Comments on: H.264 isn’t an alternative to Flash

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 04 May 2010 23:03:40 +0000

@John Nack – thanks for clarifying this. Couple of questions:
- if we assume for example that youtube encodes their video with H.264 (and of course serves them as Flash) then in order to serve them as html5 Would they have to reencode them, or does changing container formats not require reencoding?
- if a site wanted to serve both Flash and html5 versions of a video, assumingly they’d have to host both formats?
[There are many flavors of H.264 encoding, but I don't think they'd need to re-encode. Rather, they'd just need to serve up a different viewer based on device/browser configuration. --J.]

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 04 May 2010 23:00:23 +0000

By: Bluelobe

Bluelobe — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:46:50 +0000

Any reason why when C-Span shifted to Flash video from RealVideo, users like me started encountering problems being able to forward or rewind the videos? Before, with RealVideo, you could just drag the slider and skip boring parts. Now, I have to pray several Our Fathers just hoping it’ll work (and it usually doesn’t)? I still love Adobe InDesign though–I just wish Adobe would start looking at Flash alternative business because it looks like the writing’s on the wall–Flash was made for vector animation, not video, and its current performance problems is a reflection of this.

By: Bluelobe

Bluelobe — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:45:26 +0000

By: Hugo

Hugo — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:37:06 +0000

Some people are starting to mix-up containers (mov, ogg) and codecs (H.264, Theora, VP6).

By: Sébastien Gaillard

Sébastien Gaillard — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:07:11 +0000

Hi John,
“You can debate one format vs. another (e.g. H.264 vs. Ogg Theora)”
100% agree with you, but Adobe should remember it did not used the good technical vocabulary about codec and video player during years!
Before Adobe Flash player was compatible with H264, Adobe had used “Flash format” to describe the video player + the video codec at the same time ! The codec was a Sorenson Squeeze or a On2 VP6, but Adobe used “Flash” to describe it during years… that could explain people are confused ;-)
“You can debate one player vs. another (e.g. Flash Player vs. a Web browser reading HTML5 tags)”
To debate one player vs another and one codec vs another, we also need to debate :
-one wrapper (.FLV or .F4V) vs another (.MP4, .MOV) etc.
-what kind of player: browser only ? standalone player for the OS ? online or offline player ?…
Best Regards,
Séb

By: Craig Beyers

Craig Beyers — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 09:52:02 +0000

John -
I don’t pretend to understand the Flash/HTML5/other standard problem. But I thought I’d pass on this link from GCN Daily about the iPad and Steve Jobs comments about Flash’s bugginess: http://gcn.com/articles/2010/04/02/ipads-big-risk-chosing-html-5-over-flash-for-rich-web-apps.aspx?s=gcndaily_050410.

By: Hale On Earth

Hale On Earth — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 00:00:05 +0000

m curious John if the “~10% of browsers” figure garnered from the linked page includes Safari on the “over 75 million iPhones and iPod touches” sold or just the desktop version. Honestly I skimmed the page and didn’t see any evidence either way. My hunch is that it does not include handhelds.
Additionally I’m curious as to whether Adobe’s “98%” rhetoric accounts for handhelds or not.
Personally I’d like to see Flash on iDevices IF Adobe were able to rise to the challenge and make some serious performance and experience improvements to the technology.

By: Hale On Earth

Hale On Earth — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 22:47:35 +0000

Moron.

By: Randy

Randy — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:23:07 +0000

I mean all this hoopla about Flash is a bit strange to me. I am a PC user and I use Opera mainly and It happens that I open sometimes over 30 tabs at the same time, and you can imagine that those tabs have often times Flash elements on their pages. Well I never noticed any problems when I open such pages with Flash animations and didn’t notice any slack on the running of my programs.
One thing’s for sure: hail to the great communicator, Steve Jobs, who by uttering just a few words, can unleash tsunamis on the web.

By: Mark Alan Thomas

Mark Alan Thomas — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:58:01 +0000

I unsubscribed to all Gruber’s output and now feel so much calmer and cleaner. He is the ultimate troll.
How can he be the ultimate troll when he never posts anywhere but to his own blog?

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 15:51:02 +0000

I can’t hear that competition anymore.
Anyone who creates Flash content, (disregarding of application ranges for now), knows the power of flash regarding to interactivity.
The H264 algorithm never did and never does nothing else and nothing more than to improve quality of (streaming) VIDEO with reasonable file sizes.
The H264 Codec itself helps DE-CODING VIDEO and is far away from being installed on a high percentage of machines, respectively Operating Systems AND there’s bunch of players who do not support the codec respectively the media created with that Codec.
So who’s the bad cop for now. Is it Apple, is it Adobe, is it the MpegLA (Holder of the AVC/H264 Licenses)?
Really, i don’t want to miss Flash for content creation that holds Audio, Video Scripting/Programming and thus Interactivity packed for JUST one small plugin as the engine that delivers that content.
Plus, flash player plugin supports native H264 playback so you never be aimed to encode specifically FLV Files, just put your H264 encoded movie (with the correct streaming header applied) up to your server and you’re good to go.
Quicktime player itself AND the Plugin? Old, Outdated and Slow! That’s the crux of the matter. Go and blame Apple and don’t be blinded by the big shiny consumer products.
Apple, Haha, oh boy,
they still put
their pants on one leg at a time like everybody else.
Anyways.
If Adobe is willed to keep up on improving the development of their little babys AND keeping interaction with the consumer/user base, I’ll see a very bright future and less digital warfares around content creation and delivery.

By: Mirko Maus

Mirko Maus — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:04:16 +0000

Same here. I do not care about the player. I care about content.

By: Luis

Luis — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 04:30:51 +0000

I think that when it’s sad flash x h264 it’s referred to not just the compression time but the movie file. A h264 .mov file can be played in any player that has the codec, the flash movie format, the .flv cannot be easily played outside the Internet, cannot be used in a video edition program. Inside the bits the compression can be the same, but the flash movie file is far different to what is ‘commonly’ considered the h264 movie file (.mov .mp4). You can say that your post is technically correct, but there is also how terms are used.
Sorry for the bad english, I hope I was able to explain my point.
Bests

By: felix

felix — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:24:18 +0000

I unsubscribed to all Gruber’s output and now feel so much calmer and cleaner. He is the ultimate troll.