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 – 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.
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.
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
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?
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Adobe Launches "Moviestar" Version of Flash Player - HD Television Quality for Web Video.
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Comments
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I wonder what the performance is like on this one....
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | August 20, 2007 9:03 PMWill this version of Flash make me look like a Moviestar? :P
Seems exciting Richard!
Posted by: Allen Stern | August 20, 2007 9:20 PMThis... is freaking huge. :) Makes me happy I've been producing videos in that format for a while!
Posted by: Chris Pirillo | August 20, 2007 9:20 PMIt all depends on your connection speed. It will need to buffer quite a bit more before play starts to prevent any pauses.
Posted by: Kevin | August 20, 2007 9:21 PMI wonder if this means Adobe will choose not to use On2's VP7 codec. Regardless, this is big news.
Posted by: Bryan Bartow | August 20, 2007 9:53 PMI'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
Posted by: John Dowdell | August 20, 2007 10:02 PMGoogle needs to just buy Adobe.
Posted by: Ryan | August 20, 2007 10:12 PMhttp://mediatrending.com/2007/08/20/would-google-acquire-adobe/
How does this codec support compares to Silverlight.
Posted by: Kannan | August 20, 2007 10:34 PMWill there be an update to Flash Video Encoder to support h.264 or are we looking at a separate purchase?
Posted by: Jesper | August 21, 2007 12:10 AMThis 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.
Posted by: pvk | August 21, 2007 12:18 AMAny information on that front ? That would be a real revolution ...
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
Posted by: Ryan Stewart | August 21, 2007 1:00 AMrstewart@adobe.
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...
Posted by: Darren | August 21, 2007 1:44 AMWhy 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?
Posted by: Mike Sax | August 21, 2007 3:03 AMtheres a better alternative to flash right now, streaming divx like in stage6
Posted by: john | August 21, 2007 3:15 AMgo to stage6.divx.com if you want to see what high-quality web video is
Posted by: Stu | August 21, 2007 3:27 AMHere we see again... Adobe is copying Microsoft!
Posted by: jp | August 21, 2007 3:48 AM:)
What does this mean for Apple including flash support on the iphone?
Posted by: Sanjay Patel | August 21, 2007 4:45 AMWow... 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.
Posted by: Justin | August 21, 2007 5:31 AMIndeed, 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!
Posted by: Avinash | August 21, 2007 5:45 AMThe more video on the net the better.
Posted by: Erik O | August 21, 2007 6:55 AM#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.
Posted by: me | August 21, 2007 7:22 AMJust *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.
Posted by: ylon | August 21, 2007 7:36 AMIt'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
Posted by: Crog | August 21, 2007 7:40 AMAvinash - 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'.
Posted by: JulesLt | August 21, 2007 7:48 AMto #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.
Posted by: Julian | August 21, 2007 7:54 AMA service using the new flash can have same quality as stage6 using far less bandwidth and/or buffering time.
DivX is old technology.
Does this mean we'll finally have Flash on iPhone so it won't be a watered down version of the Internet?
Posted by: Michael Durwin | August 21, 2007 8:02 AMAs 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.
Posted by: Krellan | August 21, 2007 10:14 AMis this the death knell for on2 technologies?
Posted by: James | August 21, 2007 10:26 AMDoes it work with Vista 64 bit? That's all I really care about.
Posted by: Joseph | August 21, 2007 11:14 AMThis 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.
Posted by: Antech | August 21, 2007 11:38 AMIts 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
Posted by: Amy | August 21, 2007 11:39 AMhttp://www.prankvideoz.com
Linux?
Posted by: BrokenCrystal | August 21, 2007 11:42 AMto #25
cool, I didn't know that. But my point was that it is not new to have higher-resolution video on the web.
Posted by: Stu | August 21, 2007 1:04 PMThis 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.
Posted by: Erkko | August 21, 2007 1:08 PMNice, 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/
Posted by: Good Videos | August 21, 2007 1:42 PMWhat about DivX?
Posted by: Nathaniel Tucker | August 21, 2007 1:47 PMHey, 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? ;-)
Posted by: Adi Rabinovich | August 21, 2007 1:54 PMDoes this also mean that FP9 will be capable of playing rtsp streams if they're H.264 encoded?
Posted by: Mick | August 21, 2007 4:02 PMI think this is a sign that Flash is coming to the iPhone.
http://blog.arc90.com/2007/08/moviestar_big_step_toward_flas.php
Posted by: Avi Flax | August 22, 2007 6:29 AMSecondLife 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/
Posted by: barrett63 | September 4, 2007 7:35 PM