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[ChunderDownunder]

iTunes continues to be Carbon because it eases cross-platform development.

Sure, but Safari is Cocoa. If Apple were serious about ditching Carbon, wouldn't it make sense to write any multi-platform applications using a cocoa-lite runtime for Win32? 'Cocoa' for Windows existed in the form of openstep in the dying days of NeXT.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Kakao]

Lastly.... despite what the article summary says here on Slashdot, overall Flash performance is quite a bit better in 10.1, especially on OS X. Do your own benchmarking; you'll see for yourself.

I did. In Linux CPU utilization went from 20% to 80%. I want 10.0 back.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Bert64]

What they should do then, is open source the player and let other people work on it...
Considering how much effort has gone into workarounds to handle the binary flash player, i guess there are quite a lot of people who would be interested in contributing. Also the player itself is given away for free anyway, so why don't they open it up?

Re:Apple provided APIs

[LizardKing]

if only there were more of us

Move to Scotland - the place is awash with gingers.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[washu_k]

I've been simplifying by talking just about h.264 decoding, but that's not the whole problem. On OSX, third parties can't even use basic stuff like overlay properly. That's really basic stuff, but still vitally important to low CPU use when playing videos. Overlay has been around since at least the Win 3.1 days and hardware of that era.

Even if your video card doesn't support h.264 decoding, using overlay will still drastically reduce CPU playback of h.264 content. OSX simply doesn't allow it, at least until this new API.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[jedidiah]

Yes. How DARE the heretics write their own decoder.

Except as others have pointed out, it wouldn't matter because Apple would still treat their stuff as second class anyways.

Bowing to Apple's will wouldn't exactly get them anywhere.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[jedidiah]

> Apple has been quite the busy technology company in the last 10 years.

Are you kidding? This is THE FINDER we're talking about here, not some obscure bit hidden behind 3 layers of indirection that users never see.

The fact that Apple couldn't be bothered to update their user shell is just sad.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[nine-times]

Apple has been well behind Microsoft Windows when it comes to providing third parties with APIs to do hardware acceleration

Ultimately, hardware acceleration should be a side issue. Flash has been a buggy bloated mess for years. It crashes. They shouldn't need special hardware acceleration APIs to keep Flash from crashing when watching YouTube movies.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Library Spoff]

B.Y.O.B.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Deadguy2322]

You are a fucking idiot. Apple doesn't treat Adobe as second-class, the problem is Adobe not giving a shit about user experience. VLC, MPlayer and lots of others on OS X work perfectly, Adobe doesn't. Why is that, you fucking ignorant piece of monkey shit?

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Peganthyrus]

Flash has been sucking on Macs since long before FLV, since long before OSX. I first encountered Flash around 2000, when I started working in web animation. Spümcø was a Mac shop and as we got deeper into Flash we really started to regret that as the Flash editor and player were both significantly slower on Macs than on Windows boxes that were otherwise pretty much equivalent in speed and power; there were some special magic Mac-version-only bugs in the editor that showed up when dealing with the huge source files created at the tail end of making a cartoon.

The whole video thing is a red herring. Flash has sucked on Macs for ten years.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Skuld-Chan]

It's really pretty simple: Adobe doesn't want to make the investment necessary to make the Flash player efficient, stable, secure, and bloat-free. On the other hand, they want to keep making money selling the Flash development tools.

I'd like to see another application runtime that runs in less than 4 megabytes of disk space... Don't go running to Java either - it uses up almost *90* megabytes of disk space on my machine.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Just Some Guy]

Brunette?

Re:Apple provided APIs

[multimed]

I have a hard time coming up with any sympathy towards Adobe. They're a billion dollar technology company. If they couldn't figure out a way to either modernize the code they bought or rewrite it to be more efficient and current, it's their own damn fault. I met a lot of Macromedia people awhile back - there were a lot of great people: some brilliant geeks, some brilliant artists and even some really rare freaks who were both. I think Adobe replaced them with "brilliant" marketing people.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been simplifying by talking just about h.264 decoding, but that's not the whole problem. On OSX, third parties can't even use basic stuff like overlay properly. That's really basic stuff, but still vitally important to low CPU use when playing videos. Overlay has been around since at least the Win 3.1 days and hardware of that era.

Dude. OS X has a fully composited double buffered window server which uses hardware accelerated OpenGL to do compositing and scaling. There is no point in using the ancient, obsolete fixed function video overlay hardware you speak of. So far as I know, nothing does (including Apple's own software like QuickTime). I doubt the drivers even support it. (I remember the lack of overlay being a major annoyance in the early days of OS X, since OS 9 did support it, but I don't think they ever did add it. There wasn't much need once they got GPU accelerated compositing.)

You can't possibly have much direct experience with Mac OS X because if you did, you'd know that tons of third party applications do in fact make use of GL-accelerated paths to do video scaling. It's the expected norm, not an exception.

Many of your other posts have been equally ignorant. For example, all your complaints about how Apple blocks other people from taking advantage of H.264 decode acceleration. Truth is, they themselves were very, VERY late to the table when it came to doing that internally, it's still a bit incomplete (only supports a couple of the most recent NVidia GPUs, and no ATI GPUs at all), and it's taken them about a year (IIRC) to publicize that API since they first began shipping it for themselves. The reason things like 3rd party MKV plugins don't use it is simply that it's very new and they haven't been updated yet. Same story for apps like VLC.

Re:Apple provided APIs

[pureevilmatt]

Your point being that if there were more of you... then we could REAAAALLY discriminate against you? Like so: http://vimeo.com/11219730

Re:Apple provided APIs

[amn108]

I am fairly sure he confused "codecs" with "decoders". Decorders as in they wrote the video/audio decoding algorithms themselves, as opposed to making use of whatever the environment has.

More like decelerated

[Just Some Guy]

Linux currently lacks a developed standard API that supports H.264 hardware video decoding, and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs.

The Linux thing might be true. Even if there was one universally implemented GL desktop standard, that's not the same as having a universally implemented hardware decoding API. They're pretty much orthogonal. As far as OS X, though, nothing changes the fact that Flash uses 3x as much CPU as VLC to render the same video. Spare me the apologist line of "Flash does more work than VLC!" - maybe that's their whole problem. You'd think something as widely used would have some optimized codepaths for the most common use case of playing Youtube videos.

Re:More like decelerated

[by (1706743)]

But flash does more work than VLC! For instance, if you right-click on your VLC window, do you get an "About Adobe Flash Player XX..." option? Didn't think so. You'd be surprised how many CPU cycles that little bugger eats up.

Re:More like decelerated

[JamesP]

It seems linux has a standart API, but it's quite recent: It's called VDPAU

Re:More like decelerated

[gad_zuki!]

Thats because flash isnt using hardware acceleration but VLC is.

Re:More like decelerated

[Anonymous Coward]

how fricking hilarious you are. Write a program that will render your video stream into a texture that you can rotate, scale, alpha blend, apply pixel shaders on it and when it makes all that faster than Flash then keep talking.

Re:More like decelerated

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a little more complicated than that. VDPAU is Nvidia's solution to the problem. The "new standard" is called VA-API, and is supported natively by Intel and S3 for some of their chipsets. It can also use the proprietary VDPAU (Nvidia) and XvBA (AMD/ATI) driver extensions as backends.

Re:More like decelerated

[Per Wigren]

Linux has VA-API, the one true standard for hardware accelerated video decoding on Linux. Adobe should just use that and not struggle with the various proprietary vendor-specific APIs (VDPAU, XvBA, etc).

Re:More like decelerated

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off Mike Melanson. We know that's you.

Re:More like decelerated

[Anonymous Coward]

It's slower *when you're not using those features*.

It's kinda like me saying my econobox gets better mileage going across town than your 18-wheeler. You say "but I can carry a bunch of freight!" But if the question is getting around town, I don't fucking care how much crap you can carry. I just want to go to the movies.

