The Story of Flash - Part 5

Flash Video

Due to its large user base and the programmability of Flash, Flash Video has been a popular choice for websites for many years now. However, in 2010, Apple publicly criticized Adobe Flash, including its implementation of video playback for not taking advantage of hardware acceleration. This is one reason why Flash is not to be found on Apple's mobile devices. Soon after Apple's criticism, however, Adobe released a beta version of Flash 10.1, which took advantage of GPU hardware acceleration, even on a Mac. Flash 10.2 beta, which was released in December 2010, added hardware acceleration for the whole video rendering pipeline.

Flash Audio

Flash Audio is most commonly encoded in MP3 or AAC (Advanced Audio Coding). However, it also supports ADPCM, Nellymoser (Nellymoser Asao Codec) and Speex audio codecs. Flash allows sample rates of 11, 22 and 44.1 kHz. It does not support 48 kHz audio sample rate which is the standard TV, DVD sample rate.

On August 20, 2007, Adobe announced on its blog that with Update 3 of Flash Player 9, Flash Video would also support some parts of the MPEG-4 international standards. Specifically, Flash Player would have support for video compressed in H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10), audio compressed using AAC (MPEG-4 Part 3), the F4V, MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), M4V, M4A, 3GP and MOV multimedia container formats, 3GPP Timed Text specification (MPEG-4 Part 17) which is a standardized subtitle format and partial parsing support for the 'ilst' atom which is the ID3 equivalent iTunes uses to store metadata. MPEG-4 Part 2 and H.263 will not be supported in F4V file format. Adobe also announced that it would be gradually moving away from the FLV format to the standard ISO base media file format (MPEG-4 Part 12) owing to functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264. The final release of the Flash Player supporting some parts of MPEG-4 standards had become available in Fall 2007.

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 does not support acoustic echo cancellation, unlike the VoIP offerings of Skype and Google Voice, making this and earlier versions of Flash less suitable for group calling or meetings. Flash Player 10.3 Beta incorporates acoustic echo cancellation.

Scripting language

The reliance on Adobe for decoding Flash is seen as a concern by advocates of open standards and free software. Proponents of open standards generally favor formats for which specifications are openly available and complete enough to make independent implementation straightforward. One advantage is that data stored in the format will be future proof in the presence of such specifications. Another possible advantage, as desired by proponents of free software, is having a usable implementation in free software.

Adobe's restrictions on the use of the SWF/FLV specifications were lifted in February 2009 (see Adobe's Open Screen Project). However, despite efforts of projects like Gnash, Swfdec and Lightspark, a complete free software Flash player is yet to be seen, as of October 2011. For example, Gnash has no support for SWF v10 yet. Notably, Gnash has been a long standing high priority project of the Free Software Foundation. Historically, notable representants of free software, open standards and the World Wide Web have warned against use of Flash for the above reasons. The founder of Mozilla Europe, Tristan Nitot, had this to say in 2008: 

Within reason these days, pretty much all browser plugins for video are free of charge and are cross-platform. Adobe's Flash Video, which was first introduced with Flash version 6, is no exception to this. 

The Story of Flash - Part 4

The Format of Flash Files

Flash files are in a format called SWF, which stands for ShockWave Flash.  Historically, Flash files were referred to as "ShockWave Flash" movies, "Flash movies", or "Flash applications". The file extension for Flash files is .swf. The files can run in the form of a web page plug-in, played in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a self-executing Projector movie (with the .exe extension in Microsoft Windows). 

Flash Video files have a .flv file extension and can be used from within .swf files or played through a flv-aware player, for example, VLC, or QuickTime and Windows Media Player with external codecs added.

The use of vector graphics combined with program code allows Flash files to be smaller, allowing for streams that use less bandwidth than corresponding bitmaps or video clips. For content in a single format (such as just text, video, or audio), other alternatives may provide better performance and consume less CPU power than the corresponding Flash movie, for example, when using transparency or making large screen updates such as photographic or text fades.

