Adobe's Linux Video API Rant Extended

[hubick]

HTML5 ftw.

++

When you mix in liquid/scalable page design with HTML, CSS styling tailored by platform, Video, Canvas, WebGL, SVG support, Javascript manipulation, and just overall integration, and the fact that it's all a royalty free open standard - Flash is teh FAIL.

[b15hop]

Flash tries to do too many things at once. I think flash is a little before it's time. SVG should be part of html and so should video div / spans ... Hopefully HTML5 will fix all this.

[RoboJ1M]

Flash was designed and conceived in a world that is fast ceasing to exist I think.

It came about to solve a lot of the problems and limitations inherent in IE4/5/6 in a world that used nothing else.

But now we're transitioning to HTML5 which, in his own words, has all of the same problems as flash to solve.

Well, what I mean is, HTML5 is a standard and anybody who implements an HTML5 renderer will have the same problems to solve.

However, they *will* solve them, faster and more efficiently than Adobe ever will and gradually flash will be marginalized.

J1M.

[mirza]

Yeah, nowadays it seems that maximizing income by minimizing work force is about only "creative" plan CEOs are able to come up with. Then you end up with gigantic global company with single (?) developer in Unix/Linux-support department whining about sub-optimal video APIs. Adobe, with its Flash near-monopoly, is supposed to set standards for video playback on Linux.

[b15hop]

Yeah, nowadays it seems that maximizing income by minimizing work force is about only "creative" plan CEOs are able to come up with. Then you end up with gigantic global company with single (?) developer in Unix/Linux-support department whining about sub-optimal video APIs. Adobe, with its Flash near-monopoly, is supposed to set standards for video playback on Linux.

Adobe is no longer the innovative company that once existed. The only bragging rights they have is Photoshop CS4.

[seanyoung]

When playing video, the "RGB elements" could be converted to YUV. This would have to happen only once and then this whole argument of "flash being a different problem" falls flat on its ass.

Your bog-standard video player can do OSD and subtitles. This is done in by superimposing YUV on the frames. Not by converting the YUV frame to RGB and then superimposing in RGB.

This YUV argument is plain false or misleading at best.

[sreyan]

The other claims are wrong too. All Linux drivers but IEGD offer a means to get decoded frames out of the GPU. VA-API and VDPAU are both suitable in a way to avoid this retrieval of decoded frames (VA subpictures / VDPAU layers). The concepts for that are rather simple, but the implementation is probably a little less trivial depending on the vector graphics rendering engine used.

Are you the guy working for splitted desktop systems that
s given us vaapi support for libavcodec and gnash and the vaapi wrappers for xvba and vdpau? If so thanks for your work.

Your comment (quoted below) with real measured numbers speaks a hell of a lot more than mike m.

"But minority browsers don't use as much CPU while playing HTML5 video tag data.

Are you sure about that?"

Safari 4.0.4 running in 32-bit mode under Mac OS X 10.6.2, on an iMac with a 2.16 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo and 3GB of RAM.

Using http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AwvuirSEAA and viewing the 720p version sized to 960 pixels wide (the larger size in the browser window), streaming.

Using Flash Plugin, 100-115% CPU (105% typical). (!!!)

Using Quicktime Plugin (that's in the browser via Click2Flash), 30% - 40% CPU (35% typical).

Unfortunately YouTube's HTML5 beta doesn't appear to work with anyhing but standard def videos (I can't get it to work with that video anyway). So, with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEIZ_FFmjnw

Using Flash Plugin, 65-70% CPU.

Using Quicktime Plugin, 15-20% CPU.

Using HTML5, 15-20% CPU.

Pesky facts."

Thanks for your work and calling him out on the lies.

[L33F3R]

Thank you Michael for such a well constructed rant. Rather enjoyable.

[deanjo]

Your comment (quoted below) with real measured numbers speaks a hell of a lot more than mike m.

"But minority browsers don't use as much CPU while playing HTML5 video tag data.

Are you sure about that?"
<--snip--->
Pesky facts."

Thanks for your work and calling him out on the lies.

I got a chuckle out of that too, heck even moonlight offers far lower resource usage then flash playing back HD media. At least the Olympic coverage isn't using flash.

[DanL]

In the end some of Melanson's claims are justified, but in the end..

LOL @ "In the end...but in the end.."

Adobe can be doing much more -- without investing too much -- to improving their Flash Player support on Linux.

.. but it's far easier to post FUD about Linux inferiority in a blog and expect moneyed interests and your entrenched market position to justify doing the bare minimum to support your product on Linux. When "pesky facts" arise, be sure to paint your opponents as freetards or even better, hippies.