Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
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
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
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
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.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
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.
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.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The less people with hardware-accelerated Flash, the less people would use flash, right?
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
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.
"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).
I thought Apple published a new API in the latest Snow Leopard.
They did. The summary is incorrect.
This ain't rocket surgery.
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.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
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.
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.
I anticipate my Windows friends will have a much better experience
PARIAH!! UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
If you don't like the 'Adobe Downloader', use this page:
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/fp_distribution3.html
Adobe Goes to Flash 10.1
"These go to eleven."
Give this a shot: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player.exe
No mac or linux HW support? I call Shenanigans on Adobe!
Can we get our brooms now?
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"
And worse yet, quoting from one of the descriptions of flags in table 44:
In other words, you can ALSO embed the LIVE feed from your webcam in a PDF document.
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.
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
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
And the version for IE: http://fpdownload.adobe.com/get/flashplayer/current/install_flash_player_ax.exe
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
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*
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.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
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.
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!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VaAPI
Nvidia's wildly successful VDPAU implements VaAPI, as does:
-S3
-intel GMA500
-radeon UVD2
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.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
this will make your computer go from a leaf blower to a vacuum cleaner.
There's a Flash version for VAX?!
(Hey! Mod parent hilarious! You guys asleep or something?)
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.
meep
this will make your computer go from a leaf blower to a vacuum cleaner. *sigh*
So my computer will now suck instead of blow?
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.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kid-proof tablet..
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!
This is just all the more reason to stop putting video on web pages inside a Flash player.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
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?
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?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Then malicious users will be able to launch DoS attacks with nothing more than a sheet of paper and access to a photocopier.
> 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.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
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.
egypt urnash minimal art.