Re:More like decelerated

[Just Some Guy]

I don't think that's true. From my (admittedly limited) understanding, VLC is software-only. Either way, it's ludicrous that an open source project can get decent video performance while Adobe can't.

Re:More like decelerated

[Anonymous Coward]

VDPAU only works on NVIDIA hardware, and only Geforce8 or newer.
It's an "open" API, but no other HW vendors have implemented it yet.
wiki

Re:More like decelerated

[Anonymous Coward]

I see your point but you have to pay the price for the extra utility regardless. Even if you don't use these features in the particular case the rendering path is more complicated than that into a pure video player. There is also an overhead of browser - plugin communication. We should compare apples to apples.

Re:More like decelerated

[ink]

The Linux thing might be true. Even if there was one universally implemented GL desktop standard, that's not the same as having a universally implemented hardware decoding API. They're pretty much orthogonal.

Linux has a few competing standards, but complaining about that does not excuse Adobe from implementing one. There are millions of embedded Linux devices that use hardware decoding for video -- going all the way back to MPEG2. You would think Adobe would allocate developer resources for something this important, unless it's not all that important for them, of course. I can't watch fullscreen Flash content on YouTube -- but HTML5 content plays flawlessly. Advantage, HTML5.

Re:More like decelerated

[ink]

VLC uses XVideo under Linux for certain. Flash cannot use XVideo, because it has to mix RGB content over the top of video -- but VLC at least uses that.

Re:More like decelerated

[king neckbeard]

VLC, Mplayer, etc can do video and subtitles without a lot of overhead. Most video on the internet is not doing more than that. so if flash can't compete, flash should not be used for normal web video. (also, CSS3 animations, javascript, and such make rotating, scaling, and other modifications of video work without a lot of additional overhead.)

Re:More like decelerated

[drinkypoo]

I don't think that's true. From my (admittedly limited) understanding, VLC is software-only.

Try installing VLC and looking at the output options, which include OpenGL and VDPAU, before you make a comment on what video backends VLC uses.

I am using OpenGL because Ubuntu still can't get rid of blue video. Fail, fail.

Re:More like decelerated

[Evanisincontrol]

I am using OpenGL because Ubuntu still can't get rid of blue video. Fail, fail.

Forgive my ignorance, but what do you mean when you say "get rid of blue video"? I have VDPAU set in VLC and I've never had a problem with it

Re:More like decelerated

[Just Some Guy]

On OS X? That's what I was talking about just now.

Re:More like decelerated

[Just Some Guy]

I don't disagree with anything you said. My main point, though, was that other video players manage not to complete suck when running on the same systems that Flash can barely manage. I don't care whether my CPU is a Befunge virtual machine; VLC and MPlayer are FOSS programs that work, and you'd think Adobe's resources would let them get Flash working.

Re:More like decelerated

[drinkypoo]

On OS X? That's what I was talking about just now.

That wasn't clear from that particular comment. That's why we use the <quote> tag. Well, some of us.

vlc is Software-only because, apparently, the only container format you can pass to Quicktime for H.264 acceleration is MOV. I suppose you could remux in realtime, though. It seems doable. Perhaps there is some reason why not.

Re:More like decelerated

[PastaLover]

The stated reason VA-API doesn't work for them is that they can't get at the decoded data (from here). I don't know if that is at all accurate (I have my doubts) but it's pretty clear they don't have the manpower to do anything about it anyway.

Except except...

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for everybody.

Fuck you Adobe, you guys suck balls.

Apple recently added an official API to access

[thestudio_bob]

and Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs.

Apple recently added an official API to access the H.264 decoding features of certain NVIDIA GPUs used in recent Macs. I'm sure Adobe was just rushing to get this out because of the zero-day.

Adobe will accelerate Flash video using new Apple API

Re:Apple recently added an official API to access

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, thanks but this is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

Of course they added an official API that works with NVIDIA cards - every Mac now-a-days has an NVIDIA GPU in it.

Mac OS X 10.6.3 exposed low-level h.264 API

[Anonymous Coward]

Technical Note TN2267
Video Decode Acceleration Framework Reference

http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2010/tn2267.html

Still no 2D acceleration for Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I know, Flash doesn't even have 2D acceleration for Linux, since it doesn't use xv or OpenGL at all.

It would probably be faster to use Flash for Windows under VirtualBox with 3D acceleration enabled, using VirtualBox's Direct3D -> OpenGL translation.

Re:Still no 2D acceleration for Linux

[ihxo]

Apparently Linux doesn't allow Adobe to get access to hardware acceleration.

Like I always say, bitching and moaning about Apple is the only way Adobe can mask their own incompetence.

Re:Still no 2D acceleration for Linux

[h4rr4r]

not so.

VA-API and VDPAU are both available.
If gnash can do it so could flash.

Re:Still no 2D acceleration for Linux

[icebraining]

Whoosh!

Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you mean a computationally intensive process like video decompression makes laptops work hard???

My god! What shocking news!

Re:Idiot

[fredmosby]

If an iPad with a 1GHZ processor can do full screen video for hours without getting hot, my dual 2.2 GHz laptop ought to be able to do full screen video without using 90% of my processor and the fan turning on.

Re:Idiot

[PIBM]

Hardware acceleration can do wonderfull thing. Just make sure your laptop got one of the supported video card!

Re:Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, it shouldn't. Hardware fragmentation like this is exactly why the PC sucks ass. Consumers think the PC is great, but when it comes down to it, writing native generic code for hundreds of GPUs is a massive pain in the ass, extremely difficult to port, and has proved more limiting than we even know.

Re:Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but the iPad can only handle low resolution video. It doesn't do HD or even 720p.

Re:Idiot

[tumnasgt]

iPad does 720p. In fact, in some countries (including my own), Apple TVs and iPads are the only way to buy HD movies on iTunes. Funny, seeing as the iPad hasn't launched here yet.

Re:Idiot

[gig]

The MSNBC Countdown site is a great comparison of what Flash costs in inefficiency. On a notebook it is Flash, but on iPad it is HTML5. The Flash site runs the fan on my MacBook Air and uses battery such that it would last for 2 hours. (Typically it gets 5.) On iPad, the HTML5 site runs cool and uses battery such that it would last for over 10 hours. The video also looks better on iPad, and the scrolling works as you'd expect whereas the Flash version has choppy video and the scroller doesn't work unless you click on it. I know my GPU has an H.264 decoder and I think Apple has provided access just recently (but probably not early enough to get into FlashPlayer v10.1) but I prefer the HTML5 version's interactivity also. It's just better.

Ironically, Microsoft doesn't have an HTML5 browser yet and NBC was the one TV company that said it was sticking with Flash for now. But whoever did the HTML5 site did a nice job.

MSNBC Countdown
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_

To see the HTML5 version on a notebook, spoof iPad's UA string with Safari's Develop menu. On iPad the scrollers are invisible.

Re:Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

The ipad is using a lower power ARM CPU and has h.264 decoding built into the metal. It's using solid state drives and has a very low resolution display. Your laptop is using a thirsty Intel CPU, will have spinning storage and will have a much higher screen resolution to deal with. If your system is using lots of CPU, you need to look at how your video is playing back. If you're using windows, you've had h.264 hardware decoding available for 4 years, providing you have a decent video chipset and not some cheap junk from Intel. So that's what you need to look at as a starting point. If you're running Linux or BSD, you're shit out of luck, like me :(

Re:Idiot

[jedidiah]

> hundreds of GPUs is a massive pain in the ass

No not really.

In reality, you are talking about 3 major companies.

One genuine problem is that you've quite quite literally got to worry about 10 year old machines. Of course a platform that isn't 10 years old won't have to worry about 5 or 10 year old machines potentially make it look bad.

