Try it for yourself. With this YouTube clip* (make sure to choose the 720p version, enlarge the playback container and wait for clip to load fully before starting playback) in a newly-launched instance of Safari with no other windows open, I get 100 - 110% CPU utilisation. Downloaded the clip and played it in VLC: 40% CPU. So, Flash is actually closer to three times the CPU usage of VLC on my machine.
*Don't judge me, this was the first hit I got when I typed 720p HD in the search.
"When we have access to hardware acceleration, we've proven that Flash has equal or better performance on every platform"
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. H
... Adobe would have you believe that hardware acceleration is a requirement for low CPU usage when decoding video. This is simply untrue. ... For example, I watched the 720p version of a youtube clip in my browser (I waited for the whole clip to finish loading before starting playback) - CPU usage = 150%. Then, I downloaded it and played it with VLC (which has no hardware acceleration) - CPU usage = 40 to 50%...
What Adobe really means is, "We can't write code that's worth shit, but, as long as we can offload the work to something we aren't responsible for, it should run fine."
Thanks - where is the option to download the clip?
You can either jump through hoops in Safari (see here; when the mouse pointer moves over to the activity window and a few seconds later a new window appears, that's a mouse button double-click), or use an app like MacTubes.
Why use a URL for referenced information when you can view the real thing first-hand? Just check the CPU utilisation in Activity Monitor run the whilst viewing Flash, MP4, QT or even AVI movies of similar bitrate?
See for yourself, no HW acceleration required & no excuses.
Apple is to blame just as much as Adobe. Apple did not release the info on the needed API's until this year. If Flash was that much of a problem and I am not saying that it wasn't, Apple should have provided that information a long time ago if they wanted this ressolved.
Flash runs without issue on Windows, I can even run Flash 10.1 without issues on my Android phone, the only time I have problems is when OSX is involved. Clearly OSX is part of the problem.
When I boot over into Windows on my MBP I get about 10% CPU utilization using Safari fo Windows. Clearly OSX is the issue.
Flash is only a topic of conversation on Apple forums, no one in the Windows for for that matter even Android world cares less about Flash, all they care about is they want their video to work. Apple is the only one having this issue because until recently they didn'[t want to give out the required information needed.
While Adobe has blame in this and has been lazy, Apple and SJ also shares in the blame.
So Adobe shouldn't write software for the platform, the platform should change for their software? Arrogant!
You're right that it's an OSX issue though, Adobe have an issue with it. They realised their mistake when pulling Premiere for the Mac (they lost control of the DT video market). So they took a leaf from MicroSoft's book to keep the products on the Mac but fail to optimise them and create a poor application+platform value statement. The only reason Flash is rubbish on OSX is because Adobe want it to be.
Evidence? Other non-accelerated video decoders happily playback higher complexity/bitrate SD video with 12-15% CPU utilisation, Flash? 47-60% on my 2.4GHz C2D. OpenGL has provided vector acceleration for years before Adobe bought MM, I understand this is used for the Android devices - did they skip OSX?
So they took a leaf from MicroSoft's book to keep the products on the Mac but fail to optimise them and create a poor application+platform value statement. The only reason Flash is rubbish on OSX is because Adobe want it to be.
McD
I understand Microsoft would rather have people use Windows. Maybe that explains why they make the Windows version of their software the very best.
But what advantage to Adobe is there by purposefully sabotaging their Mac releases? How could that increase their overall sales?
That's mixing up a lot of variables and attributing them all to Flash. Look at the web page: there are many things going on there, including dynamic ad overlays. Not all of that is Flash playback, but a mix of extra Flash movie overlays and and to some degree even Safari itself.
OK, that's a fair point. So let's investigate. A reminder that all CPU usage numbers are for a MacBook Pro with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU.
On a newly-launched instance of safari, with a blank main window, and the activity and downloads windows also open, CPU usage is as one would hope: 0 %.
Now, navigating to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFSDi...FY4e4Qodty-DZA with ClickToFlash installed so the video part of the page doesn't do anything, and waiting until the page is fully loaded before measuring CPU usage, and you still have very low CPU usage: 0.4 %.
Now, clicking on the flash, waiting until it has fully downloaded the clip, and stopping the clip from playing, then measuring CPU usage and you get: 12 % CPU!
Yes, that's right. Flash uses 12 % CPU to do absolutely nothing. That's already pretty damning.
Now play the clip and you get 100 - 110 % CPU.
