Update: You can now download the new (Beta 2) version of Flash Player 9 Update 3 from Adobe Labs.
The New Flash Player plays MP4s, Quicktime video, even music from your iPod! article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
OK, this one's big, so listen up! There's going to be a Flash Player update today on Adobe labs that changes the game when it comes to web video and audio: Flash Player 9 Update 3 (Beta 2) will be supporting hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced fullscreen video playback of H.264 video and HE-AAC audio (the compression standards in MPEG-4 and the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray® and HD-DVD® high definition video players).
Why is this exciting?
In a nutshell, H.264 is the same standard being used to broadcast high-definition television by the likes of BBC HD, DirecTV, and Sky HD. H.264 provides great video quality and does so across the bandwidth spectrum from 3G (mobile phones) to HD while using up about half the bandwidth of MPEG-2. And there's already a wealth of H.264 content out there that Flash can now play. Specifically, this includes MP4, M4V, M4A, MOV, Mp4v, 3gp, and 3g2 files. (And even songs from your iPod that are not protected by FairPlay DRM as they're in H.264/AAC format too!)
Here's a quick FAQ about H.264 video support in Flash Player 9 Update 3 that should answer most of the important questions. For an in-depth technical analysis, read Tinic Uro's blog post titled What just happened to video on the web? and for more commentary, read Ryan Stewart's post, Flash Player supports H.264 video, on ZDNet.com.
Does H.264 in Flash Player support alpha channel?
No. Our first implementation does not support alpha channels using H.264, but we plan to implement this feature in the next major release.
Will I be able to put On2 VP6 streams into the new MPEG-4-based file format?
The Flash Player 9 beta will not playback On2 VP6 encoded video in the new file format.
Will Flash Player 9 Update 3 support non-FLV files/extensions?
Yes, with this update, Flash Player will also support MPEG-4 standard container files that contain video and audio data encoded using H.264/AAC, including MP4, M4V, M4A, MOV, Mp4v, 3gp, 3g2.
What are the minimum system requirements for viewing H.264-based content in Flash Player?
The minimum system requirements for viewing H264-based content will be similar to other media players supporting H264 in the market today. There will be a full list of system requirements and their associated playback capabilities posted on adobe.com when Flash player 9 is released.
Will H.264 be included in AIR? When will it appear in the AIR Labs releases?
Yes, H.264 will be included in AIR 1.0. It is expected to be available to AIR developers in a public beta on Adobe Labs later this year.
Will the Adobe Flash Media Server support H.264 content?
Yes, the next version of Flash Media Server will support streaming of H.264 content and AAC content - both live and on demand. More details on this will be released later in the year.
Will there be an updated FLV File Format Specification? When will it be available?
Yes, Adobe plans to make the updated specification available after the final release. The specification will describe the new MPEG-4-based file format container supported by Adobe Flash Player.
When will Flash Player 9 Update 3 ship?
Flash player 9 Update 3 is expected to be available from the Adobe Flash Player Download Center later this Fall.
What parts of the H.264 license are included when I buy Adobe Products?
The end user license to the Adobe Flash Player allows users to playback H.264 content for your own non-commercial use. Commercial use of the Flash Player to decode H.264 video may require a separate license.
What are H.264’s licensing terms?
Licensing terms for H.264 are available at www.mpegla.com and www.vialicensing.com.
What is MPEG LA?
MPEG LA is in the business of offering users access under one license to essential patents for standards-based technologies owned by many patent holders. MPEG LA provides these licenses as a convenience to the market in order to save users the time and expense of negotiating individual licenses with multiple patent owners and the resulting payment of many separate royalties. The licenses offered by MPEG LA include patents that are essential to implementation of H.264.
When does MPEG LA require payment of a use fee or royalty, and do I need my own license for H.264?
MPEG-LA has a number of categories where parties may be required to obtain a license and pay a royalty. Categories include: AVC Products, Title-By-Title Video, Subscription AVC Video, and Internet Broadcast AVC video, among others. Most categories apply to commercial uses and implementations, but some apply more broadly. Whether the license applies to your use; the applicable royalty; and the threshold for application of the royalty varies for each category. You will need to contact MPEG LA or review the license terms to determine if your use falls within a particular category. MPEG LA has posted a FAQ and has a Q&A Department (email qanda@mepgla.com) for those questions not answered by the FAQ.
