All entries from August 2007

Adobe made a big announcement yesterday. An updated Flash Player 9 will support H.264-encoded video.

Since 2004, Flash has used On2’s VP6 codec for Flash 8 videos (this is what’s used to encode all of the videos here on the Athletics site). The On2 codec was a major improvement over previous video codecs in Flash, but many people were surprised that Flash didn’t use H.264 instead.

Apple’s Quicktime Player has used H.264 for a while now. Anyone that hangs around Apple’s movie trailers site will tell you that H.264-encoded video in Quicktime looks amazing. It looks better than anything I’ve seen encoded for Flash. It’s HD quality video over the internet.

I keep up with Tinic Uro, an Adobe engineer working on the Flash Player. Back in 2005, he wrote a great article on why the On2 codec was chosen for Flash 8. The article reveals the complexity behind the decision for On2, and put things in perspective for a lot of nerds. However, it didn’t change the fact that people wanted higher quality video, and with the existence of things like H.264 in Quicktime, people knew that it was possible.

Fast-forward two years and now Adobe is answering the demand. When I read the news, the first thing I did was check Tinic’s site and found his latest article which goes into all sorts of detail regarding the H.264 implementation in the latest Flash Player 9. My favorite bit:

Why now? Short answer: Because you wanted it. Long answer: We’ve been working on this for a while and this was planned to be part of the next major revision of the Flash Player. What was unexpected was how impatient a lot of our customers are :-) It seems many are trying to make choices when it comes to video technologies right now. We wanted to make sure that we would offer the best possible choices to them and set a signal that we are willing to embrace industry standards. No one believed that we would make this happen.

More possible why-nows

• Competition is heating up. Now we have Microsoft’s Silverlight jumping into the market, and a lot of folks are stoked on it, especially the video capabilities. Adobe needs to do all they can to retain the lead.
• Computers are faster. In 2004, H.264 was too processor-intensive for a large portion of the Flash users.
• Some people still use dial-up, but there’s not enough of them around to feel bad anymore.

Encoding?

H.264 FLVs open up new encoding possibilities. One of the major complaints regarding the use of the On2 codec was that if you wanted to encode an On2 FLV, you needed to use an encoder that licensed On2’s codec. Meaning: you better use the encoder that comes with Flash, or On2’s Flix for Flash product. This wasn’t an issue for most Flash users. However, if you wanted to do any server-side FLV encoding you really only had one option: pony up the cash for On2’s Flix.

Server-side encoding is essential for any site that needs to allow users to upload videos of a variety of formats, and convert them to FLVs (YouTube, PhotoBucket, etc.). On2’s Flix Engine SDK allows you to do just that, but it’s quite expensive. Unless you’re doing serious biz, you’re not going to be able to afford it.

Open source tools like ffmpeg do exist, but ffmpeg cannot output On2-encoded videos due to licensing issues. Thus, an ffmpeg-produced FLV doesn’t look as good. Bummer. However, this may all change if tools like ffmpeg can output high-quality H.264-encoded FLVs. I’m not sure about the open-ness of H.264, but at least this introduces another option besides On2. Competition is good. I’ll be curious to see what happens here.

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Like most Flash nerds worldwide, I’m excited about the news. With Flash Player 9’s massive jump in performance, and new possibilities for delivering high-quality video, I finally have a compelling reason to take the plunge into AS3, and learn a new set of rules.

UPDATE:
I’m now realizing that the FLV format may be dead. I re-read this line from Tinic’s post:

You can load and play .mp4,.m4v,.m4a,.mov and .3gp files using the same NetStream API you use to load FLV files now.

This means the new Flash 9 Player can play any H.264-encoded .mov file I create straight out of Quicktime. Why make FLVs ever again?

Matt Owens’ “Meridians” video short has been featured on Beautiful decay. Check it out HERE