OTOH, the iPad's acceleration is crap. It only supports h264 in very incomplete way. You either cater to it or video just doesn't work at all.

Re:Idiot

[jedidiah]

> If you're running Linux or BSD, you're shit out of luck, like me :(

Nonsense.

An AppleTV has partial video acceleration under Linux. Other devices do better.

It's not a total wasteland just because you're using Linux.

If you use the gear that's recommended for this stuff under Windows, then you're good under Linux.

Re:Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that the iPad screen resolution is 1024×768, even if the CPU were powerful enough (which is doubtful) you CAN'T do 1280x720 (720p) because the hardware is physically incapable of displaying it.

Re:Idiot

[amn108]

It's not a PC problem, it's a problem of lacking consistent interfaces to video decoding, and/or lack of their (interfaces') implementations. Solving the "PC problem" by say switching to the homogenous Mac culture, is just working around the "interface" problem by turning yourself in to a dictator in control of both the single interface and its single implementations.

Take it from a computer programmer, to whom most of the problems can be simply deduced to "interface and implementation" problems. Of course, adding the human element to it changes everything, but it is better to start solving a problem on a sort of democratic ground - admitting there are numerous groups wanting to implement an interface, and that each group wanting to make use of an implementation only wants to do it once - through a well-published interface. That's a good start towards a solution.

So much for 64-bit

[innocent_white_lamb]

No more 64-bit Linux version:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/64bit.html

The Flash Player 10.1 64-bit Linux beta is closed. We remain committed to delivering 64-bit support in a future release of Flash Player. No further information is available at this time.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[WrongSizeGlass]

They closed the 64-bit Linux beta ... but didn't release a 64-bit Linux version of 10.1? So they closed the beta but not the security hole? Rocket surgery indeed!

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

He who speaks Latin is doomed to repeat it?

Re:So much for 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

It caused Firefox to crash every 5-15 minutes. Guess they gave up on it instead of trying to fix it.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[Fnkmaster]

The old 10.0.45 version of it appears to still be downloadable from here (not sure if there was another version after that).

However, given the rate at which security issues crop up in Flash, you are probably better off using the nspluginwrapper thunking stuff or other method for your distro that makes the 32 bit plugin work on 64 bit Linux, rather than running an out of date Flash plugin.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[gmack]

nspluginwrapper is not only unstable but it blocks keyboard input to flash. Using it is a complete waste of time.

Better off pressuring websites to dump flash.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[reub2000]

You've obviously never used it on an Athlon 64 lacking the lahf_lm instruction.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[macemoneta]

With the pressure from HTML5 and Apple, I guess Adobe figures now is a good time to fragment the Flash market. We no longer need Flash for Youtube, and we'll just have to suffer through not having dancing, blaring, advertisements. Strangely, I'm OK with this.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[moonbender]

Never heard of that one. Keyboard input always worked fine for me and plenty other people, though there was a problem with mouse input with a one-time workaround. I've been running 64-bit for a while now, but if Adobe is not fixing the security hole in the 64bit version, I guess I'll have to go back to nspluginwrapper. At least until YouTube reliably works in Firefox without Flash.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[pizzap]

64bit flash beta worked fine, but with all this bugs around and the beta closed.. no more flash for me. Never touching this nspluginwrapper crap again. Guess I just go and build myself an ffmpeg enabled chromium browser to watch youtube..

Re:So much for 64-bit

[IANAAC]

We no longer need Flash for Youtube...

There are a fair number of us that have never needed Youtube, but would love to see an alternative for things like Hulu.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[bersl2]

Better off pressuring websites to dump flash.

While it would please me to no end for everyone to dump Flash in favor of HTML5+SVG+SMIL/Javascript, the fact is that one or more pieces of software needs to be written to replace the Flash authoring tools. There are many SVG programs, but those don't do everything needed.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[bersl2]

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.

He who speaks Latin is doomed to repeat it?

lol, but no. First of all, it should be "videtur". But it means "Whatever may be said in Latin seems profound."

Re:So much for 64-bit

[Yfrwlf]

Called HTML5. As for non-video-playback stuff though like SVG animations and whatnot, I'm still shocked there is no standard for doing that, though there is Java...but certain Java apps requiring certain versions of Java has aggravated me to no end, and definitely serves to invalidate it as a standard IMO even though it is open source now.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[r7]

They closed the 64-bit Linux beta ... but didn't release a 64-bit Linux version of 10.1? So they closed the beta but not the security hole? Rocket surgery indeed!

Obviously something fundamental is wrong at Adobe. My guess is that they're code-bound by proprietary hooks, much the same as Microsoft (and Apple) though to a far greater degree.

Bottom line is Flash must go.

Flash is the suckiest application on the web, beating all rivals in unpatched vulnerabilities by a country mile. (ok, maybe Acrobat is a close second)

Re:So much for 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Hulu is never going to use HTML5 video.

When it comes to technology, our only guiding principle is to best serve the needs of all of our key customers: our viewers, our content partners who license programs to us, our advertisers, and each other. We continue to monitor developments on HTML5, but as of now it doesn’t yet meet all of our customers’ needs. Our player doesn’t just simply stream video, it must also secure the content, handle reporting for our advertisers, render the video using a high performance codec to ensure premium visual quality, communicate back with the server to determine how long to buffer and what bitrate to stream, and dozens of other things that aren’t necessarily visible to the end user. Not all video sites have these needs, but for our business these are all important and often contractual requirements.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[jvillain]

No problem. Just uninstall flash and your security problem goes away. I just did.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

nspluginwrapper is not unstable, flash is. when running flash through nspluginwrapper only the plugin crashes. when running the 64 bit version, it takes down the browser with it. also the keyboard input problem has a trivial workaround.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Better off pressuring websites to dump flash.

Yeah, blame the websites and blame Adobe, because that's been working so well for the last 10 years.

People who just want this shit to work have been using 32-bit browsers on their 64-bit systems. That common-sense configuration should be enabled out of the box, particularly as Firefox only officially tests and ships 32-bit binaries anyway, and if you want to use your distribution's version of Firefox it will be months out of date and riddled with security holes (I'm looking at you, Iceweasel). Everyone uses a 32-bit browser on Windows as well, because there's no compelling reason to use a 64-bit browser.

Put yourself in the shoes of Adobe's Linux developer and imagine how much you hate the "community", who despise you no matter how well you do your job even as you try to help them. If I was that guy I'd probably have jumped off a bridge by now. Pressuring websites to dump Flash, indeed...

Re:So much for 64-bit

[selven]

Nah, Acrobat is worse. Flash is insecure but it has to be very complex because of all the things you can do with it, so the insecurity is partially excusable. Acrobat, however, took the genius step of implementing javascript in a document format, something which 99.999% of PDFs don't need, but which 99.999% of malicious PDFs rely on. PDF should be a secure format, like .png and .txt are, but they just had to give documents the ability to run scripts on your machine.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't really care. I use 64-bit Linux but I only used Flash to mediate video. With YouTube and Vimeo (and no doubt other major video sites to follow) supporting WebM I won't have any use for Flash in the relatively near term. YouTube's WebM works well in Minefield right now.

Re:So much for 64-bit

[gmack]

Last time I tried installing 32 bit firefox it caused some interesting breakage in my system libraries because the compat 32 bit libs conflicted with apps that needed the same library in 64 bit.

That forced me to setup a 32 bit chroot that was ugly as a sollution but kind of worked for the most part. I ditched the 32 bit chroot in favor of Adobe's 64 bit flash because it worked more seamlessly with the rest of my system and was much more stable than nspluginwrapper.

What I did not expect was to have Adobe discontinue the beta and leave me with a flash version with known security holes and left with the vague promise to re introduce it at some point in the future that they refuse to disclose.

