What just happened to video on the web?
That's a question you should ask with the announcement we made tonight. I think a lot will change. This is probably one of my longest and information packed posts ever, but I think it is important we put down all cards on the table. Lets summarize what new functionality Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2 contains (for the impatient: It will be available on labs.adobe.com this afternoon):
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.
Unfortunately, and we realized while working on this: along with adopting industry standards also comes completely new terminology which seems designed to confuse non-insiders. This makes it difficult to pin down exactly what it is what we did and how you might benefit from it. It took me several months to just understand the basics in the ISO specifications. By now I might have lost the ability to boil it down into simple terms everyone can understand. But I'll try anyway. :-)
Lets talk about actual functionality you can leverage in the Flash Player. Now I am getting really technical:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s&threadid=62723
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=96059
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding
http://daringfireball.net/2007/04/some_facts_about_aac
Let's put together some thought up scenarios I would imagine are important:
- An file format parser implementing parts of ISO 14496-12. In terms you might understand this means a very limited sub set of MPEG-4, 3GP and QuickTime movie support.
- Support for the 3GPP timed text specification 3GPP TS 26.245. Essentially this is a standardized subtitle format within 3GP files.
- Partial parsing support for the 'ilst' atom which is the ID3 equivalent iTunes uses to store meta data. This really more a de-facto standard which came through the ubiquity of iTunes, there is no official documentation on the format. Look here for an incomplete list of supported tags iTunes does use.
- A software based H.264 codec with the ability to decode Base, Mainline and High profiles. This is also an ISO standard with the identifier being ISO 14496-10.
- An AAC decoder supporting AAC Main, AAC LC and SBR (also known as HE-AAC). The corresponding ISO specification is ISO 14496-3.
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.
Unfortunately, and we realized while working on this: along with adopting industry standards also comes completely new terminology which seems designed to confuse non-insiders. This makes it difficult to pin down exactly what it is what we did and how you might benefit from it. It took me several months to just understand the basics in the ISO specifications. By now I might have lost the ability to boil it down into simple terms everyone can understand. But I'll try anyway. :-)
Lets talk about actual functionality you can leverage in the Flash Player. Now I am getting really technical:
- You can load and play .mp4,.m4v,.m4a,.mov and .3gp files using the same NetStream API you use to load FLV files now. We did not add any sort of new API in the Flash Player. All your existing video playback front ends will work as they are. As long as they do not look at the file extension that is, though renaming the files to use the .flv file extension might help your component. The Flash Player itself does not care about file extensions, you can feed it .txt files for all it matters. The Flash Player always looks inside the file to determine what type of file it is.
- A new version of FMS is upcoming and will support the new file format. This is powerful stuff. Simply drop video files you might have encoded using one of the countless tools out there onto the server and it'll stream. Even if the moov atom is at the end of the file. Ah, that is something I have to mention as you are 100% likely to fall into this trap:
- If you use progressive download instead of FMS make sure that the moov atom (which is the index information in MPEG-4 files) is at the beginning of the file. Otherwise you have to wait until the file is completely downloaded before it is played back. You can use tools like qt-faststart.c written by our own Mike Melanson to fix your files so that the index is at the beginning of the file. Unfortunately our tools (Premiere and AfterEffects etc.) currently place the index at the end of the file so this tool might become essential for you, at least for now. We are working hard to fix this in our video tools. There is nothing we can do in the Flash Player and iTunes/QuickTime does behave the same way.
- The Flash Player will display the first supported video and audio track it finds in a file. Subsequent audio and video tracks are ignored and not selectable right now. This covers the majority of files out there on the web, only in rare instances do you have additional audio tracks f.ex. But I believe that for the web you would rather create several versions of a file anyway to save bandwidth. One of next major revisions of the Flash Player will add new APIs to enhance this most likely. Our goal was not to add any new APIs for this release.
- Video needs to be in H.264 format only. MPEG-4 Part 2 (Xvid, DivX etc.) video is not supported, H.263 video is not supported, Sorenson Video is not supported. Keep in mind that a lot of pod casts are still using MPEG-4 Part 2. So do not be surprised if you do not see any video. We should be close to 100% compliant to the H.264 standard, all Base, Main, High and High 10 bit streams should play. Extended, High 4:2:2 and High 4:4:4 profiles are not officially supported at this time. They might or might not work depending on what features are used. We have no artificial lower limit on B-frames or any problems with B-pyramids like other players do. We also decode field coded streams, although this beta displays the images progressively using the weave method. The final release will be blending the two fields. There are still a couple of bugs with frame ordering/timing I need to fix in the Flash Player itself for the final release. And there is also a problem with files using the loop filter on dual core machines which causes horizontal artifacts along slice boundaries, which is my bad. The fix for this did not make it into this beta. Overall though and leaving out the bugs I listed here which are my fault, the H.264 decoder is a remarkable piece of engineering, it is provided to us by MainConcept. It weights in at less than 100KB of compressed code which is quite an achievement for such a complicated standard.
- Audio can be either AAC Main, AAC LC or SBR, corresponding to audio object types 0, 1 and 2. We also support the '.mp3' sample type meaning tracks with mp3 audio. MP3inMP4 which intends to do multi-channel mp3 playback within mp4 files is not supported. Also, the old QuickTime specific style of embedding AAC and MP3 data is not supported. It is unlikely though that you will run into these kind of files.
- 3gp timed text tracks. Any number of text tracks are supported and all the information, including esoteric stuff like karaoke meta data is dumped in 'onMetaData' and a new 'onTextData' NetStream callback. Language information in the individual tracks is also reported. That means you can have sub titles in several languages. Study the 3GPP TS 26.245 specification to see what information is available. Note that you have to take care of the formatting and placement of the text yourself, the Flash Player will do nothing here. Time for you to start working on one of those components which do that. You can use MP4Box to inject text data into existing files.
- Meta data stored in the 'ilst' atom. This is usually present in iTunes files. It contains ID3 like information and is reported in the onMetaData callback as key/value pairs in a mixed array with the name 'tags'. ID3V2 is not supported right now. An incomplete list and link to tools which can edit these tags is available here.
- Since these files contain an index unlike old FLV files, we can provide a list of save seek points, e.g. times you can seek to without having the play head jump around. You'll get this information through the onMetaData callback in an array with the name 'seekpoints'. On the downside, some files are missing this information which also means that these files are not seekable at all! This is very different from the traditional FLV file format which is rather based on the notion of key frames to determine the seek points.
- Unencrypted audio book files contain chapter information. We expose this in the onMetaData callback as an array of objects with name 'chapters'.
- Image tracks encoded in JPEG, GIF and PNG are accessible. Unfortunately only in AS3 as I pass this information as a byte arrays through a new callback 'onImageData'. You can simply take that byte array and use the Loader class to display the images. Most often these images represent cover artwork for audio files. TIFF image tracks are not supported, you might come across files using this. Also note that we support the 'covr' meta data stored in iTunes files, these are also accessible as byte arrays.
- Will it be possible to place H.264 streams into the traditional FLV file structure? It will, but we strongly encourage everyone to embrace the new standard file format. There are functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264 which we could not overcome without a redesign of the file format. This is one reason we are moving away from the traditional FLV file structure. Specifically dealing with sequence headers and enders is tricky with FLV streams.
- Will it be possible to place AAC streams into an FLV file structure? Yes, though the same limitations as for H.264 apply.
- Will the Flash Player play back multi channel AAC files? It will play them, though the sound is mixed down to two channels and resampled to 44.1Khz. We are targeting multi channel playback for one of the next major revisions of the Flash Player. This requires complete redesign of the sound engine in the Flash Player which dates from circa 1996 and has not been improved since.
- Will the Flash Player be limited to 11Khz, 22Khz and 44.1Khz sampling rates like for MP3? No, we support all sampling rates from 8Khz to 96Khz. I implemented a 32 tap Kaiser Bessel based FIR filter which resamples the sound to 44.1Khz, retaining high quality. The most common sample rate combinations have a hard coded number of phases. In case of a 48000 to 44100 Hz conversion the filter has 147 phases f.ex. Even better: Flash Player Update 3 Beta 2 now can play back any MP3 sampling rate leveraging the same code I implemented for AAC. No more chipmunks. Ever. Err, this is actually kind of major as I have seen complaints about this bug for years :-) I fixed this problem in the AS3 Sound class, though it was using very low quality resampling. This change I made this time will fix it even for AS2 and sound in FLV files while retaining excellent quality.
