Hardware acceleration added to Flash Player 10.1 for Mac
Adobe has released a new version of its Flash Player for Mac that officially supports hardware acceleration for H.264 video content.
The update 10.1.82.76 was announced Tuesday by Adobe product manager Thibault Imbert on his blog. The feature, code-named "Gala," had been announced several months prior, but was unavailable with the official release of Flash Player 10.1 for Mac in June. In a break from usual protocol, Adobe enabled the new feature in a security release.
Hardware acceleration in Flash Player 10.1 for Mac is available only for Mac OS X Snow Leopard and the following graphics cards: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M.
According to Adobe, a CPU utilization reduction of up to two-thirds is possible when GPU hardware acceleration is active.
Flash Player for Mac has recently been the subject of controversy. In April, Apple CEO Steve Jobs published an open letter criticizing Adobe's Flash offerings. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen subsequently dismissed Jobs' letter as a "smokescreen."
The update 10.1.82.76 was announced Tuesday by Adobe product manager Thibault Imbert on his blog. The feature, code-named "Gala," had been announced several months prior, but was unavailable with the official release of Flash Player 10.1 for Mac in June. In a break from usual protocol, Adobe enabled the new feature in a security release.
Hardware acceleration in Flash Player 10.1 for Mac is available only for Mac OS X Snow Leopard and the following graphics cards: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M.
According to Adobe, a CPU utilization reduction of up to two-thirds is possible when GPU hardware acceleration is active.
Flash Player for Mac has recently been the subject of controversy. In April, Apple CEO Steve Jobs published an open letter criticizing Adobe's Flash offerings. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen subsequently dismissed Jobs' letter as a "smokescreen."
Comments
Thanks
And for that matter. Their CS Suites are getting lazy, innovative and buggier every release. Just what in the he'll is really going on at adobe. Perhaps the shareholders should oust some people!?
Funny thing adobe only supports nvidia. Apple just released their mac pros and aren't offering nvidia as an option. Once again adobe fails by falling behind.
Adobe is using official Apple APIs to access the hardware acceleration, these APIs only provide access to (recent) Nvidia graphic cards.
I don't know how easy it would be for Adobe to use other APIs that support hardware acceleration with a wider selection of video cards. I don't know whether such APIs even exist or whether other vendors program the hardware acceleration themselves. But the precise choice of supported graphic cards was made by Apple.
Funny thing adobe only supports nvidia. Apple just released their mac pros and aren't offering nvidia as an option. Once again adobe fails by falling behind. I see this as a fine example of what Jobs was referring to in regards to developers holding the ios back by not utilising up to date hardware. Thereby holding features hostage by software that simply lags. I have an ATI Radeon 4870 hd in my mac pro. And flash runs like hell. Was hoping they would have showed some dedication by now to have a decent desktop version. If they can't do that how are they ever gonna get a mobile version up to par?
And for that matter. Their CS Suites are getting lazy, innovative and buggier every release. Just what in the he'll is really going on at adobe. Perhaps the shareholders should oust some people!?
It's not the fault of Adobe that only a subset of all graphics cards currently deployed on Apple machines are supported. Apple's official API supports only a few cards, namely the newer NVidia 9400M, the 330 and the 320. Even the older 8600GT-M isn't on the list. Though I believe hardware-wise it is also capable of H/W decompression.
Funny thing adobe only supports nvidia. Apple just released their mac pros and aren't offering nvidia as an option. Once again adobe fails by falling behind. I see this as a fine example of what Jobs was referring to in regards to developers holding the ios back by not utilising up to date hardware. Thereby holding features hostage by software that simply lags. I have an ATI Radeon 4870 hd in my mac pro. And flash runs like hell. Was hoping they would have showed some dedication by now to have a decent desktop version. If they can't do that how are they ever gonna get a mobile version up to par?
And for that matter. Their CS Suites are getting lazy, innovative and buggier every release. Just what in the he'll is really going on at adobe. Perhaps the shareholders should oust some people!?
Seriously, do you even use Adobe CS products. You seem to be just copying what others say. As a matter of fact, "innovative" is a good thing.
It's true. CS gets crappier by the day. In particular the UI. Simply atrocious.
