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Adobe leveraging Internet video in media player software war

Adobe Systems has announced that PC and Mac users will soon be able to play Flash videos without the need for a Web browser. The Adobe Media Player, formerly codenamed Philo, is a desktop application that will soon be available as a ‘lightweight’ download. It will give users the ability to view videos offline with full screen playback, access to one-click viewer ratings and a Favorites feature that automatically downloads new episodes of favorite TV shows or video podcasts.

For content publishers, Adobe Media Player enables better ways to deliver, monetize, brand, track and protect video content. With Adobe Media Player, content publishers will have yet another new format to advertise within, which will compile permission-based analytics data, both online and offline, to better understand their audiences. Also with the necessary DRM measures, Adobe Media Player plans to offer content publishers a range of protection options, including streaming encryption, content integrity protection and identity-based protection.

Adobe Media Player is planned to be available as a free beta download from the Adobe Web site later in 2007 with full availability expected by the end of the year.

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great.....
By Moishe on 4/16/2007 9:21:04 AM , Rating: 3
Another piece of Adobe bloatware. This is a logical progression but I'm so NOT a fan of Adobe software that I'll probably never use this. Considering we already have two pretty good media players (QT and WM) they're gonna have to work at getting into this market.




RE: great.....
By MobileZone on 4/16/2007 9:31:47 AM , Rating: 3
If you think that Adobe isn't part of the recent boom of digital video, you probably have been living on the moon in the last couple of years. It's almost impossible now for MS, Apple, Real or whatever company get the lost market-share back.

Flash is truly multi-platform (Win, Mac, Linux, PPC, Mobile),
Quicktime is kind of tricky and Apple users just hate/boycott MS's WMP.


RE: great.....
By MobileZone on 4/16/2007 9:44:44 AM , Rating: 2
Oh, RealMedia, it's not even worth mentioning... I don't even have it installed anymore.


RE: great.....
By Mitch101 on 4/16/2007 9:48:14 AM , Rating: 2
Ditto they hid subscribing you to spam and giving away other information in the install process. Then tried blaming Microsoft for why they were failing.

Quicktime is in the same boat with me "DO YOU WANT TO UPGRADE TO PRO" How many times do I have to say no before you listed. Ah 1 ah 2 Ah 3 - UNINSTALL. The answer is 3.

Now lets go install a codec pack instead without having to be annoyed by popup questions for every video.


RE: great.....
By Moishe on 4/16/2007 10:13:50 AM , Rating: 2
true that flash is the online media player.... but you know an Adobe branded product will have ads or nags or something. Heck, remember when the free acrobat reader was a simple viewer? Now it's huge, slow, and bloated. Acrobat pay versions aren't really much better. It could be good, but I don't see MS or Apple easing up at all and what their players do is really done fairly well.


RE: great.....
By feelingshorter on 4/16/2007 6:09:43 PM , Rating: 2
Yea, that seems to happen to software often. I know I'm not the only one who thinks adobe acrobat reader is slow. There must be people here running on 2x74 raptors saying "its not slow." Even for me, my 74 raptor doesn't load it fast when my hard drive is fully defragged. There are other much BETTER PDF file readers out there. The one i'm using is called foxit, and its only like 200kb! There are also other readers that load just as fast, and just as small in file size. Loads faster than Firefox. I cannot say much for other programs Adobe Acrobat is one of the worst piece of bloatware out there.


RE: great.....
By borowki on 4/16/2007 1:01:07 PM , Rating: 2
But these site don't let you download the FLV files though. And I really don't see why they'd start offering such a feature, seeing that it'd decrease the amount of traffic to their site.


RE: great.....
By Ralph The Magician on 4/16/2007 4:23:39 PM , Rating: 2
If you can play it, you can download it. In Firefox you can use Greasemonkey and it will add a download link right on the page. If you are using Safari you can just click on the "activity" window and double click the file you want to save.


RE: great.....
By aftlizard01 on 4/16/2007 9:32:26 AM , Rating: 2
I don't know, not all of their stuff is bloatware. Either way I am always willing to try out new stuff, I just hope it isnt like Acrobat where on slower PC's it seems like your PC has frozen while it loads a .pdf file. I also hope it includes a way to keep and record flash movies if you so choose.


RE: great.....
By Moishe on 4/16/2007 10:16:38 AM , Rating: 2
the stuff that isn't bloatware is $600. I know Adobe can make quality stuff, but as far as I can tell it's been a few years since they produced something small and useful. Everything of theirs that I like is hugely expensive.


RE: great.....
By rykerabel on 4/16/2007 12:13:42 PM , Rating: 2
Their $600 stuff is even more bloated than their "cheap" stuff.

Drives me crazy how before Adobe bought Macromedia, flash worked 99% of the time. Now it only works 75% of the time and hogs resources.

Adobe are just lazy programmers with a genius marketing department.