- Will it be possible to place On2 VP6 streams into the new file format? Not right now, we are still trying to figure out if it is possible for us to support this.
- Can you play files protected by FairPlay? No.
- Do we support MPEG-4 BIFS or other esoteric stuff (scripting, VRML etc.) from the MPEG-4 Systems specification? No. Whatever is not listed above we do not support.
- Do we support SMIL? No. You can easily write your own SMIL parser in ActionScript though.
- Can you use the Sound class to play back AAC/.mp4a files? No, you have to use the NetStream class. We are now getting into a situation where there is not much difference between audio and video files anymore. They are the same essentially. Hence we figured we should not further add confusion and allow to do things ten different ways which would also increase the Flash Player binary size. My guess is that we will enhance the Sound class in the future but it might go into a different direction and will not be dedicated to pure playback of static files anymore.
- Here is a list of data which is reported in onMetaData:
duration - Obvious. But unlike for FLV files this field will always be present.
videocodecid - For H.264 we report 'avc1'.
audiocodecid - For AAC we report 'mp4a', for MP3 we report '.mp3'.
avcprofile - 66, 77, 88, 100, 110, 122 or 144 which corresponds to the H.264 profiles.
avclevel - A number between 10 and 51. Consult this list to find out more.
aottype - Either 0, 1 or 2. This corresponds to AAC Main, AAC LC and SBR audio types.
moovposition - The offset in bytes of the moov atom in a file.
trackinfo - An array of objects containing various infomation about all the tracks in a file.
chapters - As mentioned above information about chapters in audiobooks.
seekpoints - As mentioned above times you can directly feed into NetStream.seek();
videoframerate - The frame rate of the video if a monotone frame rate is used. Most videos will have a monotone frame rate.
audiosamplerate - The original sampling rate of the audio track.
audiochannels - The original number of channels of the audio track.
tags - As mentioned above ID3 like tag information.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s&threadid=62723
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=96059
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding
http://daringfireball.net/2007/04/some_facts_about_aac
Let's put together some thought up scenarios I would imagine are important:
- You created a pod cast for iTunes and happily distribute over this channel. Now you want to add value to it and easily make it accessible over the web without special plug-ins, reaching an audience which does not have QuickTime installed. Well, this new feature will allow you to do this. You can take your existing podcast in .m4a format and present it on any web page through the Flash Player. Add more value by adding interactivity and branding if you want to. The possibilities are endless.
- Your media company has made or is about to make a significant investment into web video or video archiving. You are wondering what format you should choose. Video for Flash reaches everyone now, but the format is not an 'industry standard' so you have the fear that content you will create will become obsolete and unsupported at some point. Flash Player 9 Update 3 comes to the rescue: MPEG-4 is an extremely well documented ISO standard and completely vendor independent. And by using the Flash Player now you get instant gratification for viewers.
- You want to get best the possible quality out of your video and do not want to be tied to a particular encoding solution. You also like open source software to do all of the work you need to do to encode video. A combination of libfaad, x264 and MP4Box which are all licensed under the GPL will do exactly that, albeit with little usability and requiring lots of expertise. But it will now play just fine through the most distributed run time in the world, the Adobe Flash Player.
- H.264 will be supported natively by most new graphics cards. NVidia, ATI and Intel have made a commitments to have full support for it. This means better than HD video on your PC will become possible in the not so distant future.
- There are hardware based H.264 encoders which encode at better than real time. This is important if you need to be quick to market like f.ex news organisations.
- Digital TV, especially in Europe is quickly adopting H.264. The interoperability with the web will open new doors for a lot of media companies.
- AAC SBR offers demonstrable advantages over plain MP3, think 5.1 channel surround sound f.ex. While the Flash Player does only support 2 channels output at this time, there is opportunity to go beyond that.
- Comparing H.264 against other video codecs, might it be performance or quality. I've looked at the comparisons out there, they are at best subjective, most of the times outright marketing bull and almost always completely biased. My take is: Take a good and well accepted encoder and compare the results yourself. Your mileage will vary. And that is fine. Quality is not the main reason Flash Player 9 Update 3 has H.264 support.
- Tell you if On2 VP6 is better or worse than H.264. Truth is that they have different strengths, not only performance and quality wise. It totally depends on your individual situation of what fits best. The Adobe Flash Player now offers more choice which is more important than anything else.
- I am not in a position able to explain to you why we will not allow 3rd party streaming servers to stream H.264 video or AAC audio into the Flash Player. What I can tell you is that we do not allow this without proper licensing. Refer to Adobe's friendly Flash Media Server sales staff for more information.
- I can also not help you with anything regarding broadcast fees for commerical use of H.264 and AAC streams. Please refer to the FAQ Adobe provides which usually point to contacts at MPEG-LA and Via Licensing. A summary of licencing terms for H.264 is available here.
posted by Tinic Uro at 9:09 PM
175 Comments:
thanks for the great post tinic. cheers! stef
Wow... flash video changes everything. Again.
I wonder how on2 feeling about all this?
An earthquake just registered in the bay area. You guys seriously rock.
Seriously awesome. Now video/cellphone upload websites won't necessarily need to transcode to FLV before delivering the content.
One question/thought: does this mean Adobe is moving away from FLV as the main video standard? No complaints if you are, h.264 is the future.
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This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
I can see H264 support everywhere, and this is the only page were I see .mp4 which in my sense is the real revolution. So could you confirm that the new flash player will let us read any MPEG4 file ( .mp4 file format) using H264 for video and AAC for audio ? )
I can see than you do not want to talk to much about the server, but ... it doesn't cost to ask again : will Darwing Streaming Server be able to deliver .mp4 files to the new flash player ... :-)
That would be really awesome !
Will we be able to stream these other formats via "progressive download"? Can you clarify what you meant about only being able to stream via FMS?
Nice !
Has the possibility to add ogg (vorbis~theora) support been evocated or is not planned at all ?
What about encoding?
Will ever the Flash Player support encoding video in these format?
Or we are still stuck with Sorenson?
Amazing news! Thanx to Flash Player Team for this great update. I Really love this new stuff.
Any chance to see VoiceIP stuff in next updates? ))
I was wondering if this new player also improves FLV playback in any way, or is this a completely separate engine and is FLV playback not affected at all?
Thanks!
absolutely fantastic.
I am puzzled about this though
"Sorenson Video is not supported."
Does this mean that Sorenson Spark encoded video will not work?
[a/]
Tinic, you mention that the audio engine of the flash player is due for an upgrade... there are a few hacks out on the web (including my own) for pouring PCM wave data into the Flash sound system. Can you reveal whether the anticipated sound upgrade will provide this natively?
cheers
Very interesting post, thanks for all this info :)
H264 support is an amazing feature. Unfortunately I think that these licensing costs are going to kill off 90% of the potential usage for this.
Maybe I'm reading this wrong... but even companies that already have a license to stream flash need to pay an EXTRA license fee to use H264?
Hi Tinic - thanks for the wonderfully informative blog post. Out of interest, any idea if Adobe are happy currently for 3rd party servers to stream realtime Sorenson H.263 and ASAO to Flash players? (as you say above that streaming H.264 to AAC from 3rd party servers isn't going to be allowed...)
Awesome stuff, thanks for letting us know!
Tinic,
Thanks for information, it's very useful...
I am waiting for beta-update and wanna test it :)
Thanks for all hard work you guys put to make our lives simpler...
regards
-abdul
This is a really big deal for Flash video and the online video market. Thanks for the solid breakdown, this will make it much easier to make smart decisions on projects (Sharing this kind of information is almost as important as actually building the technology, since otherwise this research has to be done internally, which might or might not happen).
I second the ogg request...
Great to see you guys doing this.
Fantastic! How long do you estimate it will take before this version is out there and actualy influencing us to start encoding in H.264?
All great, but:
Denying third parties to stream MPEG-4 into Flash is absurd and also a violation of MPEG-4 agreements!
MPEG-4 is an open standard, meaning that any MPEG-4 device/tool should work with any other MPEG-4 device/tool. We should be able to use for instance QuickTime to encode a file, upload it to Darwin Streaming Server and use it to stream to Flash Player.
I expect Adobe to be fully MPEG-4 compliant indeed, except for the transportation protocol. So H.264 yes, AAC yes, MPEG-4 containers yes, but RTSP no, but will be RTMP instead... Shame on you Adobe!
