[Gnash-dev] Adobe Flash Player beta now supports non-proprietary file formats!

[John Gilmore]

Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 14:37:01 -0700
Forwarded-By: Kurt Albershardt <address@hidden>

Interesting...

http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html

Here's some of the text from that blog posting, by an Adobe developer:

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

[Read the whole thing, it's worthwhile, the above is just small bits
of it.]

Various commenters to the blog post said various things, including:

  Has the possibility to add ogg (vorbis~theora) support been evocated
  or is not planned at all ?

  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?

  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!

  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.

  ACC will be nice, but why ignore Vorbis? It's a codec proven to
  provide outstanding quality.

  third for Ogg/theora/vorbis

  Happy that you go for standard H264/aac instead of crappy VP7 , but
  H264 has huge licensing costs ...

  That's nice and all, but when are we getting 64-BIT!?!?
  sheesh. ya'll're really missing the boat here!

  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.. :(

  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.

  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?

  Great. Think you could update the Embedded Devices version of Flash
  so that all this kickass stuff ACTUALLY WORKS on the Wii?

  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.

  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

  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.