RE: great.....
By Moishe on 4/16/2007 1:11:16 PM , Rating: 2
I haven't used Flash since v.5 and Photoshop 6 is the last one I've used. They are still great programs that have a lot of function without a lot of garbage built in.


RE: great.....
By eman 7613 on 4/16/2007 8:11:35 PM , Rating: 2
the only reason they are bloated is b/c they come with a bunch of predone paltes and stuff to make things easier for beginners and various other things they are capable of doing.

And the only time they DO cost $600 and rediculace amounts of money is when you buy a SINGLE, regular licens. If your in school you can get an education licens for the 200s or less. Or you could be like me & buy a bundle. I got a ati 1900, photoshop, premiere, and after effects for $400.


RE: great.....
By Ralph The Magician on 4/16/2007 4:22:08 PM , Rating: 2
NOOO!!!

I want On2 VP6 Flash Video to DIE already. It's horrible. Every step towards Flash video is a step backwards. With both MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX) and MPEG-4 Part 10 (H.264) do we really want shitty Flash video?

Woohoo! 320x240 400Kbps Flash Video with 96Kbps MP3 audio! JUST WHAT I'VE ALWAYS WANTED!

I liked the days of MOV/WMV far better. Moreover, now both share the MP4 container as a common, standard, playable format.

Everything on is moving to HD, but on the internet we are moving backwards. Fuck Flash Video.


RE: great.....
By eman 7613 on 4/16/2007 8:19:55 PM , Rating: 2
mp4 is teribl at encoding smaller resolution images to a reasonable size without utterly destroying quality (that is why it is a lossless codec. FLVs load much faster and hog less resources which is ideal for online videos, but are not comparable when it comes to higher quality videos in which case you probably are not streaming them across the internet to be viewed in real time.

Different things have different purposes, you don't see anyone trying to write complex 3d games in html + asp do you?


RE: great.....
By Ralph The Magician on 4/16/2007 8:55:58 PM , Rating: 2
Don't know what you're talking about. An H.264 encoded MP4 will have a smaller file size and better image quality at almost every resolution. MP4 is just as well suited for streaming as FLV. A hinted MP4 will also start playing almost instantly.


RE: great.....
By Ralph The Magician on 4/16/2007 9:07:09 PM , Rating: 2
Well, aside from super small crappy resolutions. The reality is that Flash Video is used because it's cheap and shitty.


RE: great.....
By MobileZone on 4/16/2007 11:50:51 PM , Rating: 3
Well, seems like you don't know anything about Flash Video and it's capabilities. It's codecs are as good as any other out there (QT, WM). The small resolutions is not a limitation, but a smart choice of websites to make the bandwidth under control and available to everyone, or would you expect YouTube with full screen, non-compressed videos for all?

You can make flash videos as high quality as you want. The limitation are your machine and connection.

Btw, Flash Media Server is PRETTY expensive.


RE: great.....
By Ralph The Magician on 4/17/2007 12:40:42 AM , Rating: 2
Read my post below.

Flash video sucks. It's codecs are not as good as others out there. It's proprietary and has little bandwidth advantage compared to modern codecs like H.264.

Flash should have never been used for video.

You can make Flash videos high quality, but their file size is enourmouse and the codec still sucks. It just...sucks, plain and simple. It also becomes very CPU intensive, as Flash was never really designed to be used for full motion video.

The only thing worse than Flash Video is Real Video.


RE: great.....
By Ralph The Magician on 4/17/2007 12:47:18 AM , Rating: 2
The idea of Flash Video is that it's harder to save and harder to play, because most players don't support it natively. That mean that you had to go to the site everytime to see it, and watch the add, which also might have well been in Flash.

Now that it has a wide support base, they are getting ready to strap it up with DRM and release a player. Just what I NEVER WANTED.

Now you've got small, low-quality video laced with DRM that's still proprietary and only plays in the their new player, because even the few players that supported the codec, like VLC, now can't play any of the new DRM content. FANTASTIC. ALL PRAISE FLASH VIDEO.

Fuck Flash Video. Seriously. Fuck it.


RE: great.....
By Ralph The Magician on 4/16/2007 9:28:46 PM , Rating: 3
Here are two videos encoded from the same high-resolution source, with the same settings.

On2 VP6 Flash Video with MP3 Audio
http://tinyurl.com/yrkj36

H.264 MPEG-4 Video with AAC-LC Audio
http://tinyurl.com/2xqr8d

Settings used:
400Kbps video
96Kbps audio
Automatic keyframes, automatic framerate
Keep in mind that this is higher quality than most YouTube videos.

The H.264 MP4 file looks signifigantly better, especially when rescaled to larger resolutions. The big surprise (even to me)? The MP4 file is a full 1MB smaller. Check those file sizes. 3.5MB for the MP4 and 4.5MB for the FLV. A savings of 22%. Granted, the MP4 is NOT hinted, and hinting will add to the file size, but not an additional 22%. You've also got to keep in mind that the Flash Video will get larger too when played inside an SWF controller, although the effect will not be as large as hinting.