Very useful indeed. I literally just coded something the other day where I was sniffing out ".flv" in url strings. Guess I'll be adding a few more suffixes now. :)
Tinic, you rock \m/
Thanks for the info. Good detail.
One question. Does the Flash Player support add in demuxers for proprietary file formats containing H.264 video?
Will the Linux player be updated at the same time, or will we Linux users be left waiting as usual ?
Hey i don'T care about h264, wheres the option to turn off sound globally for flash? THAT would be something to get exited about.
Hi, excellent post, it's a great move to see Adobe adopting open standards here. As someone who uses Darwin Streaming Server to publish streaming video I would like to see the ability for Flash to support streaming files from a server other than FMS. The licensing costs are just too much to consider using FMS for me. Support for Darwin / Quicktime streaming server would be the icing on the cake!
Thanks for the comprehensive post, Tinic. I'm sure there will be more commentary and lots of questions about the specifics, so I'll be watching this space. Sharing information and open dialog is key. This truly is amazing news -- Adobe is listening! :)
ACC will be nice, but why ignore Vorbis? It's a codec proven to provide outstanding quality.
Will this be rolling out for all platforms?
third for Ogg/theora/vorbis
Happy that you go for standard H264/aac instead of crappy VP7 , but H264 has huge licensing costs ...
Anyway this will help easy streaming on the web
Great! :)
... You also like open source software to do all of the work you need to do to encode video. A combination of libfaad, x264 and MP4Box which are all licensed under the GPL will do exactly that, ...
Just a minor remark regarding a typo though:
libfaad contains the AAC decoder, libfaac is the tool one would need to encode AAC audio.
You knew this question was coming... What about a Linux version? Are we to expect a timely release of this version of Flash Player for Linux?
People asking about encoding: see the doom9 link Tinic posted, question 3:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s&threadid;=62723
In short, you'll be able to use A LOT of encoders, including several free solutions. You won't be restricted to Flash encoder, or Sorenson, or whatever. Just use whatever's your real video encoding software of choice.
great posting, depp insights, valuable links: thank you!
we here at National Public Radio in Austria are really into MULTICHANNEL AUDIO, so any progress on this is highly welcome. Will the format only be AAC multichannel or also e.g. WAVextensible or RF64?
What about Flash audio ? As AS3 is evolving while complex multimedia is being delivered, why is it that Flash can only play sounds, and change panning/volume? It might be a fantastic idea if Flash could support something more than just that. Adobe has the right people to implement this, take Logic for example. It would be really nice if Flash could support some filters, delays like reverb, and other things like time-stretching and pitch shifting, simple synthesis at best. Since computers are 'multimedia', users don't really experience 'multimedia' when on the net. Yes this post is a bit of a complaint and a feature request at the same time, not taking into account the wonderful progress Flash is already making. But still, I care more about being able to do something with audio than another movie format being implemented. It's the only reason I can't use Flash for real multimedia experiences, and I would really.. really like to! :-)
how about hardware acceleration? I thought the Adobe release mentioned that specifically. Any details on what that entails, and what platforms are supported?
That's nice and all, but when are we getting 64-BIT!?!?
sheesh. ya'll're really missing the boat here!
There is statement in article that vp6 and h.264 looks different. There were a lot of testing that show superiority of H.264 over on2 vp6.2/vp7.0.10 codecs.
Also Nero HE-AAC is a winner of a blind public test.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=35d8df6ca90aa83ea4638a65bd839aa7&showtopic;=56851
Shortly, H.264 and HE-AAC are the best on compression of video/audio streams.
This is AWESOME! Kudos!!
About the Ogg stuff, it would be cool, but there is absolutley no pressing need for it.
This is obviously great new -- thanks!
I have prepared a 1080p trailer as mp4 to test and am eagerly awaiting the beta to appear.
To do this I had to convert from a Matroska container, which is becoming increasingly common these days. Any chance you will support mkv in the future? That would allow for a nice player for local files.
Does this mean the installer for Flash will boat up like a typical Adobe product? Filled with Nagware and system tray madness?
ok great. but what does all this mean for flash players on pocket pcs? It's woefully behind already... I still can't view simple youtube videos.. :(
All these wonderful features... and yet it's been over three years and counting since Adobe first promised a release for the x64 architecture. So this release is just as useless to me as all the others... sigh
this is great can't wait to have all Freecaster.tv channels viewable in a flash player, well done
Hmm and what about the people who made serious investment on On2 Vp6,
Will Vp6 become obsolete
Is Vp7 on the roadmap?
Thank you so much Adobe! This was my only big issue with Flash Player. It didn't stop me from using H.264, but it did stop me from using Flash for video. This is a fantastic announcement. Thank you for the great documentation to kick it off!
So finally the world get to see what QuickTime users have known for years... H.264 rocks.
The FMS requirement is hilarious. We (the internet) will not forget about Adobe's despotism. H.264 is nice, but the cost is too high. And flash player DOES NOT reach "everyone". Millions cannot install the latest (or any) flash player. Single vendor BS is nice for the vendor's short-term profits, but the internet will overcome your broken model eventually.
(My internet tablet has flash9 but is unlikely to see this new release anytime soon; my desktop is linuxppc and has no flash ):
Hmm, seems like flash player - iphone edition.
I hope that is the case, would be wonderful!!
This is all well and good but the truly most important feature should be adding support for ENCODING audio using ANYTHING other than nellymoser. Why you can't support a simple ulaw/alaw or something freely available like gsm/speex is beyond me. Using flash for voip would open up huge doors but not with that piece of garbage codec you support now.
Fantastic! I can't wait for the official release. Although, you may want to seriously think about supporting RTSP as a transport within the Flash player. That would give Flash both a standards-based codec and transport layer.
Also, I use the Mainconcept encoder and it is above anything else on the market. There is a little known company called Elecard that makes a simple encoding tool called Converter Studio. It's a lot more stable than Sorenson Squeeze and the output using the Mainconcept codec is amazing, especially for H.264 High Profile.
Why will this catch on with the online sites like youtube when they didn't even upgrade to vp6 with flash 8 and stuck with sorenson from flash 6?
I still find it ridiculous of sites like youtube to state that they dont' use vp6 because flash player 8+ does not have the market penetration of flash player 6+. So I don't think this will be used by youtube for quite some time :-(.
Nice post though.
I'd really like to understand this part:
"I am not in a position able to explain to you why we will not allow 3rd party streaming servers to stream H.264 video or AAC audio into the Flash Player. What I can tell you is that we do not allow this without proper licensing. Refer to Adobe's friendly Flash Media Server sales staff for more information."
So in your example, if I create content for iTunes and "want to add value to it" I have to be uploading it to a Flash Media Server only? This sounded really good up until that point. Who IS in a position to talk about this part?
Incredible information, thanks! Quick question (and apologies if it's been asked); does this mean that Flash Player will/can now play a QT-wrapped H.264 file, or will it require a FLV wrapper with H.264 content?
Thanks again!
What about seeking progressive download without downloading the whole file? The MPEG4 container stsz and stts boxes provide the time-to-byteoffset mapping the player would need to use HTTP byte-range support to seek.
Great. Think you could update the Embedded Devices version of Flash so that all this kickass stuff ACTUALLY WORKS on the Wii?
next step: destroy DRM in all incarnations.
That is indeed unfortunate about Adobe closing this off to third party tools. I understand the need to sell FMS, but I don't believe this is the way to do it. Innovate rather than restrict. And as another poster mentioned, it looks like it might not be legal to do that anyway.
Of course I'm a bit biased being one of the leads on the Red5 Project, but I seriously think putting restrictive uses on your technology is going to make you loose more customers than you would gain.
This will be interesting though. Best of luck.
This is, no doubt, VERY COOL! However, when will Flash support simple PDF viewing?
Video is all well and good, and based on everyones posts is something that alot of people really want to see, but as a printer I'd love to see PDF support out of the box.
works good so far: http://marcelfahle.com/2007/08/21/first-h264-demo-in-flash-player-9/
does anybody know where the green bar on the right side is coming from? here's the mp4 file: http://marcelfahle.com/video/h264/bonifacio576/bonifacio-576.mp4
Hi Tinic!
Great news from you on the video side!
I noticed that with this new r60.184 version the vertical bar went away, what was that?! I'm just curious...
Also, while trying to dig more with the problem i discovered another singularity here http://manuel.bit-fire.com/2007/08/20/noticeable-difference/
Is it a by-design behavior?
