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YouTube with all of the sizzle but none of the Flash

by TJ Luoma Nov 8th 2009 at 9:15PM

[Our regular Sunday night Talkcast is cancelled due to a sick host. Sorry, and we'll see you next week. –Ed.]

Let's face it: Flash on the Mac is a dog. Actually, that's an insult to dogs, which are known for running fast. Flash for Mac is such a an unoptimized beast that you can expect it will suck up as much CPU as possible, even for the simplest of videos.

My first line of defense is ClickToFlash (which I've mentioned before), but the folks over at NeoSmart have another solution, at least for YouTube: HTML5.

By using the newest version of HTML, they have devised a system to send YouTube videos directly to any MP4 decoder on your computer. Simply go to their custom web page and paste the YouTube URL into the field. In a moment you will be presented with a clean window showing you the video, as well as a download link for the MP4 version.

They also have a Greasemonkey/UserScript available which will add a link to all YouTube pages. That's nice, but what I was really looking for was a bookmarklet I could keep in my Bookmarks Bar and just click on when I was on a YouTube page. I didn't find one, so I made one. Drag (don't click!) this link to your Bookmarks Bar: FlashFree YouTube and you can easily access the NeoSmart/HTML5 version.

How does it work? Superbly well. I tested it using Safari, and watching a YouTube video through NeoSmart had no noticeable impact on my CPU at all.

I've nearly given up hope for a version of Flash for Mac that doesn't stink. Until then, ClickToFlash and NeoSmart's HTML5 YouTube are a great combination to make your web surfing more enjoyable.

(Update: NeoSmart is being blocked by Google/YouTube. It turns out that if you load YouTube videos on YouTube.com while having ClickToFlash installed, they play through QuckTime, not Flash. So download ClickToFlash.)

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[Our regular Sunday night Talkcast is cancelled due to a sick host. Sorry, and we'll see you next week. –Ed.] Let's face it: Flash...
 

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41 Comments

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Kalu

Why a Web Page? Use the Flashless (http://useless.github.com/flashless/) if you want it removes the Flash on the REAL YouTube Page with the from HTML5 :D
That much better. ;)

November 09 2009 at 5:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rich MacDonald

Click to flash is great. Basically lets you treat Flash like potential viruses ("Are you sure you want to play this movie, your Mac Book Pro fan will likely rev up like a jet engine and Safari will hit 80% CPU usage").

November 09 2009 at 3:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Russell Martin

I have the opposite experience of several commenters here- Youtube videos play fine in Safari for me and they drop frames (noticeably and annoyingly) in Firefox or any other browser.

November 09 2009 at 1:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joseph Reiter

Google is working on an HTML5 solution but, clearly, browser support is not there yet (HTML5 is not yet finalized and it will probably be years until the majority of installed web browsers support it). Here is an old demo web page that runs in recent Safari versions:

http://www.youtube.com/html5

This seems a bit abandoned at this point, but then again it is a public web page and work probably continues behind the scenes.

November 09 2009 at 8:24 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
RyanR

@Cash

What sort of moron comment is that?

Why should Mac users be given "a taste of what it's like trying to run iTunes on a pc"? I'm sorry that Mac users forced iTunes upon you, I'm sorry we coded it poorly for your OS, I'm sorry... oh wait no, Mac users didn't do any of this! So take your spite and shove it up your ass where it belongs.

November 09 2009 at 8:12 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
chris

Sweet! I'l Install ClickToFlash right away on my GF's iMac G5, so I can hear myself again when she is surfing.
Damn, that thing gets loud when a few pages have flash on them!

November 09 2009 at 8:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to chris's comment
sonic the plumber

I know this sounds painstakingly obvious, but have you cleaned the air intake grille beneath the screen? Mine was running awful loud after a couple of hours every evening until I stumbled upon the 4-years-worth of thick dust build up on the grille. It never runs above moderate sound levels since I cleaned it.

I didn't realise Flash for Mac was so borked. I assumed it was my G5 getting long in the tooth!

November 11 2009 at 5:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
henk duivendrecht

Just a little conspiracy theory : if the flash player runs so awful on Safari (and better in firefox) and not at all on the iPhone, might that be because flash is such a big threat to apple? Apple has no interest in making the flash plugin run smooth in safari.

The end user is left with a mixed bag of options that either require installing all kinds of scripts that will become obsolete with the next browser version, and with two or three browsers on their system that all support completely different web technologies.

I don't see the next version of Safari, FF and IE finally agreeing on how the web should work. Instead, IE will push their own ms-only technologies, Apple will push anything that will help them sell more macbooks, both strategies clashing with the goals of the open source community.

November 09 2009 at 5:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mike

flash is awful in safari. try Firefox instead.

free slideshow

November 09 2009 at 5:03 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tony

As I understand it there is a separate version of YouTube pages, specifically for the iPhone/iPod touch, which delivers MPEG4/H264 video not Flash. (Actually Flash uses MPEG4 but wrapped up in its own envelope, doesn't it?)

Maybe it is these pages that are being viewed in the HTML5 download?

I 100% support Apple's choice to focus on the new HTML5 standard, and hope that the current issues and discussions, which have not yet finalised the codec for the "video" tag, will get resolved soon - in favour of H264.

November 09 2009 at 3:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to tony's comment
Marco

Yes, youtube uses h264 video in a mp4/flv container. There are a lot of plugins out there to download the video in mp4 or convert it to another more friendly format.

Since it's no mistery to find which link points to the mp4 file, I guess it wasn't much of a problem creating a web page with it around the video tag.

November 09 2009 at 4:52 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Pixelmatsch

Let me rephrase this:
You would like the proprietary codec with licensing fees to win over the open alternative. (I am not debating video quality here, I know the differences.)

Would you be so kind to pay the licensing fees vor every browser that wants to integrate html5, because not everyone can and you seem to be eager to do it.
I'd prefer h264 too, but seeing as it has all this licensing baggage there really is no point in choosing it over Theora on the sole advantage of a little bit of encoding efficiency.

November 09 2009 at 4:59 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
robogobo

you lost me at "paste the URL".

November 09 2009 at 2:34 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to robogobo's comment
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