An anonymous reader writes "Instead of spending the next 10 years trying to find a Flash implementation for Linux or OS X that doesn't drain CPU cycles like there's no tomorrow, NeoSmart Technologies has made an HTML5 viewer for YouTube videos. It loads YouTube videos in an HTML5 video container and streams (with skip/skim/pause/resume) against an MP4 resource, and an (optional) userscript file can update YouTube pages with the HTML5 viewer. The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supported. Personally, I can't wait until the major video sites default to HTML5 and we can finally say goodbye to Flash."
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday November 08, @02:35PM (#30024282)
Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash
Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash
If Flash goes back to being a niche application for only certain specific types of content that actually require its programming language, such as online games, that would be a tremendous improvement. The issue being addressed here is that Flash is a full-featured system that's being used just to play videos, when there are other non-proprietary ways to deal with content that only needs to play a video. Using an open standard when one is available and could do the job is definitely a step in the right direction even if we know it's not a panacea that can totally replace Flash in every possible scenario. It could even lead to other open systems being designed and implemented that can replace Flash in areas where its featureset is actually needed.
You mention that Flash should be replaced by open video standards for video applications. However, I frequently find video and even more so video live streams to be very fragile when the browser uses the systems video player. I then often just download the video and play it externally, because the internal video player doesn't respond and I don't know why.
Flash was introduced here because it just works. Come up with something that works for everyone. If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.
You mention that Flash should be replaced by open video standards for video applications. However, I frequently find video and even more so video live streams to be very fragile when the browser uses the systems video player. I then often just download the video and play it externally, because the internal video player doesn't respond and I don't know why.
Flash was introduced here because it just works.
Come up with something that works for everyone. If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.
It hasn't been my own experience that embedded video is fragile in the browser, though I don't doubt what you are saying of your experience. Personally, I prefer to have the browser load such video in an external player that treats it like streaming media, though stability isn't my reason. I like having the full controls of the external player available and I like being able to easily resize the window that plays the video.
Just curious, what OS, browser, and video player are you using? The way you des
Personally, I prefer to have the browser load such video in an external player that treats it like streaming media, though stability isn't my reason. I like having the full controls of the external player available and I like being able to easily resize the window that plays the video.
Then you will love this. Let the flash video load and pause it at the beginning. Then fire up the terminal and type:
Presumably you use Windows. Flash is a clusterfuck on Linux. If you want something that "works for everyone" then Flash isn't it.
If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.
As for the how, I would describe "better" as something that won't crash on Linux while still working on Windows. That would be better. Of course, Adobe won't just take that sitting down. If something better does come out, they will probably pay YouTube/Google/Vimeo/what-have-you to continue using Flash.
Finally, I would argue that <video> and HTML5 are much better than F
Handily, you can embed multiple src files in a video element (hell, you can even embed a flash-based fallback by effectively wrapping the original embed tag in a video tag).
It's not ideal and you shouldn't have to export multiple video types to get cross-browser compatibility, but then again I shouldn't have to hack around the plethora of IE bugs to make my sites usable in IE6/7. Given that the former is fixed with a tiny shell script and the latter takes hours of guesswork and dumb luck, I consider it tolerable enough until one side gives in. Obviously though, that's a lot more practical for sites with one or two videos so storage isn't much of a concern than creating two or three different versions of every video uploaded to Youtube/Vimeo/etc.
Before Flash Video came along, playing streaming video used to be a nightmare. Every site required a different plug-in and a different codec. And anyone remember the nightmare that was Real Player? Flash is popular because it works.
In any case I think the chances of an html 5 video implementation that works on all five major browsers is pretty remote.
