So what IS the official line on Flash Aversion? Resource Eating? Taking away from QuickTime?

[Winston]

M A V I C wrote:
[quote=Winston]
I tried a random YouTube video on my 667 MHz TiBook:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPjvLk-eEUU&feature=rec-fresh+div-r-3-HM

Playback on YouTube is jerky. Playback with QuickTime Player or Miro is perfect. This is not the best video as a lot of it is static and there are no faces to check voice sync, but it still proves the point

So I'm more curious now after doing some testing. That Flash video is FLV1. If you open it up in QT you get the message:

The document “video.flv” could not be opened. The movie is not in a format that QuickTime Player understands.

So unless there's something I'm missing, you weren't comparing the same videos.

What res do you have the YouTube video set to when it's playing back in the browser?

OK, I do have ClickToFlash installed, with YouTube whitelisted, and the ClickToFlash option for h.264 video on YouTube enabled.

I downloaded the file by clicking on it in Safari's Activity window. The link was:
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=18&video_id=nPjvLk-eEUU&t=vjVQa1PpcFPyaa5rZTAvlOl-OicmxohVF59O9k5_AU0%3D

I have YouTube set at the default:
"Choose my video quality dynamically based on the current connection speed."

I let the video fully download before playing it in Safari, then downloaded the same file. It downloads as an .mp4 file, not .flv.

So I just turned off the ClickToFlash h.264 and tried the YouTube .flv file.
http://v2.lscache4.c.youtube.com/videopl...ip=0.0.0.0&sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Calgorithm%2Cburst%2Cfactor&fexp=901421%2C903205&algorithm=throttle-factor&itag=5&ipbits=0&burst=40&sver=3&expire=1264816800&key=yt1&signature=5F7C9E8C51ABCF6CEBE004A7EAD7E2DD7BBB7BB2.6DD78B345A8109B128F326001AF1B58FFCF2DCC9&factor=1.25&id=9cf8ef2e4f9e1145


I get more or less the same result with the .flv file. It plays poorly in Safari, and fine in QuickTime Player.

So is the problem with Safari, Flash, what?


- W

[silvarios]

I must be a Luddite because I also hate HTML email.

And no I could care less about watching the Simpsons Flash nonsense on a mobile device or otherwise. And no I'm not being flippant because of the choice of content. I wanted to look up some games on the Square Enix site. The content and navigation was predominantly Flash so I gave up after the first couple slow loading clunky interfaces. Pity.


Nathan

[M A V I C]

Winston wrote:
OK, I do have ClickToFlash installed, with YouTube whitelisted, and the ClickToFlash option for h.264 video on YouTube enabled.

I downloaded the file by clicking on it in Safari's Activity window. The link was:
http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt=18&video_id=nPjvLk-eEUU&t=vjVQa1PpcFPyaa5rZTAvlOl-OicmxohVF59O9k5_AU0%3D

I have YouTube set at the default:
"Choose my video quality dynamically based on the current connection speed."

I let the video fully download before playing it in Safari, then downloaded the same file. It downloads as an .mp4 file, not .flv.

So I just turned off the ClickToFlash h.264 and tried the YouTube .flv file.
http://v2.lscache4.c.youtube.com/videopl...ip=0.0.0.0&sparams=id%2Cexpire%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Calgorithm%2Cburst%2Cfactor&fexp=901421%2C903205&algorithm=throttle-factor&itag=5&ipbits=0&burst=40&sver=3&expire=1264816800&key=yt1&signature=5F7C9E8C51ABCF6CEBE004A7EAD7E2DD7BBB7BB2.6DD78B345A8109B128F326001AF1B58FFCF2DCC9&factor=1.25&id=9cf8ef2e4f9e1145


I get more or less the same result with the .flv file. It plays poorly in Safari, and fine in QuickTime Player.

So is the problem with Safari, Flash, what?
- W

I'm still confused on just how you can get that FLV to play in QT. How big is the file? It's a proprietary format that Apple doesn't use... or maybe what I've read is wrong. It wont play for me. Anyway, for the sake of clarity I'm sticking to the newer thread on this topic now.

[Winston]

M A V I C wrote:

I'm still confused on just how you can get that FLV to play in QT. How big is the file? It's a proprietary format that Apple doesn't use... or maybe what I've read is wrong. It wont play for me. Anyway, for the sake of clarity I'm sticking to the newer thread on this topic now.