So now I'm left looking forward to making major changes to my setup again because I made the mistake of thinking Adobe could be trusted to not completely rearrange their product plans.

Fro5t 4ist..

[Anonymous Coward]

fuelIng internal THE RAIN..WE CAN BE the reaper BSD's real prOblems that visit propaganda and People's faces is

Apple Incompetence

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, a niche desktop manufacturer with its own niche 3 percent worldwide marketshare OS who can't even be bothered to provide the necessary APIs for third parties to hardware accelerate video decoding really isn't the one to blame.

It's Adobe fault for Apple's incompetence...

Oh god...

Re:Apple Incompetence

[aristotle-dude]

Apple recently provided a new low level API because of Adobe whining but they have had two APIs for H264 decoding for several years now. The problem with flash video is that they use a profile for H264 which is not supported by hardware decoders when they could have easily used the correctly profile. Adobe is the one that screwed up here.

Re:Apple Incompetence

[washu_k]

The problem is those previous APIs don't actually work. Read through the VLC forums sometime on the problems they've had implementing acceleration on OSX, it's quite enlightening. Nothing that Apple hasn't blessed can use the old APIs and actually have the hardware acceleration work.

Now, Flash is a horribly programed pile of crap which is why it uses 3X the CPU of VLC to decode the same video on OSX. But neither of them are using hardware acceleration because it's impossible for a third party to do so on OSX, at least prior to this new API. Compare VLC on OSX to Windows or Linux on the same hardware. It still uses a massive amount more CPU on OSX than the others.

Re:Apple Incompetence

[Just Some Guy]

It's Adobe fault for Apple's incompetence...

In much the same way that it's VLC's fault for Adobe's incompetence.

Re:Apple Incompetence

[rakslice]

I don't understand... Why would the profiles supported by hardware decoders be different on macs than on any other computer using the same GPU?

Re:Apple Incompetence

[aristotle-dude]

I don't understand... Why would the profiles supported by hardware decoders be different on macs than on any other computer using the same GPU?

The profile used by flash is not supported by mobile hardware decoders. It is an obsolete profile that nobody else uses. That is why flash video performs so poorly on mobile platforms.

Re:Apple Incompetence

[aristotle-dude]

Please. The reason why VLC does not use Core Animation and Core Video is because they are not cross platform compatible. There are plenty of examples of software which use them successfully.

They are feeding you bullshit and you bought it hook line and sinker.

Re:Apple Incompetence

[washu_k]

That's not the case at all. Why does VLC use so much less CPU on Windows/Linux than on OSX if everything is perfectly cross platform? Sure, it doesn't use directshow on Windows, but it does use the lower level video acceleration APIs to great benefit. Same deal on Linux, it uses the video acceleration that X11 provides. The equivalent APIs on OSX just don't work.

Your argument also doesn't account for Perian, which is most certainly OSX only and not cross platform. Perian is a Quicktime plug-in and very much tied to Apple's APIs. Feed H.264 out of a MOV file to the Quicktime decoder and it will enable hardware acceleration. Feed that EXACT SAME STREAM, except out of a MKV or AVI through Perian to the EXACT SAME DECODER in Quicktime and hardware acceleration gets disabled because Perian is not "blessed" by Apple.

Re:Apple Incompetence

[vijayiyer]

Why can't perian repackage the H.264 MKV or AVI into a MOV and then feed that to the decoder?
BTW, what do you mean "blessed" by Apple?

Re:Apple Incompetence

[aristotle-dude]

That's not the case at all. Why does VLC use so much less CPU on Windows/Linux than on OSX if everything is perfectly cross platform? Sure, it doesn't use directshow on Windows, but it does use the lower level video acceleration APIs to great benefit. Same deal on Linux, it uses the video acceleration that X11 provides. The equivalent APIs on OSX just don't work. Your argument also doesn't account for Perian, which is most certainly OSX only and not cross platform. Perian is a Quicktime plug-in and very much tied to Apple's APIs. Feed H.264 out of a MOV file to the Quicktime decoder and it will enable hardware acceleration. Feed that EXACT SAME STREAM, except out of a MKV or AVI through Perian to the EXACT SAME DECODER in Quicktime and hardware acceleration gets disabled because Perian is not "blessed" by Apple.

What are you talking about "blessed" by Apple? I am talking about the "Core Video and Core Animation" which are part of OS X 10.5 and later. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Animation and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_Video .

A quick search seems to indicate that they do not yet use Core Video and they do not have an official 64bit build for OS X.

Let's kill Flash

[MrEricSir]

Next time I see a commercial website that requires Flash, I'll call the vendor and explain why I can't use their website. Should help kill Flash once and for all.

Re:Let's kill Flash

[Xtravar]

Apple's already working on it!

Re:Let's kill Flash

[theskipper]

On the fliip side of the coin, Flash ads get blocked implicitly.

Re:Let's kill Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

You've never had to do phone support, right? You'll get labeled "that guy". People will get your call, sigh in exasperation, listen to you, then do nothing after they say they'll pass it on. There's a small chance they will later mock you to that person. But it probably won't get that far.

Re:Let's kill Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not seeing a negative on either side....

Re:Let's kill Flash

[MrEricSir]

In other words, it's costing the company money and pissing people off.

Which is exactly what I'm trying to do.

Re:Let's kill Flash

[westlake]

Next time I see a commercial website that requires Flash, I'll call the vendor and explain why I can't use their website. Should help kill Flash once and for all.

The vendor collects internal stats and subscribes to Net Applications and other services.

He knows that you represent less than 1% of his target audience.

Re:Let's kill Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time I see a commercial website that requires Flash, I'll call the vendor and explain why I can't use their website. Should help kill Flash once and for all.

Boss: So, we've taken a first look at the bidders for our tender. This first product looks strong, but... hmm, seems they're now excluded. Why?
McEricSir: Uh, their web site required Flash.
Boss: ...

Re:Let's kill Flash

[vlueboy]

In other words, it's costing the company money and pissing people off.

Which is exactly what I'm trying to do.

Um, no. You're only exacting revenge that way, like any other irate customer... the company does not really "lose" money until you tie up someone other than minimum wage support monkeys located in india.
WE are trying to force change for the better. Pissing people off at the low end of the totem pole isn't going to get someone a president like Steve Jobs on the line to fix your problem.

Re:Let's kill Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

This, this is why I still come to Slashdot! You're so cute MrEricSir I just want to hug you!

Re:Let's kill Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me for sounding like a troll, but what development tools are available as an alternative to Flash that allow businesses to post protected interactive content? I'm not aware of any.

We have had a problem with distributors ripping off our content and posting it on their websites as their own, and building content in Flash prevents this because it is not easy to copy. Can you do this in HTML5?

Re:Let's kill Flash

[Ant P.]

So how do they measure a lost sale? Not even the RIAA can do that properly.

Re:Let's kill Flash

[jeffmeden]

To what end? Do you honestly think they will get rid of flash because support calls are costing them too much money? Here's what will happen; after they see all the time being wasted on flash complainers, they will either put in a menu option that says "for all questions regarding flash use on our web site, press 8 to be put on hold for 5 minutes then disconnected"... Or, more likely just ship all the work off to Manila where you can take up as much of their time as you want since it costs the company pennies on the dollar.

Good thinking!

Re:Let's kill Flash

[MrEricSir]

So you're saying it will be something like this:

1. Some restaurant's website uses Flash
2. I call the restaurant to complain
3. They transfer me to their branch in Manila

Wow, I didn't know all my local business had overseas call centers. Thanks for the tip.

That's good

[blai]

The less people with hardware-accelerated Flash, the less people would use flash, right?

Re:That's good

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much. I read this as the further continuation of the downfall of Flash. This is pretty much it for me, I won't be using it at all because 10 is insecure and there is no 10.1 64-bit for Linux (possibility never will be).