Like other replies have stated, you completely misunderstood the post you replied to. However, what's worse is that the website in your signature is the epitome of what I and most other websurfers hate about flash. The layout is broken (it's a fixed-size rect in the middle of the page), there are no deep URLs into the "site", and the back button is broken because the the navigation is hidden in flash. Instead of posting polemic comments on slashdot, you should just accept that there are reasons why flash is
Yep. Most of the advantages Flash previously had (animation, real client-side programming) for making rich navigation interfaces are now possible in a more open way with Javascript. The libraries are still a bit of a mess and browser support is always iffy, but dynamic, animated HTML looks amazing in the latest versions of webkit.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday November 08, @03:39PM (#30024858)
Modern flash is pretty much a rich graphics API wrapped around a cleaned up Javascript. It's a pretty nice language and environment, actually; but just inappropriately overused in many websites. I'm skeptical that html video extensions will replace it, because I don't think the html encoding will have nearly the versatility of a general purpose programming language. Will it be able to, for instance, stream recommended alternative videos or advertisements while the video is paused, for instance? It's not that I want that, but a lot of site owners do.
Posting anonymously because slashdot's javascript is tweaking out, and not letting me log on right now. I get on, but it immediately forgets me.
Will it be able to, for instance, stream recommended alternative videos or advertisements while the video is paused, for instance? It's not that I want that, but a lot of site owners do.
Sorry, but those site owners can fuck off. If I tell the browser (or component therein) that I want things to stop moving, stop making noise, and stop chewing up CPU cycles and running up my power bill, then I want them to STOP!
Flash is particularly bad in this regard, and this (along with its limited platform availability and general flakiness) is why I'm not a fan of it. When I can get a working, robust flash player that pays attention to *me* more than to the bits coming over the internet, let me know.
Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash
Flash is a security nightmare and anything that reduces the amount of flash in the world can only be a good thing. Flash badly needs to be replaced with a good open standard and wiped out. But if that's not going to happen the next best thing is to reduce the amount of flash in the world.
Precisely, but more than that, most of the time flash is being used where there's a better standard in place and in places where it shouldn't have been used originally. Flash sites aren't ADA compliant without an unreasonable amount of extra work. Mainly unreasonable because if it had been properly done in some other format it wouldn't take much effort at all.
Open is great, but really a secure, stable technology that's accessible to everybody is enough. Realistically that's probably open source.
because nobody uses Flash for [list of uses of flash]
By way of anal extraction, I arrive at the conclusion that 90% of the eyeball wall time spent looking at flash is spent looking at videos.
(89% of those 90% being youtube + google video, another 0.5% being redtube).
Once we get to HTML5 video being popular, flash will become much more a niche thing. There's a long way between "niche" and "dead", but I don't know that we need to cross that gap. Heck, I still see Java applets around (for Rubik's Cube animations; I think that's one niche where they're used well).
On the other hand, if we RTFS:
The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supported
Note that IE is not on the list. Make an educated guess about the implications for the penetration of the video tag.
Granted, that's like saying "Windows apps that are incompatible with WINE are supported on Linux by way of running Windows in a VM," but slightly more valid than that.;)
A) The entire point of HTML and HTML5 video tags was to eliminate plugins
B) Plugins are a -bad idea- for most people, for one even if your browser gets updated your plugins might not, leading gaping security flaws in addition to this, teaching people to install plugins is bad because a plugin could very well contain malware/viruses.
C) A plugin can lead to reliance on the plugin and not spur development in the actual browser
On OS X this has been available for ages, switchs all youtube videos to HTML5 and is extensible for other placse like Dailymotion.
http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/ [github.com]
The biggest problem isn't support for <video>, but common support for major video formats. Seems there's no codec supported by all browsers anytime soon.
do you want an inferior standard or do you want an open standard that you need to pay royalties to implement?
I would rather have a superior open standard because if there is a standard, that is a goal to work to. But without the standard, it is an excuse to avoid implementation. After all, software patents aren't enforceable in all countries - some browsers would be able to implement everything without paying royalties, might even draw attention to how software patents suck.
Meanwhile, we've gone years, probably decades now, with various flavors of the HTML and javascript standards that have almost never been 100
I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock" to go along with FlashBlock, because it won't take long for irritating adverts to start using the option. To be honest, I'm surprised it hasn't started already...
No, one of the points of HTML5 is that it is controlled by the browser without plugins - the same way you've been able to choose to load images since almost forever...
Also, and I may be wrong here to please correct me if I am, I was under the impression that some video/audio content delivered via the new HTML5 facilities would be presented without the need for any scripting support?
You're correct, but NoScript doesn't block only scripts. It includes the option to block <video> content, and some other non-scripted annoyances.