It's not the fault of Adobe that only a subset of all graphics cards currently deployed on Apple machines are supported. Apple's official API supports only a few cards, namely the newer NVidia 9400M, the 330 and the 320. Even the older 8600GT-M isn't on the list. Though I believe hardware-wise it is also capable of H/W decompression.
The beauty of it is that if Adobe are using the documented APIs, once Apple get around to updating that support it should work right off the bat.
It's not the fault of Adobe that only a subset of all graphics cards currently deployed on Apple machines are supported. Apple's official API supports only a few cards, namely the newer NVidia 9400M, the 330 and the 320. Even the older 8600GT-M isn't on the list. Though I believe hardware-wise it is also capable of H/W decompression.
i bought a 2008 macbook pro(512MB 8600GT) for more than $2,000 and it already feels obsolete
i have to make it last one more year until the 3yr warranty runs out. It sucks having an 8600gt and not being able to use its full potential!! do you think the hardware acceleration would make it run cooler?? if so i'll keep my an eye out some sort of hack.
It's true. CS gets crappier by the day. In particular the UI. Simply atrocious.
I wonder if this version also fixes te fact that Flash now crashes every browser on my Mac about 60% of the time.
Give them a little time, they are working hard to increase that to 100% of the time.
Give them a little time, they are working hard to increase that to 100% of the time.
You have no idea how appropriate that comment is. If anything it's a little worse now. It still crashes...Only faster
And to think people wonder why I hate Adobe Systems Inc.
Adobe is using official Apple APIs to access the hardware acceleration, these APIs only provide access to (recent) Nvidia graphic cards.
I don't know how easy it would be for Adobe to use other APIs that support hardware acceleration with a wider selection of video cards. I don't know whether such APIs even exist or whether other vendors program the hardware acceleration themselves. But the precise choice of supported graphic cards was made by Apple.
+1 Insightful
It's not the fault of Adobe that only a subset of all graphics cards currently deployed on Apple machines are supported. Apple's official API supports only a few cards, namely the newer NVidia 9400M, the 330 and the 320. Even the older 8600GT-M isn't on the list. Though I believe hardware-wise it is also capable of H/W decompression.
While it is true that the particular API's flash player is using now are restricted to a few NVidia cards, various other options for hw accelerated video on OS X have been available to Adobe all the time. Snow Leopard has OpenCL which can be used to offload large parts of the decoding work, and before that bare-bones OpenGL GLSL would have been a possibility. I admit that it's not nearly as easy or convenient as getting almost a complete H264 decoder on a silver platter (the API's they are using right now), but Adobe is big enough to develop or buy a video decoder using one of these 2 alternatives. A GLSL or OpenCL based decoder would have the additional benefit of being portable to other systems such as Linux, which will probably never have hw accelerated Flash video because no standardized API for easy video playback exists on Linux at all. In fact, even on Windows there is nothing like the API's that Adobe is now using on OS X, Windows has DXVA, but that still requires quite a lot of effort, since it only provides a set of building blocks, not a full video decoding pipeline.
Don't care anymore. With the Safari Youtube5 Plugin I haven't used flash for quite a while. If I accouter Flash anyway, I just use the Develop Panel to switch to the iPad UserId. Has worked every time till now... Oh and I used to love Chromium but Safari rules! Give it a try...
Why do you need a plugin? Just go to youtube.com/html5 and join the html5 beta. Problem solved.
-kpluck
i bought a 2008 macbook pro(512MB 8600GT) for more than $2,000 and it already feels obsolete
i have to make it last one more year until the 3yr warranty runs out. It sucks having an 8600gt and not being able to use its full potential!! do you think the hardware acceleration would make it run cooler?? if so i'll keep my an eye out some sort of hack.
Steve wants you to upgrade. But cool, now Flash is very slick on MacBooks! No need to complain any more, Steve!
You have no idea how appropriate that comment is. If anything it's a little worse now. It still crashes...Only faster
And to think people wonder why I hate Adobe Systems Inc.
I don't know what Flash smut you guys watch, I just watch the normal banner ads and play lots of Flash games, and Flash Player hasn't crashed for months here...