Perian 1.2. From About Perian in the Perian pane of System Preferences:

About
Perian aims to provide a single package for all your playback needs. It is a collection of QuickTime components incorporating several libraries:
• libavcodec, from the ffmpeg project, along with code from the old FFusion component:
• MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2
• DivX
• 3ivx
• H.264
• Flash Video
• Flash Screen Video
• VP6
• H263I
• VP3
• HuffYUV and ffvhuff
• Indeo 1 & 2
• MPEG-1 & 2 Video (in supported formats)
• Fraps (up to v4)
• Windows Media Audio v1 & v2
• Flash ADPCM
• Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska)
• MPEG Layer I and II audio
• DTS Coherent Acoustics audio
• Snow wavelet video
• DosBox video
• Nellymoser ASAO audio
• libavformat, from the ffmpeg project. along with AVIImporter.component:
• AVI file format
• FLV file format
• NUV file format
• libmatroska, along with matroska-qt.component:
• MKV file format
• Subtitles:
• (Advanced) SubStation Alpha
• SRT
• SAMI
• VobSub
• liba52, via A52Codec:
• AC3 audio

- W

[Article Accelerator]

M A V I C wrote:
[quote=Article Accelerator]
I think people in your position should point out to your clients that by using Flash, they are excluding a significant portion of web users from viewing their ads and/or sites, viz. virtually all mobile users (>100 million) plus the millions of additional users who have enabled Flash blockers on their other devices.

Sorry, but those numbers aren't accurate. Flash and Flash Lite have way more market penetration than you're estimating. For example http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/
I don't think I made my point clearly. I'm not referring to market share. I'm referring to absolute numbers. Is it a good thing to ignore well over 100 million potential customers?

[Article Accelerator]

trisho. wrote:
[quote=Article Accelerator]

I think M A V I C and i are speaking from the perspective of people who actually produce content for the web & build it versus people who consume the web.

I think people in your position should point out to your clients that by using Flash, they are excluding a significant portion of web users from viewing their ads and/or sites, viz. virtually all mobile users (>100 million) plus the millions of additional users who have enabled Flash blockers on their other devices.

If the objective is to impress as many eyeballs as possible, your clients are making a big mistake by insisting on Flash.

I don't insist on Flash, because I don't feel like dealing with it. Also...you kind of showed above that you're not aware of how ad serving systems work. Whenever companies submit their ads to an ad serving network, they're required to give JPG, GIF or PNG along with a Flash file, just in case people's browsers are blocking Flash. That way, their ads still get through.
Interestingly, I still see tons of page areas (obviously dedicated to ads) blanked out by ClickToFlash. Either ClickToFlash is inhibiting substitution too or servers/designers aren't following the rules.

[silvarios]

Brings my system to its knees because I can't cope with the slow loading navigation and lack of accessibility. The system as extension of me slows down. As opposed to the video which actually effects the CPU usage and ramps up the fans.

If you go to YouTube and play "I'm on Fire" by Springteen, the Video is a iffy with Flash. Totem will access YouTube as well, but instead of a flash container it grabs the h.264 version. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I figured the Flash version was encapsulating h.264 as well. How do I check the Flash version for audio and video codec?


Nathan

[M A V I C]

Article Accelerator wrote:
I don't think I made my point clearly. I'm not referring to market share. I'm referring to absolute numbers. Is it a good thing to ignore well over 100 million potential customers?

According to Adobe, over 800 million mobile devices have shipped with Flash support. I'm not sure where you heard that "virtually all mobile users" can't use Flash. Here's a list of mobile devices that support Flash.

According to the numbers I can find, there are over 1.7 billion internet users. Flash has roughly at least 98% market penetration. Since Flash ads increase the CTR by several fold on that 1.67 billion users, ignoring a few that don't have Flash is worth it.

Is it a good thing to ignore well over 100 million potential customers?

There are far more than that who play Flash games. Apple is ignoring them by not allowing Adobe to put Flash on their mobile devices. So think about it in reverse as well.

[M A V I C]

silvarios wrote:
Brings my system to its knees because I can't cope with the slow loading navigation and lack of accessibility. The system as extension of me slows down. As opposed to the video which actually effects the CPU usage and ramps up the fans.

Sounds like the example you've seen are poorly built. If someone is driving slow in front of you on the freeway, do you blame the car manufacturer or the person driving it?

silvarios wrote: Maybe I'm mistaken, but I figured the Flash version was encapsulating h.264 as well. How do I check the Flash version for audio and video codec?

You have to get the original file. Sometimes that's tricky. Sites like 3outube.com just grab the H.264 version. I then open the file up in VLC and go through the Media Information... thing there to check it.

[Winston]

M A V I C -

Have you tried ClickToFlash? If not, please do, and evaluate your browsing experience in Safari with and without it.
http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

Ideally, do your test on an older machine which is closer in abilities to an iPhone or an iPad.

I think you will quickly see why Apple chose to leave out Flash support for relatively underpowered devices.

It doesn't really matter whether Flash itself is bad, or many/most web sites use it poorly. Flash doesn't work very well as implemented for slower computers.


Good luck.

- Winston