For something so ubiquitous you would think Adobe would put more energy into it. Oh well, bye-bye Flash.

Hopefully more sites will be moving fully to HTML5. Flash is a dead at this point.

Re:That's good

[nametaken]

Negative. They'll all complain that their computer and internet tubes are too slow. Then they'll buy new, faster computers.

Link broken? i can't see an installer

[Anonymous Coward]

so where is the fricken installer ? all i can see is a link to install a "Adobe Download Manager" and a Mcafee anti virus scan"(i thought i had an antivirus) which isnt exactly the Flash Plugin" that i need, its not 1995 and im not on a 28k dialup so why would i even want a "download manager"? and hawk some AV companies product ?

no wonder Adobe is becoming a cesspit of crap/insecure software, spending resources on things that have nothing to do with their core products and having to hawk other peoples shit (Mcafee) to pay for it

"Direct rendering" != "Hardware acceleration"

[Nahor]

"Direct rendering" != "Hardware acceleration".

Correct me if I'm wrong but:
- "Direct rendering" = decode the data directly to Video buffer. Otherwise the data needs to be decoded to a RAM buffer which then needs to be copied to the Video buffer to be actually displayed.
- "Hardware acceleration" = use the GPU for decoding (because a GPU is usually way faster than the CPU for this kind of work).

So you can have "direct rendering" without the "hardware acceleration" (and vice-versa though it's unlikely to happen in practice).

Re:"Direct rendering" != "Hardware acceleration"

[seeker_1us]

"Direct rendering" != "Hardware acceleration".

- "Hardware acceleration" = use the GPU for decoding (because a GPU is usually way faster than the CPU for this kind of work).

So you can have "direct rendering" without the "hardware acceleration" (and vice-versa though it's unlikely to happen in practice).

Interestingly enough, that "hardware acceleration" without "direct rendering" was an option with Voodoo2 cards in the older days of Linux: if you wanted to have hardware accelerated MESA rendered in a window, you could offload the computation to the Voodoo2 cards, they would send the data back to RAM, which would then be sent to the primary video card. A significant performance loss over having the Voodoo2 render in full screen but it was cool nonetheless. :)

Re:"Direct rendering" != "Hardware acceleration"

[MostAwesomeDude]

Direct rendering is *any* hardware-specific access that doesn't have to go through the X server. This includes *all* hardware setup in e.g. KMS and blob drivers.

Hardware acceleration is kind of a frustrating term. Scaling, colorspace conversion, and decoding are all parts of hardware acceleration. People are usually talking about decoding, motion compensation, color correction, colorspace conversion, and scaling, all in one go, when talking about "hardware-accelerated video" these days. However, even mere scaling and colorspace conversion (Xvideo) is more than enough to save the day on a modern system.

Direct Download?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone have a direct link to download the Windows Firefox version without having to install Adobe's shitty download manager?

Re:Direct Download?

[Anonymous Coward]

Give this a shot: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player.exe

Re:Direct Download?

[lyinhart]

And the version for IE: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_ax.exe

Re:Direct Download?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody give this guy (and lyinhart below) a few upmods!

Re:Direct Download?

[Blue Stone]

I thought it was bad enough having to install their getPlusPlus plugin into Firefox, but on trying to install this latest Flash update they also insisted that I install the "Adobe DLM (powered by GetPlusPlus)".

WTF? Just give me an .xpi or an exe or something, not all this crap.

And while I'm at it, quit tryignt o get me to install the Akami Download Manager when I download a trial of ytour products, too. FFS!

Re:Direct Download?

[Culture20]

Download the IE version in FF. Download the FF version in IE. No activeX, no instant plugin crap.

Re:Direct Download?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet... Gentlemen, I present to you Adobe Flash Player v10.1.53.64 redistributables.
Redist always proves to be superior compared to bullc**p they hand to regular end-users.

http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/licensing/win/install_flash_player_10_plugin.msi
http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/licensing/win/install_flash_player_10_active_x.msi

Re:Direct Download?

[trust_jmh]

This link is much better: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/uninstall_flash_player.exe

Re:Direct Download?

[Larafabian]

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Re:Direct Download?

[Blue Stone]

Thanks. It's all so bloody ridiculous though! :)

Also

[Sycraft-fu]

Acceleration of H.264 is different than OpenGL acceleration. You can have a card with full GL acceleration that doesn't accelerate H.264 decoding. Indeed many older cards were like this. The original GeForce 8800s didn't have full H.264 acceleration, despite their massive amount of 3D hardware.

You have a separate API for that sort of thing, and near as I know Linux does not provide that. You could still implement it, of course, by implementing the lower level stuff needed to talk to the card in the correct way, but that is rather a lot of work and not really the place of a user mode app. Idea is the OS should provide the APIs/ABIs for that sort of thing. Driver makers then support it on the low end, apps plug in on the high end and it all works.

Re:Also

[h4rr4r]

It does, VA-API or VDPAU.

Re:Also

[Anonymous Coward]

The Radeon R100 in the summary is somewhat old and isn't going to support any H.264 decoding, not because Adobe are evil and blacklist the GLX vendor, but because the hardware is several generations behind the current, and can't do it.

Next up: Linux has crap drivers because there's no OpenGL 4.0 support for my ATi Rage 128.

Re:Also

[TeknoHog]

Acceleration of H.264 is different than OpenGL acceleration. You can have a card with full GL acceleration that doesn't accelerate H.264 decoding. Indeed many older cards were like this. The original GeForce 8800s didn't have full H.264 acceleration, despite their massive amount of 3D hardware.

However, you can use GPGPU techniques to run almost any software you want on the 3D engine, including video decoding. I understand this is a planned feature of the opensource driver for older Radeon cards: "Video Decode (XvMC/VDPAU/VA-API) using the 3D engine"

Re:Also

[drinkypoo]

I understand this is a planned feature of the opensource driver for older Radeon cards: "Video Decode (XvMC/VDPAU/VA-API) using the 3D engine"

The opensource driver is still fucking around at step 1, "include support for antique chipsets like R2xx that doesn't cause video corruption." Once they have the driver actually working correctly, perhaps they can deal with video decoding. Frankly I doubt it will ever come to pass. Further, it doesn't belong in the video driver itself if it can be avoided.

Linux users basically have two working options. They can use a video downloader to download all flash movies they want to watch before viewing, or they can use GNASH. Or, you know, they can watch their CPU use go through the roof, but I don't consider that to be a valid option, nor do I consider "not upgrading" to be a valid option.

Stupid Fanboys

[Anonymous Coward]

"Adobe is the one that screwed up here."

Yes, dipshit. That's why Flash has problems doing hardware decoding on Windows...

Oh wait. It doesn't.

Time for you to shut the fuck up.

Windows friends??!!

[Foofoobar]

I anticipate my Windows friends will have a much better experience

PARIAH!! UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!

Re:Windows friends??!!

[smellsofbikes]

I anticipate my Windows friends will have a much better experience

PARIAH!! UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!

My girlfriend uses Vista on her laptop, so I, too, have Windows friends. For SHAME.

What I think is funny is that about every three days I come home and my laptop is running with her signed in, because she needed to use the flatbed scanner (which doesn't work with Vista despite downloading drivers) or the digital camera (which does work with Vista if you don't mind reinitializing the SD card every time Vista touches it) or downloading videos onto her Creative Zen (which *occasionally* works with Vista.) Whereas my homebrew linux laptop handles all those without any complications.

It doesn't, however, handle flash. Le sigh.

Re:Windows friends??!!

[Foofoobar]

Sure it does, just have to know how to install it. I have Flash installed on my Ubuntu machine. But regardless HTML5 is going to replace it anyway. I'm presently working on a 16-bit MORPG (much like MUDding) in HTML5.

