160% Increase in use of H.264 Since January

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/160_increase_in_apple_ipad_friendly_h264_video_online_since_january/' target='_blank'>http://www.macdailynews.com/index.p..._since_january/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>""The increasing criticism of Flash as a vehicle for online video delivery (as well as Apple's dislike of Flash) appears to be driving the adoption of H.264 video," Chris Foresman reports for Ars Technica."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1274193914.usr105634.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>The study was done by <a href="http://blog.mefeedia.com/html5-video-stats" target="_blank">MeFeedia</a>, and they found that since January of this year, there was an increase of 160 percent in the video encoded in H.264. They used roughly 30,000 sources including YouTube and Hulu, as well as some of the network sites such as ABC and CBS. For the month of May, 26% of all the video in their index was H.264, compared to 10% in January. They also used Encoding.com to corroborate the data they were seeing.&nbsp;</p>

[Jason Dunn]

I don't know about this...there's not a conflict between h.264 and Flash, because they're not the same thing. h.264 is a codec typically in an MPEG4 wrapper, not a player like Flash - until HTML5 is everywhere and every browser can natively play an embedded MPEG4 file encoded with h.264, Flash has a place. And as I keep pointing out on Twitter, there are millions of pieces of Flash content out there, so it's not like it's going to get magically re-encoded to h.264/MPEG4.

What I personally want to see is Adobe enhance the stability and efficiency of Flash; tapping into the GPU for power savings. It seems like Flash 10.1 has been in development forever...they need to release the damn thing! :)

[ptyork]

What I personally want to see is Adobe enhance the stability and efficiency of Flash; tapping into the GPU for power savings. It seems like Flash 10.1 has been in development forever...they need to release the damn thing! :)

I was about to call you out on this because my version of Flash is 10.1.53.38, but I'm using a Chrome dev channel version. Other browsers I guess are still running 10.0.45.2. I guess the 10.1 in Chrome is beta. Seems darned stable, though.

[Jason Dunn]

I was about to call you out on this because my version of Flash is 10.1.53.38, but I'm using a Chrome dev channel version.

Chrome dev channel version? Well aren't you Mr. Fancypants! ;)

Looks like 10.1 is in RC 4...so one would think it would come out soonish:

Adobe Labs - Downloads: Flash Player 10 Prereleases (http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html)

[Deslock]

What I personally want to see is Adobe enhance the stability and efficiency of Flash; tapping into the GPU for power savings. It seems like Flash 10.1 has been in development forever...they need to release the damn thing! :)
Your post reminds me of one of Steve Jobs' arguments: Apple waited and waited for an efficient and stable version of Flash for mobile devices, and Adobe never delivered, so Apple said screw it.

Anyway, it looks like Adobe will *finally* come through on the efficiency end of things, but stability and security are still concerns and compatibility is going to be an even bigger issue. I expect many Flash games to either not work or be cumbersome on touchscreen devices. And supposedly Hulu isn't supporting phones due to licensing (at least according to the last report I read on it), which negates my main reason for wanting it in the first place.