Read the official Adobe press release here.
The New Flash Player plays MP4s, Quicktime video, even music from your iPod! article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
So, if this update is such a big thing (and I don’t doubt that it is) why is it being slipped into a rather uncharismatically named ‘Update 3′? If content producers are creating content in H.264 that will require this capability in the Player, are they going to have to test for ‘version 9 update 3′? Seems really weird that this isn’t a dot release or just shunted to the next version.
But an interesting development all the same!
Drew, that’s a whole can of worms that I’ve opened in the past and it wasn’t pretty. The naming of Flash Player updates is a very political thing, apparently. Of course, every update/minor version/etc. is actually a new version of the player but the naming affects the all-important penetration rate statistics. If version 9 update 3 was released as Player 10, it would start from 0% penetration (which version 9 update 3 is going to start from anyway) but Adobe can still talk about X% penetration rate for “The Flash 9 Player” without entirely engaging in false advertising (although, of course, it is supremely misleading and, ideally, they shouldn’t).
A wormy can indeed. Thanks for the insight, Aral.
Hi, really great news indeed. Although I didn’t quite like this bit in Kaourantin post:
“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 might be wrong, but this can have a huge impact on projects such as Red5, Wowza or haxevideo. Let’s see how it goes.
Cheers
HI ,
Nice articles this info is very useful thanx again………….
i am going to publish this article in my blog too…
Another reason not to name the player version 10 is of course that it will still be a while before the development environment flash 10 (CS4) is coming out. Who knows what new features the new player will require for that…
[...] Big news, and a big step towards taking on Silverlight. Lots of detailed insider information on this announcement can be found on kaourantin.net, with other sites I’ve read this morning including Yahoo!, Aral Balkan, and Flashmagazine. [...]
FlashPlayerがH.264 + AACサポート…
どうやらFlashPlayerのベータでH.264とAACがサポートされたようで……
Michiel,
I think we’re achieving a level of maturity in the player where certain things should stay the same for a while. I don’t expect a new VM or AS4 for some time now, for example :)
I read here (http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html) that MPEG-4 streaming from 3rd party servers will not be allowed?
I’m sorry? MPEG-4 is an open standard, aimed exactly to solve the issue of interoperability between different products: the whole idea of MPEG-4 is that we can choose any product from any vendor and use it in combination with any other product from any other vendor, as long as both comply to the standards.
So Adobe is tricking it’s customers again… claiming MPEG-4 support but using a proprietary (RTMP) streaming technology instead of the real deal (RTSP), and scaring off customers with remarks like ‘3rd parties need licensing from us’. There’s nothing to license, stupid! MPEG-4 is not your technology to license. It’s owned by 90% of the electronic consumer devices manufacturers.
Steve, Adobe is not licensing MP4 to you. But it sounds that if you want to build a server which streams MP4 via RTMP (a protocol which Adobe has developed) to the Flash Player (a product which they have also developed, distributed and marketed) and which directly competes with Flash Media Server (the one link in this chain which has the potential to bring in some good revenues) then I don’t think it’s too outrageous to ask for a licensing fee for this.
Controversial as this may sound but if they were to give away everythign for free (Player, protocol, server etc) then how would they fund further research and innovation?
That aside, you can still serve MP4 progressively without having to pay a penny for any Adobe products.
Aral, I completely agree about the pennetration rates, my current pennetration rates are like the films my step dad watches on a saturday morning at 3am! Can’t wait to export those into the H.264 format!
[...] flash player 9 version 3 (beta 2) Aral Balkan reports that the new flash player will play mp4s, quicktime video or music from your ipod. That’s H.264 video and HE-AAC audio. He explains why it’s exciting and gives a link to Adobes press release (but you can go there directly from here if you want). [...]
[...] Update: Ryan Stewart answers some common questions about this update, and Aral Balkan has a very detailed FAQ on his blog. [...]
All of that sounds pretty cool. My question is I just bought an nvidia 8600GT which has on-chip hardware decoding of many different formats. Will the flash player take advantage of that hardware acceleration chip that’s on my graphics card??