For my gf i configured noscript to allow all script as default, but to forbid java/flash//, so it essentially acts as flashblock but for java and too.
And Yes, html5 video doen't require scripting, but NoScript can block them anyway.
I just tried it with FF 3.5.5 (on Linux), and got nothing but a non-working clone of the YouTube player. It's been the same story with YouTube's HTML5 demo [youtube.com] for some time as well.
If it's a windows-only thing, or Chrome-only, then it's not good enough to replace Flash yet.
No, it doesn't work on Firefox, as an update to the blog post points out. Youtube won't supply video in a format Firefox supports (and it only supports one - Theora). I believe there is work being done to allow Firefox to use other codecs if you have them installed (as Webkit does - it works for me using Epiphany), at which point this could potentially work on Firefox.
By all means, someone explain to me why the <Video> tag is in any way better than the <Embed> tag that's existed for 1.4.5 years now, and why it's going to rescue the world from Flash, which took over because people decided they didn't want to use <Embed> anymore...
Personally, I can't wait until the major video sites default to HTML5 and we can finally say goodbye to Flash."
Same here. I hate Flash. It's pointless. Between AJAX, PHP, and CSS, there's very little Flash offers beyond video provision.
Yes, Flash does animation. As long as it does animation, Fine. When they began expanding ActionScript because all the Lingo programmers needed a home, that's when it went off the rails, and that was a long time ago.
The way to view the video is to use an external site (NeoSmart's site to be precise) to find the MP4 on Google's servers and display it using the video tag. All the script does is add a link to the YouTube page that redirects you to NeoSmart's viewer.
A far better solution would be something like YouTube Without Flash Auto [userscripts.org] or YouTube Perfect [userscripts.org], both of which (among other features) locate the MP4 client-side and present the video right in the YouTube page using whatever plugin you assigned to play MP4 files. If this can be pulled off without involving any external sites, I see no reason that a conversion to HTML5 video tags can't be done the same way.
Disclaimer: using those scripts to view YouTube outside of the Flash player violates the ToS.
Yep, I recently discovered this myself. Unfortunately (as with this clever HTML5 hack), it only supports YouTube, so videos on other sites still require Flash.
It's not so much the incompatibilities (although support for non x86-32 platforms has always been very poor on Linux), but the inefficiencies. There's *no* reason for a 320x240 web video to bring a modern system to its knees (GPU acceleration or not).
Even VLC's somewhat buggy FLV implementation plays flash videos with 1/10 the CPU cycles that the flash player does.
Flash's performance is borderline acceptable on Windows, although the mac version (PPC especially!) is appallingly bad.
I have encountered many, many people who think that anything running at HD resolutions is HD. Even in the geek community. And it seems very difficult to convince them otherwise. Many seem convinced that any video that is playing back at 1080 lines is utilising "full HD resolution", even if the source is a 360x240 video that's been maximised. Even Youtube's "720p" video is so compressed the artifacts are plainly visible, yet because it's 720 lines and is activated by clicking an "HD" button, pundits seem to
They can also go out and spend $50 for a pair of rabbit-ears and look at an OTA (Over-the-Air) 1080 hi-def signal, and compare it to the crappy compressed signal their cable or satellite provider sends them.
They should check, as you said, to make sure the original source was also hi-def and hasn't been up-scaled. As an example, try David Letterman on CBS - it's 1080i in many areas, and it looks SO different from older canned stuff, etc.
Then there are all the people who bought HD TVs that can't do more
You could try minitube [tordini.org], a native Youtube client. You don't even need to have the stupid Flash Player installed to use it, so it doesn't eat more CPU than any other video player.
Same here. I use Unplug (Firefox plugin) to download the video, and then I use VLC to watch it.
Unplug doesn't work with some of the less popular video sites, but it does work with YouTube. If somebody thinks they're being clever by letting someone other than YouTube host their video, then I probably didn't want to watch it anyway.