Marcel,
That demo was amazing. The quality was incredible and the scene beautiful. Where was it filmed it? Btw, I get the green bar on the right of the video, too. No idea what the deal is there. This is on Firefox in Linux
Support for SMIL means executing the semantics of SMIL, not just parsing its syntax. To execute SMIL, we depend on the player understanding its semantics. Bottom line..SMIL? NO NO NO SUPPORT.
"This is, no doubt, VERY COOL! However, when will Flash support simple PDF viewing?"
Lets hope it never does. There already is a bloated Acrobat Reader you can use for this. Keep Flash for sound/video/Actionscript etc. Keep it small!
BTW, frigging cool announcement. :) This really opens the door for Flash developers to dive into the world of media. (Not just the web any more)
Are you going to support HE-AAC with PS (parametric stereo) - aka HE-AAC v2 - in this release?
to ayo bintiie :
'Sorenson' refers not to 'Spark' but to Sorenson 3, which was Apple's favorite QuickTime codec before H.264 (and before Sorenson got into bed with Macromedia). I fully expect support for 'Spark' to continue. (Adobe would be nuts to drop it).
Also, it's vaguely implied that Flash will play 'any' .MOV files, which would be misleading. Clearly only .MOV files with tracks encoded with supported codecs will play.
I also seriously doubt whether a multitrack .MOV will be supported (for example a .MOV with multiple language alternate audio tracks).
Are you also supporting parametric stereo (PS) feature in HE-AAC (aka HE-AAC V2)?
Wow, this is really great piece of news! This means we can take full advantage of all the advanced encoding settings of x264 (like RDO, loop filter etc.) to squeeze video to even smaller bandwidth than before (or get just a lot better quality with same bandwidth). Addition of HE-AAC/AAC+ aka SBR is also a great thing, to me 56 kbits AAC SBR made by Nero's latest encoder sounds normally better than 128 kbits mp3.
This is really great piece of news! Since Flash will support High Profile, we can take full advantage of x264's advanced encoding settings like RDO, loop filter, cabac etc. right?
Addition of HE-AAC/AAC+ aka SBR is also a great thing, to me 56 kbits HE-AAC sounds normally better than 128 kbits mp3.
Probably one of the best posts i've read online in a quite some time..
Awesome response to the new toys dude :)
-
Scott Barnes
Developer Evangelist
Microsoft.
So, is there any word of a FreeBSD build in our future? I know teh BSD world would be tickled shitless to see this, and Adobe would be expanding their customer base. A win/win for all, and for only a minor effort to tweak the linux sources and a box to build on (can even get around that with a VM).
"Do we support SMIL? No. You can easily write your own SMIL parser in ActionScript though."
Ugh.
It's pretty disappointing that you're not supporting this open standard -- especially with clipBegin & clipEnd functionality.
Marcos,
thanks, the video was filmed in Bonifacio, southern Corsica, earlier this year.. I think the quality could be really better. What I did there was ultra-fast "fire and forget" encoding.. I try to bring some more and better looking stuff online soon :)
Thanks for releasing the Linux version at the same time as Windows and Mac!
And while you are releasing things, perhaps a 64 bit linux version of the existing player could be done? (I know that would be pushing an envelope, since the processors and OS have only been available for a few years now.)
Just my 2 cents:
From http://www.mpegla.com/avc/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf
* 0,02$ per VOD user
* first 12 minutes for free
* no licensing fees for internet broadcasters, as long as users don't pay for viewing
Yay. If only FMS wasn't a requirement for live broadcasting :(
Thanks for the great info!
One question, you said: A software based H.264 codec. Does this mean that if a system has a hardware H.264 decoder, the Flash Player won't take advantage of it?
The "lossless" h264 mode from ffdshow (tryouts) doesn't seem to work correctly. It's a shame really, since that one would be the perfect choice for screencasts. It's smaller and it also looks better (no banding and crisp edges).
Example mp4:
http://kaioa.com/k/flashissue.mp4 (1mb)
The screenshare codec is pretty bad in comparison. It's about 3 times bigger and the improved quality is basically invisible.
Speex would have been nice for narration, but HE-AAC offers pretty similar results. Mono/16khz/12Kbits is already good enough if you remove the static noise beforehand.
Thank you for those new features but what about the memory leak ?
Reboot computers each day because of a huge usage of flash player is boring...
But congratulations for H264, it was really urgent !
I tried one of the examples and shoved it in blend app eg:
Frame Source="http://marcelfahle.com/2007/08/21/first-h264-demo-in-flash-player-9/"/
and it seems to work fine, but this would need a user to install the beta player. Frame with web pages is a bit heavy just to have flash movie in your desktop app, so my question is; In regard to the beta players that have been released for testing - is there a better/alternative way to use them in C#, did you release an OCX and do you have the wrappers for it to work with latest C# studio, let me stress I am only interested in desktop not web use if it make a difference. Many thanks
Flash can play videos, I *cannot* believe it.
Hey guys, lets do some barrel rolls!
Keep up the good work. Now I wear my 'end-user hat'. I have one wish: Add Save video as... option to right click menu.
HE-AAC is far better in quality terms than Speex codec on 12 kbit/s
compare for yourself.
http://rapidshare.com/files/50569763/SPEECH.zip.html
I played the files by foobar player www.foobar2000.org
Jeez, guys. It's a beta. If something does not work, file a bug.
From http://www.mpegla.com/avc/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf
* no licensing fees for internet broadcasters, as long as users don't pay for viewing
Yay. If only FMS wasn't a requirement for live broadcasting :(
Uhm, what about this part:
...there will be no royalty during the first term of the License (ending December 31, 2010),
and after the first term the royalty shall be no more than the economic equivalent of
royalties payable during the same time for free television.
Does this mean we'll be paying through the nose in about 3 years?
Hi Tinic,
I hope you have some time to answer some questions from the replies of your article.
I also have a question, here I do..
Will the Sound object memory leak be resolved in upcoming updates?
Currently when loading a shoutcast stream, the stream gets loaded into memory, but never released, so the memory fills up until computer freezes.
Some people tried to make workarounds, like Minicaster, but those workarounds don't work properly (hearable gaps).
I have had email contact with Emmy about this, and she adviced me to send a bug report, wich I did. But i did not hear any responses yet.
Also currently shoutcast support is limited, although the player supports it, (wich means that is implemented by sending the ici headers), there is no way to get the song titles, wich are available withing the byte stream.
Well, hope to hear from you.
Bart
Very excited - our offline video libraries are H.264, so this will be very cool for us.
A few commenters mentioned "H.264 licensing costs". What costs are these, and for whom? I was under the impression it was an open standard. How has H.264 ever required licensing fees to encode to?
Do you mean, "costs for software developers to add H.264 export to their software", or "costs for content producers to create/use H.264 in their videos"?
Who has to pay licensing fees? No one's ever asked me.
When will they add support for divx and ogg vorbis and theora... HAH just kidding?
Allan, "Open Standard" != "No cost licensing"
It would've helped to have read Florent's comment upstream before posting.
Ive been experimenting with this stuff using a 960x540 h264 at about 200kbits 25fps.
I have noticed that CPU use is lower when playing the adobe sample in fullscreen, than it is in normal mode. It is also using a lot less CPU to play these 960x540 files fullscreen, than current youtube, blip.tv etc players are using in fullscreen with much smaller videos.
So, I am wondering what the optimal settings to use in actionscript coe are for fullscreen playback? eg If i take th excellent JW player, it uses a lot more CPU than the adobe sample, with both playing exactly the same 960x540 h264 video. So I started to mess around with the JW code and remove stuff to do with deblocking and smoothing, and am getting less CPU use, but still more than the adobe sample code. So I dont know what to try next, is this something to do with the way the fullscreen mode is accessed in actionscript by the different players, actionscript 2 vs actionscript 3 performance differences, some other setting I should or should not be using?
Oops sorry that should of read 2000kbits.
So anyways, Im looking for any info on best use of fullscreen acceleration. This stuff can also play a small part in saving the planet, I mean I know performance in the beta may not be same as final release, but so far fullscreen mode is saving a bunch of power compared to current fullscreen flash experience, and so I want to make sure video player swf authors get the best performance out of their players.
Steve,
You're looking at the effects of hardware-accelerated full-screen mode, which has a new API. Check out:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:9:Update:Full-Screen_Mode_HW
Excellent, thanks. Your link didnt quite get fully formed but I found the right page, lets see if it shows up properly:
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Flash_Player:9:Update:Full-Screen_Mode_HW
H.264 BLOWS!!! Check out the license fees associated with the commercial development use of the codec. How much did they pay you Tinic?
