A Skeptical Comparison of HTML5 Video Playback To Flash 391
gollum123 writes "Think we'd all be better off if HTML5 could somehow instantly replace Flash overnight? Not necessarily, according to a set of comparisons from Jan Ozer of the Streaming Learning Center website, which found that while HTML5 did come out ahead in many respects, it wasn't exactly a clear winner. They did find that HTML5 clearly performed better than Flash 10 or 10.1 in Safari on a Mac, although the differences were less clear cut in Google Chrome or Firefox. On the other hand, Flash more than held its own on Windows, and Flash Player 10.1 was actually 58% more efficient than HTML5 in Google Chrome on the Windows system tested. As you may have deduced, one of the big factors accounting for that discrepancy is that Flash is able to take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration in Windows, while Adobe is effectively cut out of the loop on Mac."
gollum123 also links to additional tests indicating that Flash "does not perform consistently worse on Mac than on Windows."
GPU acceleration and Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
The second test seems to forget that Flash added GPU acceleration in Windows, which dramatically drops CPU usage [engadget.com]. It's not even small amount, it's 60%->12% with YouTube 720p video and most likely even more with 1080p. They've been working a lot with NVIDIA on it, which means more bad news for HTML5. I also installed those new NVIDIA drivers and newest Flash beta and full screen video is considerably smoother. [nvidia.com]
And where's Opera in this test? They added HTML5 support in 10.5 final too and their whole drawing engine will be hardware accelerated, with websites also. Their canvas implementation is also faster than with any other browser.
How much of a perfomance hit for open standards? (Score:4, Interesting)
How much of a performance hit am I prepared to accept for open standards? 100%. The performance of the open platform will double every 18 months, but the DRM'd content will be forever limited.
Flash DOES run slower on Mac (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I can tell by reading the article that says that 'Flash "does not perform consistently worse on Mac', what they really mean is that not only does Flash run slower on Mac, but Safari is also coded really poorly for Windows.
Rome wasn't built in a day! (Score:1, Interesting)
HTML5 and all Web browsers still have a long way to go, but it is a superior standard based on its openness. A small initial performance hit is a small price to pay to help bring sanity to Internet multimedia!
(Signed: Alex Libman's sock-puppet.)
Anecdotal evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:GPU acceleration and Opera (Score:2, Interesting)
Tailspin (Score:3, Interesting)
You've just described the tailspin that we're in. To get out of it, somebody must loose face because their device/system is incapable of supporting open and free standards. It's sad that the end users will be collateral damage to this, but the sooner it happens, the better off we'll be.
Re:This is early days for the video tag (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GPU acceleration and Opera (Score:4, Interesting)
From the submission: "On the other hand, Flash more than held its own on Windows,"
"When was the last time Performance and better quality became critical in deciding which tech will be widely deployed?"
Personally - I wish that SECURITY were the primary criteria in deciding which tech will be widely deployed. I'll sacrifice a bit of "performance", if HTML5 proves to be immune to all the exploits that Adobe products are open to. Yes, of course, HTML5 will have exploits, but Adobe seems to be wide open today.
Yes, HTML5 supports "super cookies" - that's a potential exploit IMO. What else is there?
Security, security, security. If a new technology opens an entire new class of exploits, then it's not worth having, even if it increases "efficiency" by orders of magnitude.
That said - I favor HTML5, because it is "open", and people can manage their own risk. With Adobe being closed, the open source crowd isn't free to search for the exploits that the black had people keep finding.
Re:This is early days for the video tag (Score:5, Interesting)
However adding theora or vp8/6 decoding is a matter of writing a codec for the dsp as opposed to having to create a whole new decoder chip.
Devices that use something similar could add this functionality through patching even after either vp6/8 or theora get some support.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Check your sources... (Score:1, Interesting)
er, Fuck off, apple and all your wanky users. flash is a part of the web and its here to stay. like it or not.
you don't seem to "get it" - that in the grand scheme of things, 99% cpu usage for youtube on your shiny plastic toys doesn't matter. 99% flash penetration does. its maths fellas, get used to it.
i develop websites and i don't give a monkey about apple or safari users. e.g. why the hell should i spend time adding support for your broken implementation of mousewheel? just move along and buy some more crap on itunes.
the web interprets the reality distortion field as "idiots taken in by marketing" and ignores it. and rightly so
Re:I've yet to see HTML5 video work (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:GPU acceleration and Opera (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:GPU acceleration and Opera (Score:4, Interesting)
Well - maybe it's not a direct equivalent, but yes, HTML5 has the potential to keep such persistent cookies, as large as or larger than flash now uses.
http://completosec.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/html-5-persistent-offline-storage-as-a-risk-management-challenge/ [wordpress.com]
Or, you can just google "html5 persistent cookies" for more, and better hits. It's the "persistent" part that I'm concerned about, and the ability to find them, sort them, and manage them. Normal cookies aren't a problem for anyone with even minimal computer competence. These new Super Cookies are a problem for even moderately computer savvy people.
Re:GPU acceleration and Opera (Score:4, Interesting)
Well if you look at web browsers on the Amiga platform, they typically had no built in support for any image formats whatsoever. The OS provided a facility called "datatypes" which allowed any application supporting datatypes, to load any format for which a valid datatype was available. Amiga browsers were among the first able to display PNG images on the web simply because a PNG datatype already existed.
Re:Let's wait and see (Score:3, Interesting)
But Flash has been optimized zero times per platform. It is under the sole control of Adobe, so unless you have some mystical way of improving their legendarily shitty code, Flash is simply not going to get any better ever. Adobe has exactly zero reason to make Flash work any better, because they have zero competition in the market (Silverlight? Don't make me laugh, at this point everyone knows what happens when you take up a Microsoft standard). Because Adobe has no competition, Flash just keeps on getting worse and worse and taking up more and more CPU, which is totally unsupportable in theoretical future low-power web devices. Apple refused to include Flash support in the iPhone and the iPad for a very good reason; it absolutely kills performance, even on a full-blown computer.
On the other hand, if we put control over the implementation of this sort of thing into the hands of the browser companies, we'll see drastic improvements. Apple really wants a speedy, energy efficient yet full-featured browser for its mobile devices; Google wants a browser that can do more than modern ones for its web apps; the Mozilla foundation wants something like HTML 5 because it would fit in with their ideology far better than the current closed browser plugin; Opera wants it because their main market nowadays is mobile web, so their requirements are basically the same as Apple's. All of these companies have very good reasons for implementing something like HTML 5, and they all want you to use their browser - so we're going to see a lot of competition in terms of efficient HTML 5 implementations, just like we've been seeing a lot of competition in terms of efficient Javascript implementations.