Only video sites? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash
Re:Only video sites? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash
If Flash goes back to being a niche application for only certain specific types of content that actually require its programming language, such as online games, that would be a tremendous improvement. The issue being addressed here is that Flash is a full-featured system that's being used just to play videos, when there are other non-proprietary ways to deal with content that only needs to play a video. Using an open standard when one is available and could do the job is definitely a step in the right direction even if we know it's not a panacea that can totally replace Flash in every possible scenario. It could even lead to other open systems being designed and implemented that can replace Flash in areas where its featureset is actually needed.
Parent
Re:Only video sites? (Score:5, Insightful)
You mention that Flash should be replaced by open video standards for video applications. However, I frequently find video and even more so video live streams to be very fragile when the browser uses the systems video player. I then often just download the video and play it externally, because the internal video player doesn't respond and I don't know why.
Flash was introduced here because it just works.
Come up with something that works for everyone. If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You mention that Flash should be replaced by open video standards for video applications. However, I frequently find video and even more so video live streams to be very fragile when the browser uses the systems video player. I then often just download the video and play it externally, because the internal video player doesn't respond and I don't know why.
Flash was introduced here because it just works. Come up with something that works for everyone. If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.
It hasn't been my own experience that embedded video is fragile in the browser, though I don't doubt what you are saying of your experience. Personally, I prefer to have the browser load such video in an external player that treats it like streaming media, though stability isn't my reason. I like having the full controls of the external player available and I like being able to easily resize the window that plays the video.
Just curious, what OS, browser, and video player are you using? The way you des
View flash videos with VLC. (Score:5, Informative)
View flash videos on VLC.
Personally, I prefer to have the browser load such video in an external player that treats it like streaming media, though stability isn't my reason. I like having the full controls of the external player available and I like being able to easily resize the window that plays the video.
Then you will love this. Let the flash video load and pause it at the beginning. Then fire up the terminal and type:
vlc /tmp/Flash*
It works with at least vimeo and youtube.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Flash was introduced here because it just works.
Come up with something that works for everyone.
Presumably you use Windows. Flash is a clusterfuck on Linux. If you want something that "works for everyone" then Flash isn't it.
If you make it better than Flash (how?) websites will switch. And Flashs security issues and crashes in Linux will not bother them.
As for the how, I would describe "better" as something that won't crash on Linux while still working on Windows. That would be better. Of course, Adobe won't just take that sitting down. If something better does come out, they will probably pay YouTube/Google/Vimeo/what-have-you to continue using Flash.
Finally, I would argue that <video> and HTML5 are much better than F
Re:Only video sites? (Score:4, Interesting)
Handily, you can embed multiple src files in a video element (hell, you can even embed a flash-based fallback by effectively wrapping the original embed tag in a video tag).
It's not ideal and you shouldn't have to export multiple video types to get cross-browser compatibility, but then again I shouldn't have to hack around the plethora of IE bugs to make my sites usable in IE6/7. Given that the former is fixed with a tiny shell script and the latter takes hours of guesswork and dumb luck, I consider it tolerable enough until one side gives in. Obviously though, that's a lot more practical for sites with one or two videos so storage isn't much of a concern than creating two or three different versions of every video uploaded to Youtube/Vimeo/etc.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Before Flash Video came along, playing streaming video used to be a nightmare. Every site required a different plug-in and a different codec. And anyone remember the nightmare that was Real Player? Flash is popular because it works.
In any case I think the chances of an html 5 video implementation that works on all five major browsers is pretty remote.
Re:Only video sites? (Score:4, Informative)
He was being sarcastic
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only video sites? (Score:4, Insightful)
because nobody uses Flash for navigation
Well, nobody with any sense, anyway.
Parent
Re:Only video sites? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Only video sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
Modern flash is pretty much a rich graphics API wrapped around a cleaned up Javascript. It's a pretty nice language and environment, actually; but just inappropriately overused in many websites. I'm skeptical that html video extensions will replace it, because I don't think the html encoding will have nearly the versatility of a general purpose programming language. Will it be able to, for instance, stream recommended alternative videos or advertisements while the video is paused, for instance? It's not that I want that, but a lot of site owners do.
Posting anonymously because slashdot's javascript is tweaking out, and not letting me log on right now. I get on, but it immediately forgets me.
Parent
Re:Only video sites? (Score:4, Insightful)
Will it be able to, for instance, stream recommended alternative videos or advertisements while the video is paused, for instance? It's not that I want that, but a lot of site owners do.