Thanks for moving to h.264.
Now it's time to fix Flash performance on Mac OS X. WTF is the problem?
Yes, WTF is the problem?
http://www.asininemonkey.com/flash-runs-faster-in-safari-for-windows.html
Oh, wait. Performance is all over the place and varies primarily with *browser*, not *OS* (hell, look at Flash on Firefox Mac be faster than on Firefox Win in those benchmarks). Maybe it's not Flash? Maybe it's worth bitching at Apple or Mozilla instead?
Do you have data to support the claim that there's a problem with Flash performance on OS X or are you just spouting?
Ogg?! Please, what a dead format.
Tinic, about the complete sound engine rewrite. When you talk about AAC multi channel support to be included in multi channel AAC files you tell "We are targeting multi channel playback for one of the next major revisions of the Flash Player.". Do you mean that the complete sound engine rewrite will not be effective before Flash player 10 and least 11 ?
When you talk about next player AAC support, will it be full AAC standard with all 48 channels ? And do you plan to write an API to let all the AAC accessible from Actionscript ?
Is it true that other H.264 servers cannot be used and we will be forced to use Flash Media Server to stream to Flash clients?
Has Adobe lost it's head? The only thing you achieve is a burst in use of H.264, and as soon as people find out about this lockin, the terrible performance of FMS and the huge license costs, they will instantly move their content to QuickTime Streaming Server and embed another MPEG4 player (QuickTime, iTunes, Realplayer, VLC).
Flash Player will lose market share. Which already isn't that great. 98% market coverage: yeah right: if you include all versions 1.0 up to 9. Version 9.2 currently has less market share than Windows Media Player or QuickTime.
Who from Adobe CAN comment on this part? And did the MPEG-4 committee actually agree to this? They might withdraw the license to Adobe since Adobe isn't following the MPEG4 interoperability requirements.
Great news!
Man you have such a cool job ;)
Not so great to hear about cutting out the other streaming servers from the game. I'm thinking of the cool red5 right now. This basically means that usage of real streaming H.264 in the flash player will wait some more. Well, av conferencing doesn't really need H.264. The big broadcasters will pay :D
Cheers!
Very cool!
But I always wonder why proprietary software vendors are not using ffmpeg? It's all already implemented there and it's free! Is it because it's LGPL and so you'd have to supply ffmpeg as a separate DLL/SO? Is it because you would have to supply the source of you used ffmpeg version? (note: only of ffmpeg, not of flash)
TINIC - I saw your ORIGINAL post and have a printed copy...SEC has been notified for insider trading On2 Technologies Stock. Expect a call soon. They asked me to fax a copy of the original post. Say goodbye to your job and your life if you own or owned even one share of that stock.
a minor handling quirk from the new gtk embedding method - I just found the solution by experimenting:
in iceweasel/firefox (latest) simple clicks will not make it to the flash movie. instead CTRL-CLICK will do!
a happy linux user.
hello Tinic,
another note: on this page, http://www.du-nichts.net/walking2.html you can see an mp4 that has an aspect ratio set, ie. non-square pixels are used, that have to be scaled on playback (12:11, 352x288 => 384x288, same as VCD). maybe I did something wrong, maybe its a bug/missing feature...
regards.
peter
This is an awesome development! But i have a question for you about functionality, which i had problems with in previous versions of Flash. Playing streaming audio (icecast/shoutcast) and listening to them over a flash enabled web player, there was a buffing error, where it would continue to cache the data on the local computer, and never dump the cache. Now, i realize that part of this, falls on the browser setting, (this occurs in IE more than FF).
Has this behavior been addressed in this new version, when it comes to streamed/broadcasted/live media?
~DocNasty
~Krushradio.com
Holy cow! I just tried to get some H.264 video and guess what - it had to download first!!! This is ridiculous - why the step back in time?
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Adobe would win in long run if they would include also Ogg Vorbis + Ogg Theora + native SMIL support.
@macnoob
in qt-pro export as "progressive http download" or use the qt-faststart utility linked above (WFM).
* About MP4 licensing fees:
If ever, at the end of the term (2010), you have to pay 2 years back of fees... It will be bankrupt for those who invested so much in it. Or do people have to write some huge licensing fee in advance in the budgets ? How the hell could one track the number of watchers during 2 years (about per-stream licensing) ??? There is some blur in all that, i can't imagine the fees to be actually paying later, this would be a real planetary hold-up... The other pb with h264 is that various parts of the spec are open AND free (ex: VRML etc...), but some are not, and patented. Talk about clarity...
* About on-demand/live/progressive streaming: does basic http file serving together with some binary tricks and file interleaving (c.f. lighthttpd's FLV streaming mod) count as a streaming server terms violation ?
More information about live features would be very welcome, as well as terms violations...
@macnoob and others: check out GPAC
"To prepare a file for HTTP download, the following instruction will interleave file data by chunks of 500 milliseconds in order to enable playback while downloading the file (HTTP FastStart)"
MP4Box -inter 500 file.mp4
http://gpac.sourceforge.net/packager.php#cont_deli
Hi Tinic,
This all seems like great information, but you may want to check with Adobe's Investor Relations/Communications department and get approval and guidance before you post next time.
Your comments here are being picked up and "broadcast" by other blogs, and your information is affecting the share prices of a number of publicly traded stocks. Already, several tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars have been traded based upon your post...specifically as related to what will and won't be supported in this upgrade of Adobe Flash (To the uneducated, it seems as though Adobe's "upgrade" suddenly will not support what has previously been supported - directly causing investors to sell shares of stock in that unsupported company...)
If, for instance, there happens to in fact be support for one of the codecs that you mentioned won't be supported in the future, you will have successfully manipulated stock prices, and could/should be investigated by the SEC.
I am afraid that without further explanation or some sort of disclaimer, you are very much liable for severe damages. I would also mention that your comments here seem to be in direct contrast to Adobe statements regarding ongoing support for this company's product... point being, your blog is not part of Adobe's corporate communications, but it is definitely affecting investors as though it is.
You may want to consider redacting your comments or further clarifying them.
Tinic, does it mean you are going to stream the MP4-like files from FMS using RTMP only (and not RTSP/RTP) ?
Thanks for your anwer.
Tinic, this is good news but please please please benchmark this decoder against QuickTime. Especially on the mac. Especially on PPC. The way the cross-platform decoder worked for Spark and especially for On2 is an embarassment,
Also, you know that HD is already possible with On2/VP6. And with the latest r3, it's taking much less CPU than before !
Have a look at http://www.stream-in-box.com/mgw/?index=2 for instance (1-pass encoding, not necessarily top-notch)
Great news, but we still don't have any preferences to manage sound output from flash files.
It's great to have last video support, but some website use a really high volume, and some too low ... so if you we surf a website with our own music (like itunes/winamp), some shitty website make -ugly- noise on roll over and we can't even turn off the sound !
Please, just add a little pref "mute sound" / or a slider to lower/upper the level output because most of the creator of flash content don't have this to their website flash content.
kthx
Thanks for releasing 64bit linux version on time!
oh wait, it was only my daydream, no?
Hi,
Does Flash 9 beta 3 have a debugger version or do I have to keep uninstalling and reinstalling for Flex dev?
Thanks,
Derek
Thanks for the update! This is really exciting news. I already tested it out, I was able to play a stock MP4 file I had (h.264/AAC) in a video player I made with Flash MX 2004 without any changes other than switching which video file it loads. Awesome!
I have two questions about your support of the new video and audio formats:
1) Will you be supporting alpha channels in h.264 video?
2) Are you supporting HE-AAC v1 (AAC + SBR) or v2 (AAC + SBR + Parametric Stereo)? If it's the former, that's still incredible news. The latter would be even better. A lot of the audio I work with has to be compressed down to the bare minimum to load instantly (think loading animations for entertainment sites), which means very low bit rate mono using MP3. HE-AAC v1 will increase audio quality substantially, though it'd pretty much have to stay mono. But if PS means I can get a stereo "feel" with only a 2-3 kbps increase in file size over the mono version, that I could justify!
Thanks so much, and I look forward to playing with this more in the coming months, and eventually upgrading my web sites for h.264 and AAC support when it's out of beta!
Thank you, for both the detailed information, and the amazing amount of work you, and your team, have put into this feature. I can tell a lot of forethought has gone into it, and am amazed at your results.