Download Links

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like the 'Adobe Downloader', use this page:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/fp_distribution3.html

Re:Download Links

[6350']

Mod parent up.

Re:Download Links

[Jucius Maximus]

Thanks, much appreciated.

Re:Download Links

[Anonymous Coward]

you can also use the Other Operating system link and download that way.

Re:Download Links

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like they fixed that to work the way it used to then. I know the last time I tried to get the exe installer, there was basically no way to get it other than signing up for the distribution license thing. If you didn't know the download url.

The next major release will be really loud.

[ptbarnett]

Adobe Goes to Flash 10.1

"These go to eleven."

Adobe is even worse than Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

And thats for sure

SHENANIGANS!

[Azureflare]

No mac or linux HW support? I call Shenanigans on Adobe!

Can we get our brooms now?

10.1 has nVidia GPU support

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been waiting for the release of 10.1, now I can use my 384 GPU cores to render useless flash adverts!

The new API is unusable

[Anonymous Coward]

They did, but the new API is completely useless - it's only for a certain patch level of Mac OS X 10.6.

Imagine you're the type of idiot to use Macs - do you know what patch level of 10.6 you're using? Do you know if it supports accelerated H.264 decoding? Yeah, I didn't think so. Imagine trying to support that.

Adobe still supports Mac OS X 10.4. This alone makes Apple's "new" API completely fucking useless, since you can only use it if you only target the absolute latest Mac OS X 10.6.

Until Apple gets around to supporting their existing OSs, their new API is completely useless for anyone trying to support actual Mac users. The only people with 10.6 are people who bought new Macs with it, since 10.6 adds absolutely NOTHING useful over 10.5.

Re:The new API is unusable

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's impossible to check for the patch level and switch between code paths. Sounds like Adobe is just doing this to get Apple's goat, no technical reason.

Re:The new API is unusable

[je ne sais quoi]

Patch level? I couldn't figure out what the GP was talking about, I had to google it. OS X uses version numbers, patch level is some windows thing. Yes, security patches are issued outside of that, but they're assigned a date, not a patch level. No the H.264 API wasn't included in a security patch, it was in OS 10.6.3, just where it should be. Yes, the version number is straight in your user agent string:

HTTP_USER_AGENT:Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_3; en-us) ...

See that 10_6_3 part, that's the version number.

As for 10.6, it is blazingly fast compared to anything prior. I only wish it hadn't broken so much linux and unix code that used to be easy to compile.

As far as I can tell the GP's post had no useful information in it whatsoever, just a troll.

As for Adobe's announcement, this is precisely why I, as a mac/linux user, was in favor of Jobs tell Adobe to go to hell. Flash has always sucked on anything non-windows, it's awful.

Re:The new API is unusable

[abhi_beckert]

Why do we even need hardware accelerated h.264 decoding? My mac at work has it, and my ~6 year old mac at home doesn't have it. The only difference seems to be playing 1080p video.

For youtube quality... there's no reason to have hardware decoding except to conserve battery life. Adobe should be able to get 60 frames per second at low CPU usage on any processor released in the last 5 years, but they struggle even to achieve 20 frames per second at 100% cpu usage!

Adobe is the *only* video decoder with this problem. QuickTime, Windows Media Player, MPlayer, etc... they've all been decoding video perfectly fine for decades!

Re:The new API is unusable

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, adobe are quite the spectacular bunch of coders when it comes to video decoding and scaling. Their h264 decoder can't manage a 480p youtube video without some framedrop, 720p and higher is out of the question, then try watching that video fullscreen, 10fps for the low res version if you're lucky, this is hardware that plays the same streams ripped and run through mplayer without breaking a sweat. I wonder if they've discovered XVideo yet.

Re:The new API is unusable

[jo_ham]

This is what I never understood. Adobe makes a *huge fuss* trying to distract people with the hardware acceleration requirement, but other third party software on Mac has been getting along just fine without it.

There's no good reason that XBMC can play the HD streams from BBC iPlayer on my Mac with no issues and low/medium CPU use while the flash plugin itself is hitting the stops with max CPU use, and dropped frames. They are both pulling the same source down from the server. What makes XBMC so much better? It's not even like the Mac version of XBMC is their primary platform! I'm grateful there are Mac builds, of course, but their main focus is on the Linux version. (On a separate note, I am also saddened that the BBC added swf verification to their streams, breaking XBMC compatibility).

Adobe are just waving their hands and trying to distract from the fact that their Mac version of flash is really, really crappy because they just don't care, or they are stuck with legacy code... or who knows why? Even looking at pure software rendering of content (and not even video), there are marked differences between the Windows and the Mac version.

Re:The new API is unusable

[GigaplexNZ]

Adobe are just waving their hands and trying to distract from the fact that their Mac version of flash is really, really crappy because they just don't care, or they are stuck with legacy code... or who knows why?

It's not just their Mac version - they all suck in one way or another. And most people know that it is because the Adobe developers aren't particularly savvy.

Re:The new API is unusable

[tibit]

Adobe must be solidly messing things up. Even an otherwise clunky compiler like gcc can vectorize simple loops, so for example on x86 blitting in C can easily saturate whatever is the choke point in moving data around -- no more is the CPUs execution speed an issue. Same goes for most other data processing, such as 1D and 2D FIR (as you may need for rescale filtering). Methinks they don't have anyone who has a clue about signal processing. All they have is the artsy enterprisey folks. They know everything about whiz-bang technologies, but can't code for the life of them.

Re:The new API is unusable

[Anonymous Coward]

>See that 10_6_3 part, that's the version number.

major.minor.patch, so that'd be patch-level 3. HTH.

Re:The new API is unusable

[adolf]

Decades? Plural?

Kid, I assure you: If you were around computers 20 years ago, you'd have never made such a statement. Computer video in 1990 was anything but "perfectly fine," and none of the software you listed even existed at that time.

Re:The new API is unusable

[cp.tar]

As for Adobe's announcement, this is precisely why I, as a mac/linux user, was in favor of Jobs tell Adobe to go to hell. Flash has always sucked on anything non-windows, it's awful.

And I concur.

I use Mac, Linux and Windows. On Windows, Flash is rather awful. On anything else, it is unbearable.
Flash has got to be the worst piece of code since Windows Me and I for one can’t wait to see it die a quick but horrible death.

And while some Adobe fans (including some in the magazine I work in) praise Adobe and Flash and whatnot, I think Jobs’ decision to ditch Flash support is about as bold and visionary as the decision to use USB peripherals exclusively on the first iMac. That horror simply has to die, and this is the first nail in its coffin.
I just want to know what the stake through its heart will be.

Re:The new API is unusable

[theolein]

When you guys at Adobe do get it right, be sure to let us know, ok?

Re:The new API is unusable

[TheRaven64]

They added a new API with 10.6.3 which looks exactly like the one that Adobe requested. It's basically marked in the documentation as 'don't use this, it's just for Adobe, there are better ways of doing this if you're not a complete moron.'

Before then, QuickTime, including QuickTime X, could render to multiple targets, including OpenGL textures and CoreAnimation layers. You can take an H.264 stream, send it through QuickTime, and then composite it using either OpenGL or CA. QuickTime has a much more optimised software implementation of H.264 than the crap bundled with Flash (it will happily play some streams for me, using about 75% of CPU, that are slideshows in Flash).

But, really, this is all misdirection. FFMPEG uses no hardware acceleration, but manages to use about half of the CPU of Flash.

Re:The new API is unusable

[drinkypoo]

Before then, QuickTime, including QuickTime X, could render to multiple targets, including OpenGL textures and CoreAnimation layers. You can take an H.264 stream, send it through QuickTime, and then composite it using either OpenGL or CA.

What is your response to claims that you cannot use Quicktime's H.264 acceleration if you are not Apple?

