ASVGuy::SWFBlog

Old news: AIR Beta2, Flex3 Beta2, AMP prerelease and Flash Lite 3

It all happened on October 1st and I kind of ignored them because of all cool news coming from Adobe MAX.

Flash Lite 3 is out and it supports FLV video along with most SWF 8 content. Flash Lite is Flash for mobile devices, phones etc. and video support means you'll be able to enjoy YouTube with your cell phone (of course your phone has to have FL3).

AIR public beta 2 finally supports Windows 2000 and is overall improved. I'm yet to try it. There's also Flash CS3 update for AIR.

Matt Chotin  has the what's new article for Flex 3, and also covers public beta 2. Ted Patrick announced price decrease for Flex Builder 3, SDK pricing won't be changing because it's already free. All I can say about pricing is this: Regional pricing sucks! Thank god 'free' doesn't translate to a low price outside USA. As always, Ted's blog is the place to find Flex news and info.

Adobe Media Player (AMP) is the long waited official Adobe FLV Player. It seems it's more than that with catalogs, favorite shows etc. and offering content protection to content publishers. Requires latest AIR beta2 and I'm yet to install it. So I'll post my impressions later.

There's also Flex Builder for Linux alpha, released on October 2nd. It's definitely good to see Linux support though I'm not actively using Linux but I do plan in the future, especially if Microsoft fails to deliver a decent version of Windows, something on par with XP, nothing like their latest big flop Vista.

And then there's Adobe Inspire Experience design site alpha, you may want to check it out.

Flash 10 and Quake in Flash

Peter Elst has a post titled Adobe MAX Chicago - Sneak Peeks and you can't afford to miss the videos about next version of Flash and C/C++ to AS3 conversion.

Next version of Flash will have a better 'stage' where you can have your video live and you'll need to test your movie less. You've got to see the new tweens, they will become very capable and easy to use. Lastly demonstrated is kinetics - bones built-in to Flash, too cool I won't even attempt to describe here.

C/C++ to AS3 conversion is really cool too. Applications are endless. You can have Ruby or PHP interpreter converted AS3 and actually run PHP code then. You find a sample C++ code, and you can use it in your SWF easily, there won't be language barriers. Demo is impressive with Quake code converted to AS3. This is really something that can change a lot when it arrives.

Thank you Peter for the videos.

Flash Player 10 (Astro) and AIF/Hydra

Aral has the video of the astro preview from Adobe MAX 2007 keynote. A must see.

Astro is the codename for Flash Player 10. Revealed features are advanced text layout (with bidirectional languages support), 3D effects (very cool), and custom filters, blend modes and effects. All are impressive.

For custom filters, blend modes and effects, a new image processing language, codenamed Hydra, is announced. You can play with Hydra now, using Adobe Image Foundation (AIF) Toolkit Technology Preview. You'll need hardware acceleration, as software based rendering is not supported yet. Chances are that your video card is one of the supported ones, unfortunately I still use an X550 based card (my CPU is E6600, quite sufficient. I didn't get a better card because I never needed 3d acceleration, till today), so I was only able to read the documentation. Some features of Hydra will not be supported by Flash, hence it's Adobe Image Foundation, not Flash. Don't forget to check Kevin Goldsmith's blog if you are interested in Hydra.

All in all, I see a very bright future for Adobe Flash Player and the Flash Platform. And thank you Aral for the video (BTW, SWX rocks)!

Flash Player 9 Update 3 Release Candidate

Release Candidate (RC) version of Flash Player 9 Update 3 (moviestar) is available for download at Adobe Labs. Probably the last chance to find any bug and report to Adobe before the release.

Tinic Uro has more details than most of us would want to know (If you have heard of Extended, High 4:2:2 or High 4:4:4 profiles and using them, Tinic has some bad news for you).

MAC OS X 10.1 version is not there yet. Real Player 11 beta is still causing problems. Version number is 9.0.64.0.

Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2 (MovieStar): H.264, HE-ACC support

This is huge news for web video and for Flash in general. As a result this has been already covered a lot, but if you are blogging about Flash or web, you cannot skip this kind of news.

Here are some links:

• What just happened to video on the web? by Tinic Uro
• Big day for web video: Adobe announces support for H.264 and HE-AAC in Flash Player, and Moviestar premieres on Adobe Labs by Emmy Huang
• The H.264 Announcement in Black and White by Ryan Steward
• New Flash Player plays MP4s, Quicktime video, even music from your iPod! by Aral Balkan
• The Bomb: Flash Player To Support H.264 Video by Stefan Richter (Flashcomguru)
• Flash Player to support H.264 video (FlashMagazine)

Here are my notes:

• Build number for this version (Beta 2) is 9.0.60.184. Update 3 Beta 1 was released in June (build 9.0.60.120). Release is expected 'later this Fall' (for the northern hemisphere).
• Available at Adobe Labs. Windows installer size increase is around 200 KB, haven't checked the player size yet. Because only browser players are available these new features/codecs won't work inside Flash (which uses an internal player). Update: The toll is around 100 KB.
• H.264 video (ISO/IEC 14496-12, ISO/IEC 14496-10, ISO/IEC 14496-3) and HE-ACC v2 audio support (also hardware accelerated fullscreen video for Linux) is new. Multi-core and hardware accelerated fullscreen video support also applies to the new H.264. I was somewhat expecting a move like this from Adobe, as Silverlight had a strong point about video, but I was, too, surprised as many to see this so soon.
• This is huge because these are industry standard codecs also used by HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.
• We'll be able to play .mp4, .m4v, .m4a, .mov and .3gp files with the new Player (Xvid, DivX not supported). There will be no need to install Quicktime (and I don't) for viewing Quicktime video.
• I'm not sure about the future of FLV format as a container format. But it will be around and current codecs will, of course, be supported at least for backwards compatibility. You can even have H.264 in a FLV but this is 'not encouraged'. I'm a bit sorry about this.
• The new codecs also mean AIR desktop applications will be able to deliver standard HD quality content.

