Flash Player 'Gala' brings hardware decoding support to Mac OS X

Even amidst all their fighting, it appears Apple and Adobe can manage to lay down arms and work together every once in a while: Apple just enabled low-level access to NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, 320M and GT 330M H.264 GPU hardware in Mac OS X 10.6.3, and Adobe's followed up six days later with a new preview version of Flash Player code-named "Gala" that takes advantage of it. That's good news for anyone who's ever heard their fans spin up while watching a YouTube video on a Mac (so, everyone) but we doubt it means there's any détente on larger issues between these two coming -- Apple remains committed to HTML5, while Adobe's pulled all investment from iPhone-related Flash development, and the company's relationship with Google seems to be heating up. We'll take what we can get, we suppose -- we'll hit you with some benchmarks just as soon as we get things installed.

[thejdude Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:15PM]

Look, anything that stops my Mac from eating itself alive when watching YouTube is something I'm willing to do.

[Fr0 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:21PM]

@thejdude
Only will help on more recent Macs (for no apparent reason).

My 2007 iMac will do DXVA in Vista (64-bit no less) just fine, but evidently it won't get the H.264 acceleration in OSX.

[heffeque Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:31PM]

@Fr0 And sadly, perfectly capable graphics cards like the 8600 GT (much faster than the 9400) aren't supported. Now THAT'S stupid.

[InKahootz Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:31PM]

@thejdude REVELATION! Adobe capitalizes on something Apple has done!
Let's do this thing and stop the 98% CPU with 1080p.

[Matt314 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:32PM]

@thejdude
Wouldn't be surprised if Apple came up with a way to prevent mac users from using this.

[XGM Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:37PM]

@thejdude

Arrg and im stuck on ATi... Well HTML 5 on youtube is still my option for now

[MRCUR Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:47PM]

@InKahootz - I just installed it and doing any type of HD YouTube still gets over 90% CPU usage. It's not the 100% it used to be, but it's still not "good".

Granted this is in Chrome which seems to use more CPU than any other browser.

[Tony C Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:56PM]

@thejdude X1600 = S.O.L.

[InKahootz Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:57PM]

@MRCUR Straight from the release notes.

Determining if video decoding hardware acceleration is active:
When Flash Player is using hardware video decoding in the Gala preview release, you will see a small white square overlaid on the top left of the video.

So if you don't see it. It's not using it.

[Millah Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:02PM]

@thejdude It almost seems like Adobe turned this out rather quickly in order to avoid Apple continuing to say that they're slow to implement things for OSX. This doesn't change the past 10 years of Adobe being negligent on the Mac, but hey its certainly a great start. Maybe this feud will actually result in Adobe stepping up their crap on OSX to avoid further criticism, and maybe, just MAYBE, Apple can forgive Adobe and allow flash :).

[MRCUR Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:06PM]

@InKahootz - The white block is there in both Chrome & Firefox.

Here's a screenshot from a 1080p YT video in Chrome: http://twitpic.com/1j873w

[RidleyGriff Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:19PM]

@heffeque

Yep. Pity Adobe didn't utilize the APIs Apple has had in place for hardware decoding support the last 5+ years. If they had, every graphics card OS X supports hardware decoding on would reap the benefits -- and Flash could have been working better this entire time.

[InKahootz Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:23PM]

@MRCUR Tested 1080p in 3 browsers. All with one tab open.
http://tinypic.com/r/n56m0x/5
Conclusions: It's better.

[MRCUR Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:27PM]

@InKahootz - What build of Chrome do you have? My CPU usage is higher with Gala than yours.

[yokken Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:30PM]

I only noticed a 1C-2C difference in the 720p video that I chose (Whatcha Say music video), and no change in the 1080p video I chose (Dark Knight trailer). How disappointing... :(

[InKahootz Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:32PM]

@MRCUR 5.0.342.9 beta

[geoken Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:32PM]

@RidleyGriff

So to the people blaming Adobe for not doing this earlier (which everyone except you guys say wasn't possible) and for not doing it on a broader range of hardware, why do you think it's Adobe's fault.

Plex also recently used this new API to add hardware h264 encoding. Like Adobe it only works in 10.6.3 and it only works on Mac's with a 9400M or GT320/330M.

Are you guys suggesting that both Adobe and Plex could have done this earlier but chose not to? Are you also suggesting that both plex and Adobe could have applied this to a larger set of GPU's but both chose to limit it to the exact same limited subset of cards?

[InKahootz Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:42PM]

@geoken To the contrary! It is currently working on my 9600M!

[MrAffrox Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:54PM]

@heffeque It IS stupid. Especially since all the 8600s are destined to die. This will just shorten the lifespan even more.

[yarqgc Posted Apr 28th 2010 10:21PM]

@heffeque

Exactly. I'm in the same boat :(

[vihio Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:05PM]

@Tony C same :-/

[loismustdie Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:11PM]

@MRCUR It's because chrome IS NOT SUPPORTED.
If you read the dev notes before installing you would have noticed that this only works for Safari, Firefox, and Opera

[Leozno1 Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:15PM]

@MRCUR And on top of that Adobe released this just days after Apple mad hardware acceleration available to developers

[Schmich Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:58PM]

@Leozno1 "Even amidst all their fighting, it appears Apple and Adobe can manage to lay down arms and work together every once in a while" Well Adobe did say that they would not use their customers to hurt/attack another company...unlike another company that starts with A...

[Chris7197 Posted Apr 29th 2010 4:06AM]

@thejdude

Seems to be working well so far - about 25% CPU usage when watching normal quality YouTube videos, versus about triple that previously (MBP 13 Late 2009)

[Kensai Posted Apr 29th 2010 4:18AM]

@Millah

Are you an idiot or something?! Did you pass the memo without reading it?

