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Adobe releases Flash Player ‘Gala’ preview release with hardware accelerated H.264 video playback

Thursday, April 29, 2010 · 9:00 am · 20 Comments

Adobe has released a Flash Player preview release, code-named ‘Gala,’ which introduces support for H.264 video hardware decoding on Mac OS X 10.6.3 Snow Leopard.

Gala allows developers to preview Flash Player with hardware acceleration of H.264 video on supported Mac computers equipped with the following GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M.

The hardware acceleration functionality in the Gala preview release of Flash Player is expected to be included in an update following the release of Flash Player 10.1.

According to Adobe, the H.264 video codec supported by Flash Player provides excellent quality, but without hardware acceleration, H.264 requires a great deal of CPU processing power to decode. To date, support for hardware accelerated H.264 video playback in Flash Player has only been possible on Windows PCs and x86-based netbooks. Beginning with Gala, Mac users will also benefit from hardware decoding of H.264 video in Flash Player, the number one platform for video on the Web.

The preview release of Flash Player Gala is based on Flash Player 10.1, which will ship the first half of this year and is now available as a release candidate.

The Gala preview release is an opportunity for developers to preview this functionality and to test compatibility with existing content on supported Mac computers.

More info here.

MacDailyNews Take: Just think, soon Adobe will be treating Mac users, the platform users without whom Adobe would not exist, almost as well as they treat Windows users.

Help kill Adobe’s Flash:
• Ask CBS via online feedback form to offer HTML5 video here.
• Ask MarketWatch via the customer support web form to offer HTML5 video here.
• Ask CNBC via the customer support web form to offer HTML5 video here.
• Contact Hulu via email and ask them to offer HTML5 video:
• Ask ESPN360 via their feedback page to offer HTML5 video instead Flash here.
• Join YouTube’s HTML5 beta here.
• On Vimeo, click the “Switch to HTML5 player” link below any video.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Lava_Head_UK" for the heads up.]

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Comment Feed

20 Comments

Apelock

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 9:05 am · Reply

Bring back Macromedia!
deepdish

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 9:13 am · Reply

Bring back Aldus!
andintroducing

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 9:17 am · Reply

Hilarious! Far too little too late. Watching Comedy Central on my Mac, my battery life goes down from 5:20 hours and minutes remaining to 3:31. If all the other Adobe products are any indication of how much bloat, slow loading and CPU hogging will still remain once they’re done, this “Gala” premiere is going to shut down on my machine before it even gets a chance to open.

Fix yr sh*#, Adobe. Inefficient, lazy code won’t cut it anymore! Eventually your other phone providers will realize that Apple’s pointing the way to the future . . . and it is without you.
Norm

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 9:22 am · Reply

I never realized it until my new iMac. I have Click to Flash and I found something I wanted to watch in Flash. I clicked and watched for 20 minutes and I reached up to rotate the monitor and found it very warm. I’ve been checking for the past 2 weeks and yes! only flash warms up the computer
silverhawk

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 9:47 am · Reply

MDN
You’ve beaten Flash into submission. Adobe’s raising a white flag!
In all reality I’ve got a late 2006 MBP. I cannot get QT to play a fluid video-it jerks and stutters badly. Do I have to get QT Pro to get it to work?
silverhawk

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 9:49 am · Reply

Norm
Try Google Earth. That get my MBP fans turning at hurricane speed.
iQuack

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 9:55 am · Reply

@silverhawk
With 10.6, there is nor more QT Pro. It can export and such just as the old QT Pro does. So basically QT 10.0 is QT Pro (of old).

Will this work with my GTX 285? Weird to support such a small range of cards. Then again we are talking about Adobe.
macerroneous

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 10:22 am · Reply

I admit to very limited understanding, but I remember Adobe saying that they needed a little help from Apple to make Flash more Apple-friendly. Finally, Apple opens up their API’s to allow hardware decoding. It seems like it only took two days for Adobe to take advantage of the new APIs. This all seems to argue in Adobe’s favor, doesn’t it?
MacBill

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 10:35 am · Reply

FSCK YOU, ADOBE! You have been screwing over Mac users since the 1990′s, and you are no longer wanted nor needed in the tech world.
ron

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 10:36 am · Reply

Toooooo late.
NHL

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 10:55 am · Reply

I don’t know how this works.

Is this a “port”?

Is this extra code, inside which Adobe has wrapped Flash, making Flash even more of a resource-hog for Apple hardware?

Is this a new version of Flash that is streamlined and written specifically for Apple?

Is this good or bad for Apple and/or Flash?
Jubei

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 11:18 am · Reply

No thanks. Adobe has screwed us over, treated us as third rate low life scum bags. Gave us slow updates and never on par with Windows counterpart. Gives us bloated Windows designed UI for their apps… Goodbye Adobe.
HolyMackerel

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 11:44 am · Reply

Would Apple like Flash if Adobe made it Open Source?
Reality Czech

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 11:46 am · Reply

How bizarre. Adobe are unable to provide hardware decoding of Flash video for years because Apple didn’t provide a public API. Two days after Apple release the API, Adobe provide hardware decoding. But somehow Adobe are the bad guys? The reality distortion field on this half baked blog is phenomenal.
Trvth

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 12:38 pm · Reply

In other news, White Star, builders of the great ocean liner Titanic, will replace one the steamship’s three massive reciprocating engines with an up-to-the-moment Parson’s turbine engine that will drive a giant 17-foot propeller.
The Jimmy

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 2:38 pm · Reply

Gala is a type of apple. Get it? Teehee. Maybe the next release will be called “Fuji” or “Cortland” or something. Those Adobe guys are SO witty!
ivid

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 3:26 pm · Reply

Word is that hardware acceleration was not possible until Apple released updated video drivers for their hardware. But that’s Adobe’s fault right ?
fandango

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 4:21 pm · Reply

@The Jimmy…

Or maybe, ‘Granny Smith’.

Let’s just hope she doesn’t break a hip.
@Reality Czech

Thursday, April 29, 2010 - 6:14 pm · Reply

Well, technically, by “years” you mean “since Snow Leopard when OpenCL 1.0 was made available offering hardware video acceleration (HVA) for the few *new* video cards at the time.”

No, Adobe are not, and have never been, the “bad guys” for not offering HVA. They are the bad guys because Flash itself is a proven resource hog that boils down to sloppy architecture/coding along with their proven lack of desire in optimizing the code base for the platform. Video playing is a prime example of this.

Adobe would like people to believe that HVA will be a cure-all and prove that Flash itself is not the poor application that it is; rather it has been Apple’s fault all along for not giving them the much needed HVA APIs. Yet, Flash still compares miserably to other video players available for OS X.

It cannot be argued that much 264 video decoding on Macs is being done in software since there are a lot more video cards being used that do not support HVA and until recently Apple had no public APIs for HVA. In regards to video playing, Flash has been often shown to be a heavy tax on the CPU when playing videos. Adobe’s problem is that Mplayer, VLC, DivX and others all work fine with the same 264 sources with much less CPU loading. Likewise, Flash itself in Windows uses much less CPU resources for software decoding. A good case of optimizing for one platform (Windows) and poorly porting that code to the other platform (OS X) — something they have been guilty of for many years now.

Adobe likes to tout the mantra “HVA! HVA!” While the players mentioned seem to have no major issues playing 264 video without heavy resource loading Flash does. Adobe is simply using HVA as a crutch to make their player appear to not be the bloated mess it is.
Rupert

Sunday, July 4, 2010 - 10:16 pm · Reply

Flash player is not only used to play videos. It’s an awesome platform that could be used to provide rich internet applications only posible with that technology. Keep in mind that..