Now, if you want to say "well, maybe Flash would only use 40 % CPU if the only thing it was doing was decoding the video data", that means you're attributing 60 - 70 % CPU usage to processing the single pop-up advert, even before and after the advert appears! Does this sound realistic?
The answer is clear: Flash on OS X is incompetently engineered and uses three times as much CPU time to decode video compared to an open-source video player. Said open-source video player does not use hardware acceleration on OS X. This proves that Adobe could cut Flash CPU usage for video decode by up to two-thirds without using any hardware acceleration.
That 12% isn't idle time. Look at the various ad overlays. There's a lot going on with that page.
No there isn't. Check my post again. I have ClickToFlash installed so Flash content only loads if I click in the location required.
After loading the page completely but before clicking to load the flash video, CPU usage is 0.4 %. Then I click to load the flash. Once the clip is fully loaded, and the clip is not playing, CPU usage is 12 %. Flash is doing nothing useful, but is using 12 % CPU.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacRulez
If the question is about how well Flash plays video relative to VLC, the right test would be to get a video isolated from other elements.
Anything less risks making Adobe's engineers liable for YouTube's design decisons, which just wouldn't be a fair comparison.
Read my post again. The test is as fair as can be. How do you account for the 12 % CPU usage increase when you choose to load the flash video but not play it? How do you account for the 110 % CPU usage when the video is playing? Subtract the 12 % quiescent CPU usage (which should be 0 % anyway) and you've still got over double the CPU usage of VLC.
For its part, Adobe fired back and said that any crashes of Flash in Mac OS X are not related to its software, but are instead the fault of Apple's operating system.
So, how does that explain the crashes and slowdowns on the Windows machine that my company forces me to use?
According to my personal experience with few Windows browsers and to google results for "flash crashes" it is not.
I certainly haven't seen it. I've had no choice but to use Click2Flash on my iMac due to frequent crashes, but my cheap Windows netbook has never had a single Flash related problem in two years. For streaming video, the netbook blows the doors off the iMac, even though the iMac has vastly superior hardware specs.
Comments
That's an interesting statistic. URL?
Try it for yourself. With this YouTube clip* (make sure to choose the 720p version, enlarge the playback container and wait for clip to load fully before starting playback) in a newly-launched instance of Safari with no other windows open, I get 100 - 110% CPU utilisation. Downloaded the clip and played it in VLC: 40% CPU. So, Flash is actually closer to three times the CPU usage of VLC on my machine.
*Don't judge me, this was the first hit I got when I typed 720p HD in the search.
Shantanu Narayen:
"When we have access to hardware acceleration, we've proven that Flash has equal or better performance on every platform"
... Adobe would have you believe that hardware acceleration is a requirement for low CPU usage when decoding video. This is simply untrue. ... For example, I watched the 720p version of a youtube clip in my browser (I waited for the whole clip to finish loading before starting playback) - CPU usage = 150%. Then, I downloaded it and played it with VLC (which has no hardware acceleration) - CPU usage = 40 to 50%...
What Adobe really means is, "We can't write code that's worth shit, but, as long as we can offload the work to something we aren't responsible for, it should run fine."
Thanks - where is the option to download the clip?
You can either jump through hoops in Safari (see here; when the mouse pointer moves over to the activity window and a few seconds later a new window appears, that's a mouse button double-click), or use an app like MacTubes.
That's an interesting statistic. URL?
Why use a URL for referenced information when you can view the real thing first-hand? Just check the CPU utilisation in Activity Monitor run the whilst viewing Flash, MP4, QT or even AVI movies of similar bitrate?
See for yourself, no HW acceleration required & no excuses.
McD
Acutally the topic should be about improved battery life performace. Which is the topic stated in the article.
Which is directly affected by the CPU utilisation we're discussing.
McD
Apple is to blame just as much as Adobe. Apple did not release the info on the needed API's until this year. If Flash was that much of a problem and I am not saying that it wasn't, Apple should have provided that information a long time ago if they wanted this ressolved.
Flash runs without issue on Windows, I can even run Flash 10.1 without issues on my Android phone, the only time I have problems is when OSX is involved. Clearly OSX is part of the problem.
When I boot over into Windows on my MBP I get about 10% CPU utilization using Safari fo Windows. Clearly OSX is the issue.
Flash is only a topic of conversation on Apple forums, no one in the Windows for for that matter even Android world cares less about Flash, all they care about is they want their video to work. Apple is the only one having this issue because until recently they didn'[t want to give out the required information needed.
While Adobe has blame in this and has been lazy, Apple and SJ also shares in the blame.
So Adobe shouldn't write software for the platform, the platform should change for their software? Arrogant!