It was darn APPLE all these years that didn't open the APIs for hardware acceleration by Adobe's Flash. Enough already with this Jobsian Myth that it was Adobe's fault...

[Atkins Posted Apr 29th 2010 6:04AM]

@geoken "Are you guys suggesting that both Adobe and Plex could have done this earlier but chose not to?"

Of course, they could've used Quicktime's HW, but they didn't update their runtime for it. And let's not forget that any non-video Flash will be the same crap.

[geoken Posted Apr 29th 2010 8:49AM]

@Atkins

The whole point of Flash is that it's ubiquitous and cross platform. If they used QuickTime as the back end it would completely defeat the purpose (not to mention that flash handles multiple codecs besides h264).

Your "solution" is basically that all OSX software should just repackage Apple software since Apple doesn't provide the necessary APIs to match the performance of their software.

[thecqgl Posted Apr 29th 2010 10:19AM]

@thejdude how about a hammer? i really hope youtube and any other google app dont run in Mac, and adobe pull out all support for Mac so Steve Jobs can keep his hands in his 4ss!! stupid 1diot 4sshole jerk!!
screw the iphone, ipad and any stupid device created by this stupid company

[sshole Posted Apr 29th 2010 1:52PM]

@InKahootz So... if this is the soloution to this problem, why does my Windows 7 computer in work still shit itself when I do more than one thing with flash?

Flash still needs to die..

[backwardsjosh Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:16PM]

Sweet. Now only 1 more platform to go. Linux.

[incognito Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:08PM]

@backwardsjosh, the problem with Linux is a whole different thing than it was with Apple - there is no single API for HW access to the GPU available on majority of the platforms that the Flash Player could use. Further, the complete GPU HW access is not only different between GPU vendors, but it usually is different between different GPU versions even from same vendors... And Adobe is not really interested in building n Linux versions to accommodate slightly different hardware...

It really is a holly mess, and at least the most popular Linux vendors should sit down together (and possibly with HW vendors, too) and agree on a common API for various hardware access needs. Linux excels on the 'many ways to skin a cat' front, but sometimes that very strength can become a terrible burden - this is one of those cases...

[The Madman Posted Apr 29th 2010 4:17AM]

@backwardsjosh I don't have any problems with Flash on Linux. :/

Writing this on my Atom-based Dell Mini 10v.

[ScienceProUSAcom Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:17PM]

Unfortunately this will eliminate a favorite passtime of mine, going into Apple stores, loading up 1080P YouTube clips on all of them, and watching them bake.

However, I guess for the good of the world, its about time OS X got Hardware accelerated flash after years of Windows PCs having it.

[icase81 Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:37PM]

@ScienceProUSAcom I hate to be the bearer of bad news but windows only got hardware acceleration of flash like, a few months ago when the 10.1 beta came out.

[ScienceProUSAcom Posted Apr 28th 2010 10:03PM]

@icase81

No, you're incorrect, Hardware acceleration came out with Flash Player 10 back in 2008. Look it up.

[JedixJarf Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:22PM]

@ScienceProUSAcom

Yep... MBP using 20-25% less CPU Usage on 1080p youtube videos, awesome.

[hey buddy Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:23PM]

@ScienceProUSAcom

Well, using Windows PCs only got acceptable after Windows 7, so I guess it's even.

[ScienceProUSAcom Posted Apr 28th 2010 11:24PM]

@hey buddy

Can't agree with you there, it's been pretty rockin' since Windows 95 :)

[LMcClure Posted Apr 29th 2010 5:42PM]

@ScienceProUSAcom

Flash has had an "Enable hardware acceleration" checkbox in the settings (see http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/help01.html) for quite some time, but it is not the same type hardware acceleration being discussed here.

The old "hardware acceleration" only assisted video scaling. The hardware acceleration in the 10.1 betas for both Windows and Mac accelerate the actual decoding.

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:19PM]

So this will stop flash from crashing browsers daily?

[DrDr Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:22PM]

@Dr Kwame Nkrumah

No, it will just allow them to crash more quickly and more efficiently.

[Matt314 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:33PM]

@Dr Kwame Nkrumah
I dont own a mac, but flash has never crashed my browser on my laptop... Maybe its just a mac thing.

[Dr Kwame Nkrumah Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:38PM]

@Matt314

I'm typing this in windows 7 and flash crashes firefox daily.

[Matt314 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:41PM]

@Dr Kwame Nkrumah ? Well I use chrome (shouldn't make a difference) but if that's not an exaggeration either i'm very lucky or you try a reformat.... I seriously can't remember my browser even crashing. What flash intensive site can I go on to try and test this?

[capnbob66 Posted Apr 28th 2010 8:52PM]

@Matt314 Flash crashes Firefox on my Thinkpad WinXP all the time...

[xsacha Posted Apr 28th 2010 9:21PM]

@capnbob66
Can you mentioned these flash websites so we can try them? I've personally never seen Flash crash in Windows 7.

[taligent Posted Apr 29th 2010 12:16AM]

@xsacha .. What about this one ?

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/

[Wesscoast Posted Apr 29th 2010 12:46AM]

@Dr Kwame Nkrumah

Yeah I don't see comments on the crashability. Bugger.

[thomaskingx1 Posted Apr 29th 2010 5:37AM]

@xsacha

No Kwame can not mention these flash sites because they don't exist.

In some past post he alluded to Youtube crashing his Windows machine on a consistent basis, but really? Youtube? Seriously?

Quite frankly, I have a hard time believing that he even owns a Windows based machine, or even knows how to access Youtube for that matter.