I can now just see web versions of things such as the Korean GOM Player (www.gomplayer.com) start to have pure web versions of their product, especially when mixed with the new hardware fullscreen upscale!
Its realy help full for all flash developer.
Flash is safe for another day.
I'm watching the headlines saying: "Adobe releases HD version of Flash" all over the Internet and I chuckle, of course this doesn't make any more sense than Silverlight's HD claims (in a time when YouTube barely manages to serve 320x240 videos to the masses), but Flash definitely stole Silverlight's "HD revolution" thunder, so the goal was achieved.
I wonder, however, when all is said and done, how much of the features in Flash will be dead baggage, past bad decisions made in a hurry to outdo the closest competition, such as Sorenson Spark and VP6. People have been talking about H.264 in Flash before VP6 was even considered.
I don't really believe the player size will affect adoption much, if anything, you could deploy in two steps (the ActiveX/plugin being a small installer that preloads the actual big libraries inline).
But, what worries me, is Adobe has some difficulty maintaining all of those features consistent and bug free in both the player and especially the IDE (Flash Pro / Flex), and what the current combination of VM-s, codecs, and deprecated features and formats would mean for the quality of the flash suite.
And then the interesting choice of RTMP for H.264 streaming... brings back old memories of suffocated opportunities with Flash video chat / voip and Flex 1, Central.
Should Microsoft pick up with Silverlight, I expect the first thing to fall (now that Flex is open-sourced and all), is the RTMP requirement on MP4 streaming.
I need to decide we will deliver on demand videos in progressive or streaming.
We aim to deliver video on demand. Till now we planed to use flv online playback and h264 for downloads.
But recently adobe announced that flash player will support h264 playback.
This is making me to rethink all.
If we go progressive we may take benefit of h264 right now. If we go streaming, we will have to use flv, or wait till h264 is supported to be streamed inside flash, and pay licenses which I think will be quite expensive.
We can also wait till the hosting server we have choose to work with to allow h264 to be streamed via flash, and this way they will pay the license for h264 streaming. (Can’t guess if they will provide this feature).
If we go streaming now, once Flash Media Server still not support h264 streaming, we need to have twice the number of files (one flv file for streaming h264 file one for download).
We will also need to encode twice the number of files (flv and h264) and to create subtitles for both file types.
My idea is to use a fake streaming by using a PHP script that allows server-side seek.
My big questions are:
1)If we will be providing large video files, what is the best solution? To go straight for a streaming solution (Flash Media Server), to go for progressive or to go for PHP streaming (fake streaming)?
2)By using AS3, will it be wise to start with PHP streaming (fake streaming) and later, if required, move to a streaming solution?
3)What is the best solution for deliver high-quality on demand video? Progressive download or Streaming? I know that streaming do not support videos encoded using the 2 pass encode method (which provides better video quality), but progressive download method does support video encoded by using 2 pass encode process.
4) Do you think we can save much on bandwidth if we use streaming instead of progressive download?
Hope I’m not asking too much from you.
any feedback to: [email protected]
Best regards
Diogo
http://www.on2.com/company/news-room/h264_faq/
I packaged qt-faststart.c into a (fairly raw) Mac OS X GUI application:
QTFastStart.app
As noted I have no H.264 files with the moov part at the end to test it out so I don't know if it works as intended.
Statment from http://www.on2.com/company/news-room/h264_faq/
"Both VP6 and H.264 offer comparable video quality overall"
I don't think that "comparable" is a right word. VP6 is more comparable to MPEG-4 ASP codecs like Xvid and Divx even at low bitrates.
It's possible to say that VP7 is comparable to H.264 .
However H.264 is still TOP technology of video compression.
Some results http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=105763
Yes, it's metrics. It's not human blind test but it's something reasonable.
Another thing, just think during 2007 year the most popular player as Flash is still using old MP3 audio codec at bitrate as low as 64 kbit/s 22 khz with horrible quality (most of youtube audio tracks). While HE-AAC v1/v2 at 32-64 kbit/s 44.1 khz are good as 100-110 kbit/s MP3.
Some estimated data.
Fow low bitrates we are speaking of aprrox. 1.4x of bitrate reduction for video for H.264 comparing to VP6. And more than double bitrate reduction comparing HE-AAC 32-48 kbit/s to MP3 80-100 kbit/s. However at higher bitrate the situation is different. AAC at 80-96 kbits is comparable to MP3 VBR 128-140 kbit/s.
"I don't think that "comparable" is a right word. VP6 is more comparable to MPEG-4 ASP codecs
like Xvid and Divx even at low bitrates.
It's possible to say that VP7 is comparable to H.264 .
However H.264 is still TOP technology of video compression."
If that is true, then the question has to be asked - why did Tinic and Adobe choose VP6 over H.264 two years ago and at that time make the claim that VP6 was superior?
(http://www.kaourantin.net/2005/08/quest-for-new-video-codec-in-flash-8.html)
H.264 is not new and has not changed significantly since then... Yes, it is great that the Flash Player is now more flexible and can accept what TV broadcasters (a tiny piece of the overall video pie)already have encoded... but the notion that somehow h.264 is suddenly better is ludicrous. Better than what? The three year old VP6?
Why has Adobe ignored the fact that there are better codecs out there and in development... Why hype h.264 over VP7 or the soon to be released VP8? Clearly those would also be "better" than VP6 and for a majority of web video streaming, these would seem to be better solutions... and for the same reasons that Tinic wrote about in 2005.
Perhaps Tinic could explain this contradiction? Or let us know when Adobe plans to adopt the superior and less-expensive VP7 or VP8?
During 2005 year VP6 was choosed because of its popularity at that moment and it was mature codec. While there was only one stable and mature H.264 codec in 2005. Nero/Ateme H.264. But H.264 was already superior in quality terms.
There is still a big room for improvements for H.264. For both performance/speed and quality/compression gain.
I don't think that vp8 will be any soon. on2 is working urgently on their H.264
Hi
This is probably a stupid question, but I am relatively new to Flash and am looking forward to using the compact file size of H.264 for flash presentations.
I have looked everywhere and can't seem to find out how to put a Quicktime Movie (.mov) into Flash. I have downloaded and installed the beta version of Flash 9.
My movie was recorded in H.264. All I simply want to do is embed the movie into Flash.
What code would be required? As I stated, I am new to all of this, so please be patient with me.
I have had no problem creating a .swf file in the past and getting that to work on the Web, but what do you do to get a .mov file to work in Flash 9. My understanding is that it's possible, but for the life of me I can't figure it out.
Loren
Hi Crog,
Actually, you are incorrect. On2 already supports H.264 and the CEO stated that VP8 is supposed to be launched this Fall.
Interesting discussion above. If true, why is Adobe hyping the quality of H.264? The functionality/ease of use makes sense; but the quality? That is somewhat subjective - and as someone else pointed out, they had previously preferred VP6!!! By the time VP8 is out it will have been two generations improved! What gives?
Hi!
I have a more test/practical question . Im testing the new h264 capability on a minisite of mine with a skate edit ... tis a 20 min clip encoded in h264 (avc1) high profile 4 Mbit 720p, and HE-AAC SBR 128kbit (mp4a) ... now when i try to use flash for playback in a simple player it doesnt work... i tried the unmuxed components audio and video seperatlly and they also dont work... all the encoding was done with the open GPL based MeGUI based on x264 .. the file plays fine on all my software players but not in flash ... i wanted to deploy it so the poeple who wanna see it can stream it becouse of the filesize... now if anyone else has already tried encoding with x264 then to play in flahs and has any expirience please help...
maybe high profile is still buged to .. but most of the mp4 content form variouse sources i have thrown at the player didnt work .. it vould be nice if adobe posted the DETAILED ENCODING SPEC/SETTING they used for the h264 version of the demo!!!
Anonymous said
"On2 already supports H.264 and the CEO stated that VP8 is supposed to be launched this Fall."
on2 is planing to support H.264 in september but still doesn't.
on2 will spend a lot of time for H.264 support. It isn't that fast and easy. At least during the rest of 2007.
if vp7 wasn't adopted as a codec for flash video then why vp8 will be.
VP7 codec is already more complex on encoder and decoder side comparing to H.264. However it isn't better than H.264 but comparable.
It would be great and I don't know if it will be possible to do with vp8:
1. Decoder's performance should be on par with CoreAVC (the fastest H.264 decoder with the identical standard quality for decoded output). Coreavc as fast as MPEG4 ASP decoders.