You're right that it's an OSX issue though, Adobe have an issue with it. They realised their mistake when pulling Premiere for the Mac (they lost control of the DT video market). So they took a leaf from MicroSoft's book to keep the products on the Mac but fail to optimise them and create a poor application+platform value statement. The only reason Flash is rubbish on OSX is because Adobe want it to be.
Evidence? Other non-accelerated video decoders happily playback higher complexity/bitrate SD video with 12-15% CPU utilisation, Flash? 47-60% on my 2.4GHz C2D. OpenGL has provided vector acceleration for years before Adobe bought MM, I understand this is used for the Android devices - did they skip OSX?
Being a Mac user, you should know all this.
McD
So they took a leaf from MicroSoft's book to keep the products on the Mac but fail to optimise them and create a poor application+platform value statement. The only reason Flash is rubbish on OSX is because Adobe want it to be.
McD
I understand Microsoft would rather have people use Windows. Maybe that explains why they make the Windows version of their software the very best.
But what advantage to Adobe is there by purposefully sabotaging their Mac releases? How could that increase their overall sales?
Here's another inconvenient fact: Unstable applications with access to low-level drivers can cause problems down to the OS level.
<crickets>
Come on, an API is not a low-level driver.
Come on, an API is not a low-level driver.
Do you even know what that API does?
Do you even know what that API does?
Do you? He is right. An API is not a driver. Looking at it from a stack perspective, an API sits on top of a driver.
That's mixing up a lot of variables and attributing them all to Flash. Look at the web page: there are many things going on there, including dynamic ad overlays. Not all of that is Flash playback, but a mix of extra Flash movie overlays and and to some degree even Safari itself.
OK, that's a fair point. So let's investigate. A reminder that all CPU usage numbers are for a MacBook Pro with a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo CPU.
On a newly-launched instance of safari, with a blank main window, and the activity and downloads windows also open, CPU usage is as one would hope: 0 %.
Now, navigating to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFSDi...FY4e4Qodty-DZA with ClickToFlash installed so the video part of the page doesn't do anything, and waiting until the page is fully loaded before measuring CPU usage, and you still have very low CPU usage: 0.4 %.
Now, clicking on the flash, waiting until it has fully downloaded the clip, and stopping the clip from playing, then measuring CPU usage and you get: 12 % CPU!
Yes, that's right. Flash uses 12 % CPU to do absolutely nothing. That's already pretty damning.
Now play the clip and you get 100 - 110 % CPU.
Now, if you want to say "well, maybe Flash would only use 40 % CPU if the only thing it was doing was decoding the video data", that means you're attributing 60 - 70 % CPU usage to processing the single pop-up advert, even before and after the advert appears! Does this sound realistic?
The answer is clear: Flash on OS X is incompetently engineered and uses three times as much CPU time to decode video compared to an open-source video player. Said open-source video player does not use hardware acceleration on OS X. This proves that Adobe could cut Flash CPU usage for video decode by up to two-thirds without using any hardware acceleration.
That 12% isn't idle time. Look at the various ad overlays. There's a lot going on with that page.
No there isn't. Check my post again. I have ClickToFlash installed so Flash content only loads if I click in the location required.
After loading the page completely but before clicking to load the flash video, CPU usage is 0.4 %. Then I click to load the flash. Once the clip is fully loaded, and the clip is not playing, CPU usage is 12 %. Flash is doing nothing useful, but is using 12 % CPU.
If the question is about how well Flash plays video relative to VLC, the right test would be to get a video isolated from other elements.
Anything less risks making Adobe's engineers liable for YouTube's design decisons, which just wouldn't be a fair comparison.
Read my post again. The test is as fair as can be. How do you account for the 12 % CPU usage increase when you choose to load the flash video but not play it? How do you account for the 110 % CPU usage when the video is playing? Subtract the 12 % quiescent CPU usage (which should be 0 % anyway) and you've still got over double the CPU usage of VLC.
Come on, the answers are staring you in the face.
For its part, Adobe fired back and said that any crashes of Flash in Mac OS X are not related to its software, but are instead the fault of Apple's operating system.
So, how does that explain the crashes and slowdowns on the Windows machine that my company forces me to use?
According to my personal experience with few Windows browsers and to google results for "flash crashes" it is not.
I certainly haven't seen it. I've had no choice but to use Click2Flash on my iMac due to frequent crashes, but my cheap Windows netbook has never had a single Flash related problem in two years. For streaming video, the netbook blows the doors off the iMac, even though the iMac has vastly superior hardware specs.