Notes on H.264 in Flash

Snips+notes on Adobe’s implementation of H.264 video in Flash—

* This is a pretty big step in the direction of interoperability of digital video platforms—Web Video/Settops/IPTV/Digital TV/mobile “hardware acceleration” for Web video will be a boon to the adoption of HD-ish quality video via the Innertubes.

ISPs better step it up. Cable’s Bandwidth Shortage.

* Adobe has licensed the x86, PowerPC and ARM (ARM=iPhone) versions of MainConcept’s H.264 and AAC decoders. (source)

* On2: making a move toward embedded/hardware decoding: Flash coming to a settop near you. (source)

* Beta now available: http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer9.html

* Metadata: Get those Video search/discovery startups ready:support for ‘covr’ (and other) metadata from iTunes

* ability to decode Base, Mainline and High profiles

You can load and play .mp4,.m4v,.m4a,.mov and .3gp files using the same NetStream API you use to load FLV files now. We did not add any sort of new API in the Flash Player. All your existing video playback front ends will work as they are.

* Xvid, DivX not supported

* Decoder is from Mainconcept

* multichannel AAC files are downmixed

* support for sampling rates from 8Khz to 96Khz

* Fairplay-iTunes DRM- not supported

* Commerical use of H.264 and AAC requires licensing fees.

(source)