Comments for Adobe Launches "Moviestar" Version of Flash Player - HD Television Quality for Web Video

Adobe Launches "Moviestar" Version of Flash Player - HD Television Quality for Web Video

2007-08-21T04:00:00Z

Adobe today announced the latest version of its near ubiquitous Web video software, Adobe Flash Player 9. It's codenamed Moviestar, because it includes H.264 standard video support ‚Äì the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD high definition video players. In other words, the quality of video has been substantially improved from the previous version of Flash Player 9. Also added to the mix is High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support and "hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback".

Adobe claims that these advancements will extend their leadership position in web video "by enabling the delivery of HD television quality and premium audio content".

The new Flash Player will be available later today as a beta at Adobe Labs - and the final release is slated to be available in the fall (September - November). The last big update to Flash Player was the launch of Flash 9 in June 2006.

]]> Adobe: This is Tipping Point for H.264

I spoke to Mark Randall, Chief Strategist for Dynamic Media at Adobe, about the news. He told me there were three main points to the Moviestar release:

1) The H.264 support means superior video quality; it is also an open standard.

2) High Efficiency Advanced Audio is, says Mark Randall, a "successor to MP3". He said it is a higher quality audio, but at a lower bit rate.

3) It means "hardware acceleration" for Web video.

Randall also said that this represents a tipping point for the H.264 standard, because now Flash Player is supporting it as well Blu-Ray - two big industry players.

Richer Platform for Online Video Producers

As well as the consumer benefits, this also gives online video companies a platform to deliver richer Flash experiences on the desktop, Web and H.264 ready consumer devices. As well as the new Flash Player, H.264 playback will be supported by the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR - a platform to create rich Internet applications to the desktop) and applications developed with Adobe AIR software, including Adobe Media Player in late April.

Currently Adobe Flash Player is said to have 98.7% penetration in the Web, making it the most used media player:

Source: Adobe; Millward Brown survey, conducted March 2007

Conclusion

Higher quality online video is great news for consumers and producers alike - especially in a near ubiquitous media player like Flash Player, which is used on YouTube, MySpace and other major platforms. What do you think of this news?

Comment from Alex Iskold on 2007-08-20

2007-08-21T04:03:39Z

I wonder what the performance is like on this one....

Alex

Comment from Allen Stern on 2007-08-20

2007-08-21T04:20:00Z

Will this version of Flash make me look like a Moviestar? :P

Seems exciting Richard!

Comment from Chris Pirillo on 2007-08-20

2007-08-21T04:20:36Z

This... is freaking huge. :) Makes me happy I've been producing videos in that format for a while!

Comment from Kevin on 2007-08-20

2007-08-21T04:21:20Z

It all depends on your connection speed. It will need to buffer quite a bit more before play starts to prevent any pauses.

Comment from Bryan Bartow on 2007-08-20

2007-08-21T04:53:54Z

I wonder if this means Adobe will choose not to use On2's VP7 codec. Regardless, this is big news.

Comment from John Dowdell on 2007-08-20

2007-08-21T05:02:20Z

I'm glad it's of interest to you too. Here's more info on the video aspects:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html

jd/adobe

Comment from Ryan on 2007-08-20

2007-08-21T05:12:14Z

Google needs to just buy Adobe.
http://mediatrending.com/2007/08/20/would-google-acquire-adobe/

Comment from Kannan on 2007-08-20

2007-08-21T05:34:28Z

How does this codec support compares to Silverlight.

Comment from Jesper on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T07:10:31Z

Will there be an update to Flash Video Encoder to support h.264 or are we looking at a separate purchase?

Comment from pvk on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T07:18:06Z

This is interesting, but ... Quicktime has been doing exactly that for years (H264 + AAC) ... and more QT can read it within MPEG4 : there is no info in that news of the possibility for flash to read the real thing : H264 + AAC encapsulated within the MPGE4 file format.
Any information on that front ? That would be a real revolution ...

Comment from Ryan Stewart on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T08:00:12Z

Hey Jesper, from what I understand, you won't need a new version of the Flash Encoder because this update will play *any* H.264 format. So you just use exactly the same process you use to create H.264 now and the updated player will handle it.

Basically you can play Quicktime movies directly from Flash now.

=Ryan
rstewart@adobe.

Comment from Darren on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T08:44:45Z

I think it's good progress but I am nervous that we are going to end up with lots of sites using it completely wrong. This could end up with my broadband connection looking like dial up. Also the words hardware acceleration make my laptop uncomfortable...

Comment from Mike Sax on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T10:03:32Z

Why do they keep calling it version 9... if there are multiple version 9 players out there with radically different capabilities, won't that create a self-defeating confusing mess?

Comment from john on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T10:15:20Z

theres a better alternative to flash right now, streaming divx like in stage6

Comment from Stu on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T10:27:51Z

go to stage6.divx.com if you want to see what high-quality web video is

Comment from jp on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T10:48:30Z

Here we see again... Adobe is copying Microsoft!
:)

Comment from Sanjay Patel on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T11:45:41Z

What does this mean for Apple including flash support on the iphone?

Comment from Justin on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T12:31:45Z

Wow... I wonder how long it will take them to get the Linux version.

Frankly, I'm more excited about the accelerated video playback than anything else. My laptop's CPU has to run at full speed just to play a flash video. Not a full screen one, either. But if I take that video an put it into VLC, it plays with relatively low CPU use.

Comment from Avinash on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T12:45:36Z

Indeed, this is a great news but I don't think that companies like YouTube and MySpace are going to adopt Moviestar in the near future.

Man, consider the huge time it'll take to load videos? If YouTube adopts it, dial-up users are gonna faint!

Comment from Erik O on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T13:55:31Z

The more video on the net the better.

