6 posts tagged “flash”

The BBC has launched a Flash-based version if its iPlayer - that allows you to watch the last seven days Beeb programs. Unlike the iPlayer program that was launched earlier (that only worked on Windows and used up all your bandwidth in bit-torrent stylee), this version can be used straight from the browser, and works on Windows and Macs (dunno about Linux, depends on how far along the flash plugin is). Latest Flash plugin recommended. And yes, it shows Dr Who. And Balamory. And Chucklevision :p

BBC Flash iPlayer

A beer for the first person to turn this into an Air application or sidebar widget. :)

Further to my last post, here is a page streaming an Apple movie preview via Flash Player. Awesome. The movie looks good too (I loved the first one, as sad as that makes me)

If you've installed the updated Flash player beta, head over there and check it out.

On the subject of h.264, why does it take such an obscenely long time to encode? I encoded a one-hour disney movie into AppleTV format 264 (via Handbrake), and it look almost NINE hours! Which means a 2:30 long movie would take like 24 hours to encode... jeepers! I guess its no problem if you have a quad-core though.

Adobe just announced they are updating their flash player with h.264 and 3gp movie support. Fantastic. Before you all fall asleep, these formats are

1) h.264 (MP4) is the same format iTunes sells videos in
2) 3GP is the format previously/commonly used to take video on cellphones (before h.264)

So instead of your flash page just linking to and playing FLV movie files, you will now be able to link to and stream mp4, m4v, m4a, mov and .3gp video too. Its also supporting the iTunes "standard" for metadata, something I wish other companies would do *cough*Nokia*cough*

Does this mark the beginning of the end for Flash Video? It would seem like it to me, even though it is a good format, h.264 has the edge, so why not go with that? Imagine, places like YouTube won't have to convert your video into Flash format (losing quality) - you can upload an MP4 straight from your cameraphone, and it will get played as-is.

This seemingly boring technical announcement opens up a whole world of possibility - WebVideo 2.0 :p

source

Damh The Bard has started a Druid podcast, actually its the official OBOD podcast, as far as I can tell. You can e ither subscribe via your feedreader of choice, or, in iTunes, go to Advanced>Subscribe To Podcast, and enter http://www.druidcast.libsyn.com/rss, then iTunes will automatically download new shows for you.

This first episode goes into the history of OBOD, and a basic outline of that modern Druids believe. Now, I'm none too sure about "The Order", reminds me too much of The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn, The Order of Freemasons, The Order of the Knights Templar etc... far too.. erm.. ordered. The three degress of Bards, Ovates and Druids smells too much of the three degrees of Wicca to me, hardly surprising considering their origins. Still, old Dave has a mellow voice that carries you along, and the whole thing is really professionally done. Well worth subscribing too.

Adobe have updated Bridge CS3 to 2.1, so download it if it hasn't automatically updated. Once you've done that, you can download Adobe Media Library - this beta script allows you to make Flash gallery websites straight from Bridge, like you can with Lightroom, which is pretty cool.

I followed a link earlier, to a BBC News story about Edios and Lara Croft. Yeah, well, the reason it is interesting (being a non-gamer) is that you can watch the news footage on the page, via a flash player. This is actually a big deal for the BBC. Usually when you read a story and click a "watch" link, a window opens up and you have to watch the footage in Real Player. Or maybe, on occasion, Windows Media Player.

A couple of years ago, I remember someone from BBC Online being interviewed, I think on Radio 4. Anyhow, he was asked why the BBC insist on streaming in Real format. He said it was all tied up with licensing, it would cost too much to switch to another format. But that was before Flash video took off. Flash is perfect for the little 2 minute news items the BBC show, involves no licensing fees (aside from a FLV converter), and is cross platform. I hope that the BBC adopt it site-wide, and drop the Real streams. I uninstalled Real-player about 7 years ago, and I'm damned if I'm installing it again.

Its also future-proof, and mobile ready (as soon as there is a mobile browser that will play flash streams. Probably the next version of Symbian will provide that via Flash Lite).