Sorry, but those site owners can fuck off. If I tell the browser (or component therein) that I want things to stop moving, stop making noise, and stop chewing up CPU cycles and running up my power bill, then I want them to STOP!
Flash is particularly bad in this regard, and this (along with its limited platform availability and general flakiness) is why I'm not a fan of it. When I can get a working, robust flash player that pays attention to *me* more than to the bits coming over the internet, let me know.
Parent
Re:Only video sites? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, when video sites change, we can say goodbye to flash, because nobody uses Flash for navigation, casual online games, interactive information displays, or google maps street view...we have a long ways until we can say goodbye to Flash
Flash is a security nightmare and anything that reduces the amount of flash in the world can only be a good thing. Flash badly needs to be replaced with a good open standard and wiped out. But if that's not going to happen the next best thing is to reduce the amount of flash in the world.
Less of a bad thing is still an improvement.
Parent
Re:Only video sites? (Score:5, Insightful)
Open is great, but really a secure, stable technology that's accessible to everybody is enough. Realistically that's probably open source.
Parent
Another impediment in getting rid of flash (Score:5, Interesting)
because nobody uses Flash for [list of uses of flash]
By way of anal extraction, I arrive at the conclusion that 90% of the eyeball wall time spent looking at flash is spent looking at videos.
(89% of those 90% being youtube + google video, another 0.5% being redtube).
Once we get to HTML5 video being popular, flash will become much more a niche thing. There's a long way between "niche" and "dead", but I don't know that we need to cross that gap. Heck, I still see Java applets around (for Rubik's Cube animations; I think that's one niche where they're used well).
On the other hand, if we RTFS:
The latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Safari are supported
Note that IE is not on the list. Make an educated guess about the implications for the penetration of the video tag.
Parent
Re:Another impediment in getting rid of flash (Score:5, Funny)
IE is supported by way of Chrome Frame...
Granted, that's like saying "Windows apps that are incompatible with WINE are supported on Linux by way of running Windows in a VM," but slightly more valid than that. ;)
Parent
Re:Only video sites? (Score:5, Funny)
Casual online games don't need Flash. Just look at Game! [wittyrpg.com] for example.
Parent
Re:Only video sites? (Score:4, Informative)
A) The entire point of HTML and HTML5 video tags was to eliminate plugins
B) Plugins are a -bad idea- for most people, for one even if your browser gets updated your plugins might not, leading gaping security flaws in addition to this, teaching people to install plugins is bad because a plugin could very well contain malware/viruses.
C) A plugin can lead to reliance on the plugin and not spur development in the actual browser
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it doesn't make the whole idea useless, because HTML5 is at least an open standard.
And isn't that what Chrome Frame is for?
ClickToFlash (Score:5, Informative)
HTML5 video (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HTML5 video (Score:5, Insightful)
tbf do you want an inferior standard
or do you want an open standard that you need to pay royalties to implement?
It's not a simple problem (well IMO it is), but there is clearly a need for politics here, if you want to hate anything hate software patents.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
do you want an inferior standard
or do you want an open standard that you need to pay royalties to implement?
I would rather have a superior open standard because if there is a standard, that is a goal to work to. But without the standard, it is an excuse to avoid implementation. After all, software patents aren't enforceable in all countries - some browsers would be able to implement everything without paying royalties, might even draw attention to how software patents suck.
Meanwhile, we've gone years, probably decades now, with various flavors of the HTML and javascript standards that have almost never been 100
I'm waiting for "HTML5VideoBlock" (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Just use a style sheet. In HTML5 the video tag is no different from any other tag.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're correct, but NoScript doesn't block only scripts. It includes the option to block <video> content, and some other non-scripted annoyances.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a hint (Score:3, Insightful)
Anytime you submit a story and one of your sentences starts with "Personally,", leave it out. We don't care.
Re:Here's a hint (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you mean to say "Personally, I don't care."
And personally, I think you should definitely follow your own advice with that.
Parent
Re:Here's a hint (Score:5, Funny)
Personally, I find comments like yours annoying.