2. Encoder's performance should be on par with the fastest Elecard/Mainconcept H.264 encoders. It's fast as Divx. (practically without drop of visual quality)
If that will happen then vp8 will be really competetive codec. I hope so.
Crog,
Your post is not making sense to me, but seems to be a typical perception... which is the point... Tinic's post is a lot of hype, the same "marketing bull" that he accuses others of spreading.
First, of course On2 is "spending time" on h.264. They are supporting it, so I hope that they would be spending time on it. VP8 was announced by the CEO to the industry, so expect that to launch in the Fall.
Second, your opinion of VP7 vs. H.264 is not relevant to the argument the poster made. Adobe chose VP6 over H.264, and made an argument against H.264 for several reasons... and when h.264 became possible for Flash, Tinic and others then compared that version to VP6 while ignoring VP7 and the soon to be released VP8. It's like comparing a 2008 Mercedes to a 2005 Lexus. Makes no sense at all and seems suspicious... especially since using h.264 in many situations is more expensive.
Fact is that the Flash player has become more flexible; not better in terms of quality; not faster - only more flexible... so I agree with the previous poster... it seems like the customer is getting pushed towards h.264 while another less-expensive solution is available... Why is Adobe not talking about VP7 (or VP8)?
not better in terms of quality
Encode yourself some videos by H.264+HE-AAC and comparing it to vp6+mp3.
Using H.264 and AAC I saw 1.4 times bitrate reduction for video and 1.5-2 times for audio.
There were tones of tests (subjective and objective, i.e. doom9, av forums etc) since 2004 where vp6 loses by a big margin to H.264.
Adobe brings big quality boost to flash player by including H.264 and AAC in it.
That's interesting. Tinic doesn't seem to think so (see above).
Just want to chime in. I have encoded plenty, and subjectively, I might agree with you, h.264 looks different than standard VP6; but VP6 HD, VP7 and the soon to be released VP8 (1080p) are of equal or better quality. As an online producer for a the world's largest media company, I am more worried about what the move to h.264 does to the industry. We re-broadcast on the Web in HD and while Adobe's move saves us the transcoding time, we will also be forced to pay substantially more in license fees and royalties unless Adobe retains support for VP7 and VP8.
This is potentially a financial DISASTER for our unit, which re-broadcasts hundreds of videos a month. Whereas we were re-broadcasting in the Flash player, now we are looking for another solution so that we can stay with On2's product advances.
Remember that h.264 is a standard. It is expensive and updates are made at a snails pace (otherwise it would have been adapted sooner); the VP line is owned by a private company that can (and has) make rapid changes as the industry evolves and at a fraction of the cost. Food for thought.
Crog,
Ooops! you're quickly running outta facts there, buddy.
I could probably, with enough time/patience, point out equally as many people/developers who say that VP6 is better than H.264 (including Tinic). Matter of different folks, different strokes so a one size fits all approach is not appropriate.
I am at a loss to explain you're statement characterizing VP6 in 2005 as a mature codec. There is nothing mature about On2 codecs - they are constantly evolving and never stay the same long enough to become mature - high in quality, yes, maturity? No, especially in comparison to an industry standard.
I doubt very much if On2 is spending an enormous amount of time on H.264, I think if you look at the most recent videos, you'll see where their emphasis will be in the near future. They may have been urgently working on it for a short while but I highly doubt it if it occupies them all day long.
Mr Joll stated VP8 soon, that's just the way it is, soon. Not too long to wait - and don't forget it will be 2 generations better than VP6 which was already touted as being better than ...... oh well, here we go again.
Not to worry, there's plenty of videos out there for everyone to get a piece of the pie.
To answer Tinic's question: It just got really EXPENSIVE! Thanks Adobe.
Why so agressive statements?
Only thing I'm telling here that vp6 is worse than H.264 in quality/bitrate safe terms. Its easy to see.
Yes, vp6 is far less expensive than H.264.
So it's logical that vp6 was choosen as a codec for flash in 2005.
I don't doubt that in conjuction of licencing cost and quality vp6 was a best choice in 2005.
Hey Crog,
I don't think they are being aggressive. I think they are just trying to point out that you (and Adobe) keep comparing H.264 to VP6 when there are better codecs out there: VP6HD, VP7 and soon VP8.
It really doesn't matter at this point. Consumers/big companies will dictate demand. On2 is already being used by all the big media companies to stream HD content and they can switch to/continue to use Move's player instead of Flash's player.
The conflict is that the majority of H.264 content is created by these big media companies and they risk losing money or being sued for royalties if they choose to broadcast over the web in H.264. If I read correctly, it sounds like they are in effect being forced to go to other players and use On2 to avoid the extra costs. Seems like Adobe might not have considered that aspect of this "update"...LOL!
Hi, Bill.
So vp6 is worse than h.264 but vp6HD is already better, right?
vp6HD is still vp6.2 Sharpness profile based codec. And there is nothing new in it just optimized perfomance for HD. No quality gain.
I repeat that vp7 also isn't better than updated TOP H.264 codecs like Mainconcept,Elecard, Nero and x264.
vp8 isn't here so how can anybody talk about if it will be better or not? It's still vaporware.
What's the best to me (as a media producer) with h264 annoucement is the availability:
* to encode h264 movies using cross-platform, maybe Open Source software -- x264 is reported as one of the best encoding products in the doom9 comparo !
* to use hardware-accelerated encoding devices and SOCs
* to use industry-wide hardware decoding
Is there any hardware-accelerated VP6 SOC encoding device out there ? No. Do people see how many excellent hardware real time encoding h264 chips are coming on the market (3Dlabs media proc, Ti DaVinci, fujitsu chipset, etc...)? And the same goes (of course) for the decoding part.
That's the power of industry standards, and if On2 don't magically open up their eyes (as of today, there is no SERVER-SIDE VP6 live encoding/transcoding solution for Linux/UNIX !!!). Don't ever dream of hardware implementations then...
I understand the move to h264 now that hardware acceleration (notably, on embedded) is coming in high speed. But the RTMP choice... Is just killing. Because i doubt encoding solutions (especially Live) will be available on Unix platforms.
Please think of RTCP/RTSP/RTP compliance for incoming flows, do whatever you want on flash player side (rtmp or whatever), but please don't kill this new opportunity for media producers...
Cheers,
Florent,
You are joking, right?
Surely your job as "media producer" allows you to search the internet:
http://www.hantro.com/
http://www.on2.com/completepr/?id=398
http://www.on2.com/company/news-room/press-releases/?id=405
http://www.on2.com/company/news-room/press-releases/?id=384
http://www.us.design-reuse.com/news/news8295.html
http://on2.com/company/news-room/press-releases/?id=415
http://www.on2.com/company/news-room/press-releases/?id=413
http://www.on2.com/cms-data/pdf/flix_linux_engine_system_overview_guide.pdf
There's plenty more...
I won't make any claims on quality or cost like the others posters above, but when Time Warner, Fox/NewsCorp, ABC, Discovery, and the rest of major media chooses On2's VP6 and VP7 over Mainconcept's best h.264 (which has been available for more than a year), I think the argument is over.
Cheers!
Sounds mighty fine, indeed.
One question remains: will this also improve video playback on CD-Rom applications (for which flv was a real problem)?
"I won't make any claims on quality or cost like the others posters above, but when Time Warner, Fox/NewsCorp, ABC, Discovery, and the rest of major media chooses On2's VP6 and VP7 over Mainconcept's best h.264 (which has been available for more than a year), I think the argument is over."
ridiculous :). How can sobebody tell something like that? When H.264 is standard for HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. The same movie companies Time, Warner, Fox use H.264 cause it's standard like MPEG-2.
Second, many people doubt if on2 will develop the codec that will be better than highestly optimizied H.264+ codecs nowdays.
The title of the blog is "What just happened to video on the Web?" The discussion is regarding the Web, not Blue Ray, or DVD HD. The fact is, for the Web, those companies had a choice of Mainconcept's H.264 and On2's VP6 or VP7, and preferred On2. And not just for for UGC; for re-broadcast of programming in HD. Sorry, it's reality... check out ABC.com, Discovery.com or any of the others...
Sorry, but actually is there any videocard like Geforce or ATI that support vpx acceleration?
No, there is nothing.
All modern videocards support H.264 hardware acceleration.
It will be hard task to decode vpx HD on user PC.
sorry, long post but...I'm developping Flash applications so I'd like to know few things (like a developper to developper conversation)
first this is great news, but I have few remarks that concern the codec.