NVIDIA PureVideo™ HD Technology2
Dedicated on-chip video processor
High-definition H.264, VC-1, MPEG2 and WMV9 decode acceleration
Advanced spatial-temporal de-interlacing
HDCP capable3
Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing
Noise Reduction
Edge Enhancement
Bad Edit Correction
Inverse telecine (2:2 and 3:2 pull-down correction)
High-quality scaling
Video color correction
Microsoft® Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) support
Flash Player 9 gets H.264+AAC…
Nice! This definitely helps keep Flash as the de facto standard. “Yes! that’s right Flash Player 9 will now supports H.264 for video playback. The latest update to Flash player 9 which will be available on Adobe Labs will include……
I lose my mind. Hoped to sleep today. And now these news :)
[...] Lo que está claro que Adobe es una empresa con accionistas, ya lo dicen por aquí: […] it sounds that if you want to build a server which streams MP4 via RTMP (a protocol which Adobe has developed) to the Flash Player (a product which they have also developed, distributed and marketed) and which directly competes with Flash Media Server (the one link in this chain which has the potential to bring in some good revenues) then I don’t think it’s too outrageous to ask for a licensing fee for this. [...]
Not a spectacular player, but a demo of 480p and 720p Apple trailers :)
http://www.debit.nl/video/
And Aral thanks for the post..
[...] Ekstra: – http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html – http://aralbalkan.com/1012 [...]
Thanks for sharing, Bernard :)
@Stefan, RTSP is an integrated part of the MPEG-4 standard. The whole idea behind MPEG-4 is interoperability between multiple MPEG-4 components.
By choosing their own proprietary RTMP protocol, and hacking RTSP streaming support out of the new Flash Player MPEG-4 component, Adobe deliberately cripples the player. This is not of interest in the end-user, nor to the producer or publisher. And I wonder how the MPEG-4 license holders will react to this: their main interest is interoperability and don’t like companies who abuse their technologies.
It would be the same as Microsoft releasing a new Internet Explorer browser which doesn’t work with HTTP but with a proprietary MTTP protocol, only supported by MS IIS…
There are great free servers for MPEG-4 available, for instance Darwin Streaming Server: Apple doesn’t need to charge for the server, then why would Adobe? Except for RealNetworks no streaming server developer charges license fees, or they bundle their unlimited server with the OS for free. Remember what happened to RealNetworks. Their technology was great. They’re dead because of extremely high server licencse fees.
Look at how many alternatives have already popped up for FMS: progressive, PHP FLV, Wowza, Red5, StroboScope, etc… I’ve been in this business for many years, and no-one of our customers is considering FMS since it is way too expensive.
Adobe should commit to standards and allow RTSP streaming to Flash Player, or alternatively open up RTMP to allow third parties to stream to Flash Media Player as well. Become a MPEG-4 license holder by throwing in patents and make money this way instead of charging for crippled proprietary technologies… It’s commercially more attractive to commit to a standard and compete in a huge market… or is Adobe afraid of some competition?
I have to agree with the commenters RE: streaming support. Pretty awful that you cripple the client and lock out RTSP.
OK, so this new re-engineered Flash, is the Mac version still going to suck? Because the current Flash version eats like 95% of available CPU cycles on my PowerBook just to play a simple video. It’s much less efficient than the Windows version.
It will be interesting to see when/if google adopts the release for youtube.
I keep seeing references to the licensing in these articles, and it’s getting me confused. No site seems to lay it out in simple terms.
Maybe the question needs to be asked in a different way: Currently with FLV I can encode any of my videos and post them to my website (commercial website or otherwise) and not pay any fees (other than what I paid to purchase the software involved). What’s different if I switched from FLV to H.264?
[...] For more information visit Aral Balkan blog. [...]
[...] Ekstra: – http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html – http://aralbalkan.com/1012 [...]
[...] Ekstra: http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html http://aralbalkan.com/1012 [...]
flash player will support(play) HE-AAC v2 (aacPlus v2) ?
[...] New Flash Player plays MP4s, Quicktime video, even music from your iPod! at Aral Balkan [...]
will there be support for content with drm?
[...] Ekstra: http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html http://aralbalkan.com/1012 [...]
Nice Info
Thanks
nice post
thanks
will there be support for content with drm?
So you want the HOTTEST techno gizmo but dont feel like shelling out the dough. You deserve to get freebies. Want Free Things has the top freebies from free Nintendo wii to free electronics such as a free camera, free iPod or free iPhone.
Great info, we DO expect (though) that the ad-supported model WILL work. //keeping our noses down and pushing ahead…
Sincerely,
The Songnumbers Team
PS, we just pushed out BETA 2 of our site!
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