timwhit
Hairy Aussie
I think Flash video is one of the only thing that Flash excels at. Everyone (85-90%) already has it installed, so it is extremely easy to integrate into a website. There are lots of free players out there that have nice features already built in, like fullscreen, volume controls, etc. And it is available on many platforms.
The praise ends there. One thing that really bug me about it is the extremely high CPU utilization. On my system, which is not top of the line or all that new, but decent (Athlon 3000+), watching a Flash video pegs my CPU at 100%. Whereas watching a video in WMP, which is not great by any means, the CPU rarely exceeds 50%, and this is watching a much higher bitrate video too.
The other thing is the lack of codec support. Basically, Flash 9 only supports Sorensen Spark or On2 VP6. That is pitiful. I know that Adobe wants to keep the plug-in small, but there are many better codecs out there that are free and open source that would far exceed the quality of either of the two that are supported, like Xvid. But, Adobe is one of the evil ones, so they will continue to only support proprietary codecs that are extremely CPU hungry and require users to have a top of the line system to view a 320x240px video.
The praise ends there. One thing that really bug me about it is the extremely high CPU utilization. On my system, which is not top of the line or all that new, but decent (Athlon 3000+), watching a Flash video pegs my CPU at 100%. Whereas watching a video in WMP, which is not great by any means, the CPU rarely exceeds 50%, and this is watching a much higher bitrate video too.
The other thing is the lack of codec support. Basically, Flash 9 only supports Sorensen Spark or On2 VP6. That is pitiful. I know that Adobe wants to keep the plug-in small, but there are many better codecs out there that are free and open source that would far exceed the quality of either of the two that are supported, like Xvid. But, Adobe is one of the evil ones, so they will continue to only support proprietary codecs that are extremely CPU hungry and require users to have a top of the line system to view a 320x240px video.