Basically, you "could" choose between H264, VP7 or also (everybody seems to forget), VC-1
1) Thank you soooooo much to NOT use VP7. At the time of Flash 8 my company was trying to make new Flash video applications, and just because of On2's way of doing business (very expensive price just to get a development version, royalties depending on the business model, NDA needed for everything), we run away (and because of that we are still stucked with WMV...)
2/ The way I see this we'll have H.264 for not only web video but in more general for all computer video (just check torrents...). Now, the "electronic world" is massively choosing VC-1. VC-1 is mandatory on both HDDVD and Blu-Ray but H.264 is not (it is only possible as an option). So unless you buy a $20K hardware player, H.264 won't be available on those devices, at least at the beginning.
I'm leaving in Japan and here there is nearly no buzz about H.264. All those TV companies will continue to use MPEG2 as their main technology, even for HD (for example the terrestrial digital TV that will replace the traditionnal analog TV in 2011 does not use H.264, so no TV or hardware will support it)
3/ I'm talking about VC-1 because (for my job) I'm concerned about compatibility, not only Windows-Mac but also PC-Mac-DVD-TV-PortablePlayer and so on...The other reason is also that no matter which decoder I try (even MainConcept's), I can't get any H.264 movie play fine on my PC (P4 HT 2.8G)...what's the point of having nice HD image if it plays at only 20fps ? VC-1 is much faster to decode and I never felt any slowdown for same quality/size movies, even using low end PC such as notebooks with no hardware accelerated graphics.
So if I may ask two questions:
- Did you even consider VC-1, and do you realize that many users won't have a high-end PC that can play H.264 nicely for another few years ?
- What about FlashLite or any other embedded version of Flash ? Do you really think integrating H.264 to those devices is possible and a good idea ? (I'm not talking about IPod, obviously, but more about cell phones, PDAs and such)
Anyway, thanks for your post and great blog !
Can you compile a Solaris 10 Sparc beta too please?
I have a quad CPU system I'd like to try the multi threading on.
There is fast H.264 decoder as CoreAVC. It's even faster than VC-1 for 1080p. 2x times.
If you need a higher perfomance decoder try to search for tcpmp player + AVC/AAC plugins. It's fastest.
And there is a bunch of hardware acceleration for H.264 last time.
"My guess is that we will enhance the Sound class in the future but it might go into a different direction and will not be dedicated to pure playback of static files anymore."
Do I hear some sort of MIDI implementation in the works?
Tinic,
Can you give us some pointers as to where the following metadata comes from ?
Using the 'getid3' media file parsing library in PHP I can see all the atoms but I have no clue as to how this information is used to map them through to the onMetaData object properties.
I'm particularly interested in the 'seekpoints' property but can't see where the values come from in the atom hierarchy.
Heop you can help thanks
Stephen
Here's what I'm wondering: No matter what I do, I get a BIG FAT green bar on the right side of my flash 9 h.264 videos. Not only that, I get a major shift in the colors being displayed and the audio get knocked out of sync.
All the videos I have are encoded using Episode 4.3: H.264 /ACC
I'm on a Mac 10.4.10 using Safari and Firefox.
Do you have any idea what the issue may be?
Here's an example:
http://www.chrisknell.com/h264test.html
Christopher K,
this is a bug in the AltiVec color conversion functions. This only affects PowerPC G4 and G5 Macs.
I also do not recomment using H.264 streams if you are targeting PowerPC machines. They simply can not handle the load. There is a reason Macs got a 2x-3x performance jump when they switched to Intel.
Also of note: Your component forces a very slow code path as smoothing is turned on for this video even in 100% scale.
Smoothing should be turned off if you are displaying the video at 100% scale. Performance will be terrible because of this, especially on PowerPC machines.
"There is nothing we can do in the Flash Player and iTunes/QuickTime does behave the same way"
When the server reports http/1.1 support an dthe read file does not start with the atoms, can do an http-range request for the last X bytes.
Is it possible to encode h.264 into an FLV container without having the moov data? If so, is the CodecID going to be set at '7'? I've been trying to create an h.264 FLV for a few days now and it just does not seem possible.
There are obvious reasons to do this, so the answer of 'just use mp4' is not really that interesting to me.
There is already some progress made for providing pseudo-streaming (similar to lighttpd mod_flv_streaming) that allows seeking into H264 streams before the file is fully loaded.
You also get the 'faststart' for free as the swapping of the atoms is done on the server side.
See the wiki at http://h264.code-shop.com for more information.
Very good discussion.
Time changes everything and its been always somethig that newer things make older things look obsolete. Great that products are getting more user-friendly and ultimately its the normal user that gets the benefit.
thank you!!!!!!
finally a half decent audio codec, no more 1990's generation audio compression
When can we expect support for subtitles too?
If anyone does not believe the hype about Moviestar I can't say I blame you. HOWEVER, here's the proof. Go here (with Moviestar player installed): http://nickrobillard.ca/hd_demo/video/jw-mod_f9ms.html
Yes it's a huge clip! That because it is an UNTOUCHED 720p MOV from http://www.apple.com/trailers/dreamworks/beemovie/hd/ !!! Yes untouched!
Now I'm not one to give Adobe much credit but wow I'm am honestly blown away. My laptop is 5 years old (so not that great) and I get PERFECT 24fps playback. :D
Does anyone know a ffmpeg converting string for h264. I can't get it working
I'm going to run a online service like WMA TO MP3 Converter
FINALLY
I have spent almost the whole day of trying to find information about whatever Adobe have released a new Flash File Container or simply just added support for the MPEG-4 container.
THIS IS BY FAR the ONLY page who really points the fact out for sure.. Thank YOU very much.
Adobe should really update their page to reflect what you have written here, about the F4V formats etc.
Will I still be able to use AS2 to stream h.264 video, or will I need to learn AS3?
You said: "We also support the '.mp3' sample type meaning tracks with mp3 audio. MP3inMP4 which intends to do multi-channel mp3 playback within mp4 files is not supported"
Can you please specify what is a .mp3 sample type? Also, what is the difference from MP3inMP4?
I was trying to play a MP4 with an MP3 audio track but the Flash Player didn't play sound... The video was muxed with MP4Box.
At this moment I can't use FLV Meta Data Injector to insert the keyframes object in a h264 flv... this -and other- applications must adapt to the new format?
Tinic,
What are the plans for integrating built-in support for seeking in media using http-range requests? Presuming users supply media with movie atoms are at the heard of the file this should work as well as it does in other media formats. Without having to use server-side modules that reconstruct streams and atoms based on time parameters passed to them.
Also is there an support planned for live h264 streams?
Flash video sites such as MySpace or YouTube currently encode video content using the On2 TrueMotion VP6 codec and MP3 audio built-in to Flash 8 and above. The new Flash Player lets publishers skip the extra step of VP6 encoding and pipe in H.264 content using their existing web players. Flash programs rely on the same NetStream method used for existing Flash video with a few new optional callbacks for metadata and encoding types.
AAC and H.264 are ISO standards introduced in 1997 and 2003 respectively. The recent acceleration in hardware encoding and decoding solutions is partially driven by the large data processing requirements of high-definition H.264 video on Blue-ray and HD-DVD media.
Tinic-
Hey there was a comment posted that me and my company are very interested in knowing more about:
"I'm particularly interested in the 'seekpoints' property but can't see where the values come from in the atom hierarchy."
Exactly where in the h.264 metadata can you find the 'seekpoints'property? We have run some traces in flash to bring back all the tag properties of the mp4 that is playing, but when we do a trace for 'seekpoints' nothing is returned. We assume this is because 'seekpoints' were not added to the video file's metadata, so if we wanted to add these 'seekpoints' ourselves, how would we go about doing this! Thanks in Advance!
Lestat
Thanks for your very helpful article. Currently I'm teaching Flash at the Art Institute of New York City, and am trying to persuade the school to expand its Flash course offerings to include Flash Video dedicated course, and am in need of some statistical data in doing so. I was wondering if you had any statistics like how many websites are using Flash video as the main element and/or at least include Flash video elements in the design.
Let me see whether I have this correctly: I want to insert a 10 seconds video message into a website - Hi Def if possible. I plan to put the stream on my host's server. Are you guys saying that I have to pay Adobe a license fee for complying with the MPEG4-10 standard? You cannot be serious.
Oh, and can somebody give me an html code sample - something for the simple structured?
thanks for the great post
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