Parent
Hardware acceleration (Score:3, Interesting)
Does this actually work? (Score:3, Informative)
I just tried it with FF 3.5.5 (on Linux), and got nothing but a non-working clone of the YouTube player. It's been the same story with YouTube's HTML5 demo [youtube.com] for some time as well.
If it's a windows-only thing, or Chrome-only, then it's not good enough to replace Flash yet.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Same here, it didn't work. HTML5 videos work fine on other sites though.
Re:Does this actually work? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it doesn't work on Firefox, as an update to the blog post points out. Youtube won't supply video in a format Firefox supports (and it only supports one - Theora). I believe there is work being done to allow Firefox to use other codecs if you have them installed (as Webkit does - it works for me using Epiphany), at which point this could potentially work on Firefox.
Parent
Impressive (Score:4, Informative)
RTFP...as it says Firefox doesn't support mp4 (Score:5, Informative)
the page itself says that firefox doesn't support mp4 videos in HTML5 due to some license restrictions.
<Video> vs. <Embed> (Score:3, Interesting)
By all means, someone explain to me why the <Video> tag is in any way better than the <Embed> tag that's existed for 1.4.5 years now, and why it's going to rescue the world from Flash, which took over because people decided they didn't want to use <Embed> anymore...
I'll just hold my breath...
agreed. (Score:3, Insightful)
Same here. I hate Flash. It's pointless. Between AJAX, PHP, and CSS, there's very little Flash offers beyond video provision.
Yes, Flash does animation. As long as it does animation, Fine. When they began expanding ActionScript because all the Lingo programmers needed a home, that's when it went off the rails, and that was a long time ago.
This is a poor solution (Score:5, Interesting)
The way to view the video is to use an external site (NeoSmart's site to be precise) to find the MP4 on Google's servers and display it using the video tag. All the script does is add a link to the YouTube page that redirects you to NeoSmart's viewer.
A far better solution would be something like YouTube Without Flash Auto [userscripts.org] or YouTube Perfect [userscripts.org], both of which (among other features) locate the MP4 client-side and present the video right in the YouTube page using whatever plugin you assigned to play MP4 files. If this can be pulled off without involving any external sites, I see no reason that a conversion to HTML5 video tags can't be done the same way.
Disclaimer: using those scripts to view YouTube outside of the Flash player violates the ToS.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep, I recently discovered this myself. Unfortunately (as with this clever HTML5 hack), it only supports YouTube, so videos on other sites still require Flash.
Re:Say goodbye to Flash? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much the incompatibilities (although support for non x86-32 platforms has always been very poor on Linux), but the inefficiencies. There's *no* reason for a 320x240 web video to bring a modern system to its knees (GPU acceleration or not).
Even VLC's somewhat buggy FLV implementation plays flash videos with 1/10 the CPU cycles that the flash player does.
Flash's performance is borderline acceptable on Windows, although the mac version (PPC especially!) is appallingly bad.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I have encountered many, many people who think that anything running at HD resolutions is HD. Even in the geek community. And it seems very difficult to convince them otherwise. Many seem convinced that any video that is playing back at 1080 lines is utilising "full HD resolution", even if the source is a 360x240 video that's been maximised. Even Youtube's "720p" video is so compressed the artifacts are plainly visible, yet because it's 720 lines and is activated by clicking an "HD" button, pundits seem to
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They can also go out and spend $50 for a pair of rabbit-ears and look at an OTA (Over-the-Air) 1080 hi-def signal, and compare it to the crappy compressed signal their cable or satellite provider sends them.
They should check, as you said, to make sure the original source was also hi-def and hasn't been up-scaled. As an example, try David Letterman on CBS - it's 1080i in many areas, and it looks SO different from older canned stuff, etc.
Then there are all the people who bought HD TVs that can't do more
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You could try minitube [tordini.org], a native Youtube client. You don't even need to have the stupid Flash Player installed to use it, so it doesn't eat more CPU than any other video player.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Same here. I use Unplug (Firefox plugin) to download the video, and then I use VLC to watch it.
Unplug doesn't work with some of the less popular video sites, but it does work with YouTube. If somebody thinks they're being clever by letting someone other than YouTube host their video, then I probably didn't want to watch it anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)