Speaking of AIR, also on the Adobe Labs you can now find beta 1 of Adobe AIR update for Flash CS3 which lets you target AIR from within Flash CS3.

Essential ActionScript 3.0

Which AS3 book should you get, if you could only get one? The answer is Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock, and it's now available in bookstores and online.

The manuscript has been available at O'Reilly Rough Cuts since May and Colin has posted many sample pages at his blog. Now it's time to get the real thing! You can still purchase online access, but I will go for the print book, for this one.

(I have many authors in my favorites list, I'm not naming them here, as I'm sure I'll miss some which wouldn't be fair. For essential AS3, you can't go wrong with Colin Moock).

'Flash is dead' Mindset...

Jesse Ezell proclaimed Flash dead on May 2, 2007. On May3, he blogged more details. That post is quite long, softer and may fool some people, he even ends it by saying 'So, Flash is great. Silverlight just solves a lot of the major problems that I've run into with Flash'.

On June 12, Tinic Uro blogged about multi-core support in the upcoming Flash Player. Flash is to take advantage of multiple/multi-core CPUs, promising 25-33% performance enhancement...

Here's what Jesse blogged: Flash: Now Slowing Down Your Multi-Core PC !

C'mon!

I had trouble believing my eyes. The Jesse I knew was a great guy I respected (though not always agreed with his opinions). After seeing that post, it feels sad but, he lost me.

That's the same blinded mindset we saw with 'RIA = Rich Interactive Applications' supporters.

I'm beginning to seriously think that it's not only money but Microsoft really makes use of brain implant chips which, as a side effect (or due to a bug), blinds ones judgment. If you are an MS fanboy, at least you can try to pretend to be fair, doesn't that make sense?

Lots of Public Betas from Adobe (Flex 3, AIR, Flash Player 9 update 3)

Flash Player 9 update 3
Flash Player Update 3 Beta 1 (build 9.0.60.120) is now available for download at Adobe Labs. 371 bugs were fixed since update 2, but that's just the start. Adobe has more to please. Tinic Uro has the definitive post about this (though he doesn't mention the 'Flash Player Cache' feature like Emmy Huang).

The improvements are mostly performance related. Flash Player now embraces multiple core CPUs, DirectX on Windows, OpenGL on OSX, hardware scaling of video!... There's also MIP map support for all bitmaps (which should increase performance and somewhat the memory usage), mipmaps are generally used for 3D textures...

AIR (Apollo)
Adobe Integrated Runtime, AIR, formerly Apollo, beta 1 is also now available at Adobe Labs. A lot of new features and Flex 3 now has more support for AIR.

I must say I think the code name Apollo was way better than AIR. Now people will say 'Adobe AIR' meaning 'Adobe Adobe Integrated Runtime' and 'Adobe IR' doesn't even look good. Air is everywhere, essential to life, it's not heavy, it's transparent, - but it also doesn't have any value, so I really didn't like the new name.

Flex 3
Both the free SDK and Flex Builder 3 beta 1 are now also available at Adobe Labs. What's more, now the bug base is open to public and also Flex 3 nightly builds are available.

Lots of great features. My favorite is Flash Player's ability to cache the Flex framework. Ted Patrick always has great Flex coverage, so visit his blog to learn more.

Farewell to 'Macromedia'

Adobe's Acquisition of Macromedia Expected to Close on December 3, 2005  (via JD)...

So the time has come... For me, personally, Macromedia has been a dear name for more than 10 years. Maybe it's better it's promoting to legend status at its height...

While I'm fully aware that its just the name that will vanish it seems, my feelings are mixed.

That's all I can write for now...

Xbox Flash Video Test Spotted on DevChat

A few hours ago Mike Chambers invited readers of his blog for online Flash Video testing on Central DevChat. The test involved watching video feed of the Xbox game Star Wars:Battlefront.

Daniel Dura also posted an invitation and a screenshot.

It was nice as an online event, spontaneous. I wished our tests involved playing games...

Here are some notable quotations from the chat:

CyanBlue: Is it live video feed from your own xbox, mesh???

CyanBlue: Who's playing the guy on the right??? He's worse than me, it seems... :)

JesterXL: how'd they connect da box to da stream?
JesterXL: ATI card with TV out or....?

mike.chambers: mike downey and christian cantrell.
mike.chambers: christian was the one kicking the most ass.
mike.chambers: danny is ok, but christian is much better.
mike.chambers: they are both better than chambers.

CyanBlue: ...my wife probably will kill me if I don't come home tonight... :D

Dominick@home: damn, some of the new j2se 5.0 features rock

Dominick@home: pretty cool.. but how would central handle the video if it were 400x600

mike.chambers: this is just a hw test.
mike.chambers: more stuff to come in the next couple of weeks

mike.chambers: ill post some info on how we do it on my weblog

Dominick@home: also java has static import... really cool..

mike.chambers: thanks for the help testing this

Dominick@home: now we all get timbuktu bags..

Fernando: i love ps 2

***mike.chambers has left default