In addition to a vector-rendering engine, the Flash Player includes a virtual machine called the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) for scripting interactivity at run-time, support for video, MP3-based audio, and bitmap graphics. As of Flash Player 8, it offers two video codecs: On2 Technologies VP6 and Sorenson Spark, and run-time support for JPEG, Progressive JPEG, PNG, and GIF. In the next version, Flash is slated to use a just-in-time compiler for the ActionScript engine.

Flash Player is a web browser plugin, and cannot run within a usual e-mail client, such as Outlook. Instead, a link must open a browser window. A Gmail labs feature allows playback of YouTube videos linked in emails. The Flash games that run on The Free Games Zone wbsite use the Flash Player browser plugin.

Flash Source Files

An FLA file is a Flash source file that contains all the animation and graphics. To work with this file you would need to have Macromedia Flash MX 6 or higher installed on your computer.

Parts of this article have been derived from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash

The Story of Flash - Part 3

Developments Over the Past Few Years

Adobe Labs, which was previously called Macromedia Labs, is a source for news and pre-release versions of emerging products and technologies from Adobe. Most innovations, such as Flash 10, Flex 3, and ActionScript 3.0 have all been discussed and/or trialled on the site.

One area on which Adbobe is focusing (as of February 2009) is the deployment of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). To this end, they released Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a cross-platform runtime environment which can be used to build rich internet applications, using Adobe Flash, that can be deployed as desktop applications. By February 2009, it had surpassed 100 million installations worldwide. Flash can be installed independently from Adobe's website (adobe.com) and is installed silently when Adobe Reader is installed.

Two additional components designed for large-scale implementation have been proposed by Adobe for future releases of Flash: firstly, the option to require an ad to be played in full before the main video piece is played; and secondly, the integration of digital rights management (DRM) capabilities. This way, Adobe can give companies the option to link an advertisement with content and make sure that both are played and remain unchanged.

Flash Player for smart phones was made available to handset manufacturers at the end of 2009.

Open Screen Project

On May 1, 2008, Adobe announced the Open Screen Project, which hopes to provide a consistent application interface across devices such as personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. When the project was announced, several goals were outlined: the abolition of licensing fees for Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Integrated Runtime, the removal of restrictions on the use of the Shockwave Flash (SWF) and Flash Video (FLV) file formats, the publishing of application programming interfaces for porting Flash to new devices, and the publishing of The Flash Cast protocol and Action Message Format (AMF), which let Flash applications receive information from remote databases.

As of February 2009, the specifications removing the restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV/F4V specs have been published. The Flash Cast protocol - now known as the Mobile Content Delivery Protocol - and AMF protocols have also been made available, with AMF available as an open source implementation, BlazeDS. Work on the device porting layers is in the early stages. Adobe intends to remove the licensing fees for Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices at their release for the Open Screen Project.

The list of mobile device providers who have joined the project includes Palm, Motorola, and Nokia, who, together with Adobe, have announced a $10 million Open Screen Project fund.

Parts of this article have been derived from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash

The Story of Flash - Part 2

History

The origins of Flash go back to an application called SmartSketch, which was developed by Jonathan Gay. Gay had previously developed graphics software for Silicon Beach Software before setting up his own company, FutureWave, in 1993. 

SmartSketch was a drawing application for pen computers that ran the PenPoint OS, which had been created by Silicon Beach Software. PenPoint failed in the marketplace though, and the decision was made to port SmartSketch to Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Due to the introduction of the World Wide Web, this was just about the time that the Internet was becoming more popular, and SmartSketch was re-named firstly as CelAnimator, and then as FutureSplash. FutureSplash was a vector-based web animation application that was competing with Macromedia Shockwave. 

In 1995, SmartSketch was further modified with frame-by-frame animation features and released as FutureSplash Animator on multiple platforms. At the time, FutureWave approached Adobe Systems with an offer to sell them FutureSplash, but Adobe turned them down. FutureSplash was used by Microsoft in its early work with the Internet (MSN), and also by Disney Online for their subscription-based service, Disney's Daily Blast. In 1996, FutureSplash was acquired by Macromedia and released as Flash, contracting the words "Future" and "Splash". Flash is currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems, as the result of their 2005 purchase of Macromedia.

Parts of this article have been derived from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash