[jdowdell]

Plugins on Mac browsers still have no API to offloading video decompression to hardware... QuickTime excepted, that is.

Kevin's stats were comparing CPU-decompression of video, which should get closer to parity.

Apple's APIs would be easier to use, were they to provide guidance and resources more like Microsoft does. Stark difference.

[wtallis]

Why can't Flash make use of Quicktime like every other multimedia app on Macs for the past decade?

Adobe has stated that the APIs aren't sufficient, but I haven't seen any of you explain what exactly you do need. If you're looking for an API to specifically feed data to a dedicated decode chip, you're doing it wrong, because hardware abstraction is the operating system's job.

If it's merely a problem of the Quicktime APIs being hard to use, then you deserve a swift bankruptcy for complaining about it publicly rather than learning how to program properly on a Mac.

The simple fact remains that Flash is so resource-hungry that it is undeniably badly written. On my machine, with a Radeon X1600 GPU that doesn't have any useful h.264 acceleration, playing a certain h.264 video with a resolution of 640x360 causes Flash 10.1 beta 2 to use on average 90% CPU, whereas Quicktime Player playing from a file uses a steady 16%. Flash is wasting three quarters of my CPU cycles on overhead. Yes, I can understand a difference of a few points due to extra layers of IPC and the networking code, but even if I'm generous, the latest-and-greatest Flash pre-release is throwing away every other clock cycle that my CPU has.

Edit: I tested the video on VLC as well, to make extra sure that there is no home-field hardware acceleration advantage for QuickTime. VLC uses about 18% CPU. Flash's software decoder is 4-5 times slower than it should be.

[jdowdell]

"Why can't Flash make use of Quicktime?"

Then you'd have to do version-checks, if you're actually delivering content to audiences. Fewer people have it, fewer people use the current version. Most codecs on content sites are H.264 or On2 VP6 (successor to Theora). Easier to solicit Apple to open up their acceleration APIs to plugins.

<em>"The simple fact remains that Flash is so resource-hungry that it is undeniably badly written."</em>

You're quite incorrect.

[wtallis]

Version checks on Mac OS X are not necessary: The system requirements for Flash 10.0 on OS X state that OS X 10.4 or later is required. Mac OS X 10.4 and later ship with QuickTime 7, which includes h.264 support. Quicktime 7 cannot be removed from the operating system. Thus, exactly everybody who can run the latest stable release of Flash for Mac already has an OS-provided h.264 decoder that has proven to be much more efficient than the one that is in Flash. Not using Quicktime on OS X is like not using DirectX 10 on Windows Vista and 7.

As to the current performance of the latest Flash beta, what is your justification for Flash requiring five times the computational resources of other video players? What is Flash doing that is not only more intensive than h.264 decoding, but four times more intensive?