But, really, this is all misdirection. FFMPEG uses no hardware acceleration,

FFmpeg does use hardware acceleration.

but manages to use about half of the CPU of Flash.

On which platform?

Re:The new API is unusable

[delinear]

I just want to know what the stake through its heart will be.

Probably won't come until a sufficient percentage of web users are on browsers that support enough HTML5/CSS3 to be able to ditch it. IE, I'm looking at you.

Re:The new API is unusable

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a point, but a decade and a half ago apple quicktime and windows media player on a 486 suffered less frame drop with low res content than flash does on some modern hardware.

Re:The new API is unusable

[jedidiah]

ffmpeg uses hardware acceleration on Linux, despite all of the whining to the contrary from Adobe.

As crappy as their stuff is, perhaps they should just hand their decoder over to the community
and just concentrate on overcharging developers for tools. Instead of making excuses, everyone
else seems to be just taking care of business. Linux players have been using video acceleration
APIs for years. If Adobe spent half as much coding as they do spreading FUD, they could have
accounted for all the variations by now. ...and GPU acceleration of video is what allows an ARM or Atom to play much of anything.

Adobe's weak excuses are really just a gentler way for them to say "f*ck off, you're not worth our time".

Re:The new API is unusable

[drinkypoo]

Why did you make your comment a reply to mine when you address zero of the points I raised?

Re:The new API is unusable

[TheRaven64]

What is your response to claims that you cannot use Quicktime's H.264 acceleration if you are not Apple [slashdot.org]?

Absolute nonsense - I've used it in my own code. You can't use it with nonstandard containers (the .mov container is the official container format described by the MPEG-4 standards, not an Apple-specific thing). You can still use the software codepaths, which are SSE / AltiVec optimised and are much faster than Adobe's ones.

FFmpeg does use hardware acceleration. [ubuntuforums.org]

How on earth is a link to an Ubuntu forum describing how FFmpeg uses nVidia's X11 extensions to do H.264 decoding remotely relevant to OS X?

On which platform?

The one relevant to this entire thread: OS X. Comparing FFmpeg on Linux to Flash on OS X would be a relatively meaningless comparison because the kernel, display system, and various other factors would come into play.

Re:The new API is unusable

[jackal40]

Flash sucks. Period. No need to limit that to anything non-Windows.

Re:The new API is unusable

[MachineShedFred]

Because it's hard to grep /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist to figure out if you're on 10.6.3 or above and use the API, isn't it? I mean, that's a whole line of code you'd have to add!

Re:The new API is unusable

[MachineShedFred]

It's even easier than that: /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion.plist has it in easily readable XML, and has for every single version of Mac OS X ever released.

Re:The new API is unusable

[drinkypoo]

Absolute nonsense - I've used it in my own code. You can't use it with nonstandard containers (the .mov container is the official container format described by the MPEG-4 standards, not an Apple-specific thing). You can still use the software codepaths, which are SSE / AltiVec optimised and are much faster than Adobe's ones.

I see, now I have come to full understanding of the problem. You cannot use hardware decoding with the most used container format on the planet. That makes perfect sense. I can see why you would make apologies for Apple... if they paid you.

How on earth is a link to an Ubuntu forum describing how FFmpeg uses nVidia's X11 extensions to do H.264 decoding remotely relevant to OS X?

We're talking cross-platform, each claim needs to be platform-relevant. Look up in the history.

The one relevant to this entire thread: OS X. Comparing FFmpeg on Linux to Flash on OS X would be a relatively meaningless comparison because the kernel, display system, and various other factors would come into play.

Parts of the discussion are relevant. But it's been rehashed beyond hash already. Clearly it has succeeded in confusing you, there's no sense in teasing it out for you now.

Re:The new API is unusable

[adolf]

If you want to be pedantic, Windows Media Player didn't exist, either, having not been in existence until the release of Windows 98.

HTML5

[hotfireball]

Adobe are nuts. The soon HTML5 will kill em, the better is for everyone on this Planet.

No empty death: he died with his phone in hand

[ClosedSource]

I suggest you make your funeral arrangements before calling all the vendors who require Flash.

Indeed Apple did

[Midnight Thunder]

Here is the relevant tech note for the "Video Decode Acceleration Framework" on MacOS X: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/technotes/tn2010/tn2267.html

Linux currently lacks a developed standard AP

[h4rr4r]

So then why does Gnash have hardware acceleration?

Seems to me it is more likely the folks that can't even make a 64 bit client are the problem here.

Re:Linux currently lacks a developed standard AP

[Anonymous Coward]

So then why does Gnash have hardware acceleration?

Because they've got time to deal with ATI vs AMD vs Intel acceleration issues and isn't someone's after-hours project.

Re:Linux currently lacks a developed standard AP

[h4rr4r]

I did not realize flash was not paying their linux developer, makes sense considering how he spends more time bitching than working.

Also ATI is AMD these days.

Re:Linux currently lacks a developed standard AP

[spongman]

maybe you should get a 64-bit OS that can run 32-bit apps?

Re:Linux currently lacks a developed standard AP

[vipw]

He already has one. If flash was an app, there wouldn't be any problem at all.

95% CPU usage...

[Anonymous Coward]

...so Steve was right all along!

So much for flash

[drinkypoo]

I guess HTML5 is going to have to win, on my desktop anyway. No 64 bit flash for Linux? Fail, fail.

Grrr....

[g-lock82]

And as usual, detecting and updating the Flash Player across ~300 sites is not as fun as several thousand other things I could be doing this morning.
Adobe seem to go out of their way to hide the distributable .exe, hide the command-line switches (which have changed for reasons passing understanding in this version) and hide the method of detecting the currently installed version of Flash.
I've already ripped Reader out of (most of) my clients because it's a bitch to manage. Flash would be next on the bonfire if I could convince my customers.

Re:Grrr....

[Anonymous Coward]

I hear ya brother!
I had to do the 'application' to get the distro version.. But luckly another slashdotter posted the direct link. (I still havent gotten the 'blessed application' from adobe)

I'm sending out 10.1 this afternoon and ran into the failure of the /silent switch for the .exe version.
It just hung the test workstation thru sms. And revealed itself as 'invalid' with a direct test.
What worked was using the MSI.
To install silently use:
msiexec.exe /qn /norestart /i install_flash_player_10_plugin.msi
for FF
and...
for IE (The same params..but different installer)
msiexec.exe /qn /norestart /i install_flash_player_10_active_x.msi

Breaks Hulu / Linux

[tukang]

I've been trying all the 10.1 RC releases and starting with release 4 it broke hulu and many other streaming sites for me. After playing a stream for 5-10 minutes, the stream will continuously try to restart. Not only that but the audio track from each stream isn't turned off so you have a new audio track that lags the previous one by a second and if you don't close hulu you'll have a chorus of audio tracks. This is also happening in the final version but it does not happen in 10.0 so for now I'm downgrading and hopefully I don't get hacked :)

How About Codeweaver's Crossover

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Codeweaver's Crossover support the Flash 10.1 Windows version for use in Linux in an acceptable manner?

Linux 64-bit beta seems to be gone

[Tester]

The 64-bit beta that they had been distributing for Linux seems to have disappeared from the website today.

If only there were a "video accelleration API"...

[batkiwi]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaAPI

Nvidia's wildly successful VDPAU implements VaAPI, as does:
-S3
-intel GMA500
-radeon UVD2

Anyone else on an Atom CPU with Linux?

[pizzach]

Adobe 10.1, with all its goodness, now gives me around 95% CPU usage as opposed to about 75% with the previous release.

I can play most video on the web as long as I am blocking flash adverts, the video is not HD, and there isn't too much translucent crap overlayed on the video. This 20% is likely a deal breaker for me. I will either switch to Gnash full time, or download all flvs instead of watching them at one frame every 5 seconds in the browser. The official flash plugin will officially no longer be "good enough" on my 5 month old computer.