Comment from me on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T14:22:02Z

#19, On the contrary, adopting H264 means either more quality, and/or smaller downloads. YouTube is already on it, you can bet every player on the market will be after MPEG4 soon. Smaller files = less expansive bandwidth bills.

Comment from ylon on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T14:36:40Z

Just *PLEASE* give Mac OS X users a Cocoa based Flash! We need Flash applets to *feel* like native Mac OS X apps desperately and until then there will be a lot of resistance among many developers as there are many lacking features having it not pull in that set of functionality.

Comment from Crog on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T14:40:38Z

It's very important update. Right now H.264 is the top tech of video compression. vp7.0.10.0 with best settings is still inferior to Mainconcept H.264 on highest compression 2 pass mode.
Since Mainconcept support full featured H.264 it will be a breakthru for quality of video web streaming. QT supports only basic main profile of H.264.
Don't talk about Divx codec. It's still old MPEG4 part 2 ASP. And is very inferior to H.264. Divx stage is getting a lot of time for buffering because they use too high bitrate like 2 Mbit/s.

Success for Adobe. H.264 is a goal. Good luck

Comment from JulesLt on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T14:48:31Z

Avinash - YouTube are already switching over to H.264, with the target of having everything over about the time that . . . Moviestar is delivered. As a great specific example, the Bjork 'All Is Full Of Love' video on YouTube via H.264 direct to Apple TV looks near the same quality as my DVD of same video. Of course, 90% of what's up there at the moment is in lower resolution to start with.

I'm glad to see they're doing it - while Quicktime has supported H.264 for some time, it's lacked the deployment that Flash had, and that was what drove Flash video. Now Flash (and Google/YouTube) will be driving out standards, which will benefit everyone. Might also stop the idiots who think H264 and AAC are Apple 'proprietary'.

Comment from Julian on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T14:54:14Z

to #15

> go to stage6.divx.com if you want to see what high-quality
> web video is

That¬¥s nonsense. stage6 is based on MPEG4-ASP (aka DivX). Flash player just got support for MPEG4-AVC (H.264) which is far superior than DivX.
A service using the new flash can have same quality as stage6 using far less bandwidth and/or buffering time.
DivX is old technology.

Comment from Michael Durwin on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T15:02:02Z

Does this mean we'll finally have Flash on iPhone so it won't be a watered down version of the Internet?

Comment from Krellan on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T17:14:10Z

As for Google buying Adobe, no. What would be a great match is Apple buying Adobe! The two companies have been complimentary for decades, going back at least as far as Adobe PostScript in Apple's first LaserWriter in 1985. I would love to see Flash and QuickTime come to some kind of happy agreement with each other.

Comment from James on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T17:26:36Z

is this the death knell for on2 technologies?

Comment from Joseph on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T18:14:35Z

Does it work with Vista 64 bit? That's all I really care about.

Comment from Antech on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T18:38:34Z

This is wonderful indeed. But with the advent of 64-bit computing with Linux, XP/Vista and the upcoming Leopard release, it is still a disappointment to see no architectural support in the betas.

Comment from Amy on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T18:39:59Z

Its nice to see Flash can play H.264 encoded video, but that doesn't mean you're going to be seeing true HD streaming to your PC anytime soon. You need around 7-8Mb/s sustained for a 1080 H.264 stream and even then, you'll need some serious hardware to decode that. I don't know of very many people that have that kind of connection in the US yet.

And AAC HE is the successor to MP3? I don't think so. Its good for ringtones and rear channel surround in certain movie soundtracks, but the loss of quality is noticable in most music. Maybe AAC LC, especially because of iTunes, but even then, does MP3 need a sucessor? The files are small already and storage is becoming cheaper.

Amy
http://www.prankvideoz.com

Comment from BrokenCrystal on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T18:42:16Z

Linux?

Comment from Stu on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T20:04:11Z

to #25

cool, I didn't know that. But my point was that it is not new to have higher-resolution video on the web.

Comment from Erkko on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T20:08:57Z

This is just going to break the bank! With a move to an open standard, Adobe will surely create the winner ecosystem around flash, and be the de facto technology to deliver web video. Brilliant!

Being in the open standard camp just opens so many doors that have been closed before.

Comment from Good Videos on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T20:42:46Z

Nice, I've already been using H.264 for video before converting them into FLVs. H.264 is higher quality and it results in the videos being much smaller as well, so you get faster downloads and less bandwidth used.

http://jivebay.com/2007/04/13/making-good-video-for-the-web/

Comment from Nathaniel Tucker on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T20:47:28Z

What about DivX?

Comment from Adi Rabinovich on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T20:54:07Z

Hey, I called this one: http://www.adir1.com/2007/08/codec-wars-and-other-plagues-of-our-times/

I am glad to see Web finally embracing some sort of open codec standard, the mess of millions of incompatible codecs has driven many users up the wall, and worse of all, made people give up on digital video and Internet video.

I wonder, will the users need quad core CPU (or better) for full screen playback? ;-)

Comment from Mick on 2007-08-21

2007-08-21T23:02:04Z

Does this also mean that FP9 will be capable of playing rtsp streams if they're H.264 encoded?

Comment from Avi Flax on 2007-08-22

2007-08-22T13:29:23Z

I think this is a sign that Flash is coming to the iPhone.

http://blog.arc90.com/2007/08/moviestar_big_step_toward_flas.php

Comment from barrett63 on 2007-09-04

2007-09-05T02:35:51Z

SecondLife DVD Maker is a powerful and easy-to-use DVD Author and Burning tools . You can make your own DVD title with the movie captured by your DV or downloaded from the internet.

http://www.vista-download.net/audio-video/dvd-software/