"much better experience"

[Bitmanhome]

I anticipate my Windows friends will have a much better experience.

Of course that's true of everything.

download link in tfs is wrong

[perryizgr8]

download link in tfs is wrong. it downloads some crap ffx extension called adobe dlm or something. please fix.

Hulu doesn't support 10.1!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hulu doesn't support 10.1!!!!! But Hulu desktop is amazingly faster!!!

Any non-admin firefox alternatives?

[Anonymous Coward]

The XPI installer (http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi) has a very old version and it appears that Adobe has not made their new installer non-admin friendly for firefox on Windows.

Any suggestions? Anyone have an npswf32.dll they'd like to post? :-)

A brief recap

[rakslice]

In 1998, Apple released QuickTime 3.0. They added a new feature since 2.0, building on RealNetworks' innovations in this area: pop up nag messages informing the software industry that Apple wasn't concerned about the consumer experience of QuickTime anymore. In 2002, Macromedia incorporated video support into Flash, and became web video leader by default.

Re:A brief recap

[zmollusc]

Oy, what a choice!

Could you please rephrase the question?

[rakslice]

"an enterprise-level software management tool"

It's been a long time since I've been in Windows land. Can't you manage the software on a bunch of desktops with just Active Directory and a bit of scripting without having to buy extra tools?

10.1 saves the day.

[LordDfg]

Read this: http://www.tekgoblin.com/2010/06/10/adobe-flash-player-10-1-released-win-mac-and-linux/ I have been using Adobe Flash player since 10.1 beta3 and I have to agree it's amazing. I am using Nvidia 8500GT on Windows 7 and playing 1080p content using flash player is really great. Before getting this card which offers DXVA2 my system would cripple playing youtube 720p or in most cases 480p videos. From browser lock ups to various errors, I have seen it all. I highly recommend this update to anyone with a decent GPU [which is supported by adobe].

Flash is a dying transistion technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously.... HTML5 will kill this shit we call "crashplayer"...

Seed, please

[Mathinker]

It would be nice if someone would put up a torrent for it, methinks...

Even more brownie points for posting an sha1sum here so we can be sure we're not getting our version "pre-hacked".

Of course, if doing so is illegal in your country, I wouldn't dream of encouraging you to break the law, even if in this case we're talking about something which was already distributed for free from the rightsholder.

Doomed if you do, doomed if you don't

[elguapoloco]

Most people are quick to criticize whatever Adobe does. Flash Player 10.1 is a lot faster on the Mac. I've been debugging with it (the debug player is much slower than the release version) and my Away3D content rarely dips below 30 fps. Venting personal frustrations is great but doesn't reflects everyone else's reality. I bought a netbook, mostly for my son to start using a computer. I trashed XP it came with and installed Ubuntu's NER. The ONLY reason I even considered using Linux was: it runs the Flash player. We can access cbeebies's website for games and shows and even stream it live. Here in the UK most TV content is available on-demand and all the providers use Flash to deliver. The availibility of Flash is one thing that can help push Linux adoption. You can develop flash content on Linux using third party tools like FDT. Try doing that for Apple's iOS Apps...

FlashBlock, ClickToFlash, etc.

[Weezul]

Yeah, all this make it imperative that users install some form of FlashBlocker that blocks flash content until the user clicks it. In fact, I'd prefer that flash content was opened in the stand alone FlashPlayer, not the browser. I'm sure this would prevent most remaining browser crashes.

Adobe Troll is troll

[theolein]

Honestly, the only person who could write a post like that is a frustrated Adobe Coder who's worried about his job because Flash is such a giant heap of fail that no one wants it.

Better experience?

[jonadab]

> I anticipate my Windows friends will have a much better experience.

I have a better experience without Flash installed. I believe this is true irrespective of OS.

yes, no common base interface is the problem

[amn108]

I am on Linux, and I much resent Adobe, but they have a point with Linux not having a standard interface to decode H.264. Actually, Linux does not have an interface to decode video at all, it's all a bunch of libraries/command-line-invoked-decoder-backend-daemons, as usual with Linux. A jungle of choices, implications and consequences. Truly, why should Adobe code for up to 5 different interfaces to make use of this? Just good old code bloat then. And they certainly do not want to distribute a version of Flash Player for each of the interfaces.

For all things Linux does right, there should be a library called libvideointerface or something, that delegates all decoding to whatever the host is able to do, and decouples applications from doing the hard work of locating and wrapping functionality.

I cannot do a car analogy here, but a C++ analogy would be:

class IVideoDecoder
{
          void decode() = 0;
}

I don't really care about this release,

[ChrTssu]

but I assume this news foretells the imminent release of Android 2.2, which does excite me.

It's Our way or no way

[slashdotard]

They really know how to write code, don't they?

Too many vulnerabilities to find them all and it monopolizes resources so that nothing else can be done and you can't quit it in the same day without pulling the plug, which you'll shortly have to do anyway to avoid a meltdown and letting the magic smoke escape.

Adobe: "It's Our way or no way. We're too big to do it right."

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I run 64-bit Linux and I only use Flash to view video. Major video sites such as YouTube and Vimeo are in the process of offering WebM support. Frankly Adobe can keep 64-bit Flash. Fairly soon I simply won't need it.

Just lazy

[MrJones]

Adobe is just lazy, If they are releasing something big they would call it Flash 11, with GPU aceleration, real multi touch, 64bit all the way, same performance in the same hardware in windows/linux/mac, etc.

If Apple lose, then too many win, including Google and Microsoft, so Adobe is just trying Apple to lose in order that their friends GOOG and MSFT win.

Somewhat OT: Flash on a Ramdisk

[Joe U]

I've been tinkering with moving the flash temp folder to a ramdisk (on windows) with good results.

Has anyone else tried this setup? It's eliminated skipping on some of my older machines that have lots of RAM, but not the fastest HDD's. Also, it wipes out flash cookies.

I do this with the Chrome temp folders as well.

Begging for answers

[s122604]

I'm still confused/scared about all of this

As a user of Ubuntu 10.04, am I at risk over this? My installation has flash, but not adobe's reader software.

I do all of my browsing in a restricted account (no admin/install privileges).
So am I at "risk", if so how significant, and what can I do about it (accepting that I still want to look at videos and such online)?

Another great Adobe installation experience!

[Peganthyrus]

So I download the .dmg and open it and run the installer.

The "Install" button's ghosted out until I click the "I have read and agree to the terms of the license agreement" checkbox. But where's the agreement? Well, there's a link (with no rollover state, of course) to this page on Adobe's site, with a bewilderingly-long list of links to EULAs. As PDFs.

Nobody ever reads the EULA anyway, but this is ridiculous.

Flash 10.1 with (SLIGHTLY) older video cards (PC)

[Jager Dave]

Don't install 10.1 if you have even a slightly older video card. I'm running a Core2Duo with 4gb, my video card is a nVidia 9600GSO (about a year old!). Flash 10.1 causes green artifacts with online Flash playback now (10 didn't).

Even their release notes say they "fixed green artifact on some video cards". Apparently, they didn't fix it on others. No convenient way to "roll-back" to 10, either.

Flash 10.1 is Yi Da Tuo Da Bian. (words from FIREFLY - look it up :) )

Missing the point

[salesgeek]

I would love to see more Adobe software for Linux. I use a few Air apps (Tweetdeck) and I'd love to use Creative Suite on Linux. In fact, Creative Suite on linux would get me to dump my Virtual Box instance with XP and Corel.

So far as Flash goes, I'm just glad it works on Linux. I'd love to see it get better, or see Adobe support an open Flash player project (especially given that Flash player is free as in beer anyway).

Flash Plugin for Linux

[phylevn]

I think that Adobe should be to improve the flash plugin for Linux