Filed under: Multimedia
YouTube with all of the sizzle but none of the Flash
[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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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Matt said 9:30PM on 11-08-2009
You know what's ironic? They have a flash ad at the bottom of their HTML5 Youtube player page.
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Sigbhu said 2:41AM on 11-09-2009
it's an ad, but it ain't flash. animated GIF.
tom.toeda said 3:52AM on 11-09-2009
Some of the ads are Flash indeed. I'm sure they are placed automatically and as such some are naturally Flash.
spyker said 9:33PM on 11-08-2009
What's with all the dog posts today? :P
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Diezel said 9:44PM on 11-08-2009
I was thinking the same thing.
robogobo said 2:31AM on 11-09-2009
yeah.
maxmontreal said 8:46AM on 11-09-2009
haha me too, first thing i thought of
Mr Lizard said 3:08PM on 11-09-2009
I thought I was going barking mad!
..I'll leave now.....
Marco said 9:35PM on 11-08-2009
Very interesting, indeed! Nice bookmarklet. I was always frustrated by how flash failed on mac.
I tried on the latest build of Chromium and surprisingly it doesn't work. Probably due to the lack of support. Nevertheless, I have been experiencing flash MUCH faster on it. Who knows why.
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Nick said 9:50PM on 11-08-2009
The FlashFree Youtube solution is very interesting, but since ClickToFlash provides the option to view (or download!) the H.264 file, there doesn't seem to be any need for FlashFree Youtube for Safari users.
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bo3of said 9:56PM on 11-08-2009
It's funny because Adobe is b****ing that the iPhone doesn't support Flash!
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Cash said 5:49AM on 11-09-2009
It's funnier that this gives mac users a taste of what it's like trying to run iTunes on a pc. Sucks when a company refuses to optimize a popular program for your platform of choice, doesn't it?
Cawlin said 11:28PM on 11-08-2009
You realize ClickToFlash has been able to serve up h264 on youtube for a while now right?
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James C said 10:42PM on 11-08-2009
ClickToFlash does this already -- you just have to set it up in the options.
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Desaparecido said 10:56PM on 11-08-2009
I was just now wondering why my MacBook Pro is fine when running Photoshop and InDesign and then get's burning hot when playing just one YouTube video.
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markerik2000 said 11:52PM on 11-08-2009
Flash is slow and awful in Safari. Try Firefox instead. It runs as well as it ever will.
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Justin said 12:09AM on 11-09-2009
Hmm... their page doesn't seem to work right in Firefox.
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Zacqary Adam Green said 2:14AM on 11-09-2009
Firefox doesn't support MP4 video in HTML5, just OGG Theora. The cost of licensing an MPEG-4 decoder for an open source project is prohibitively expensive for the Mozilla Foundation, whereas OGG is free.
It's a lot of bureaucratic political disagreement and in the end we all lose. =D
Justin said 11:11AM on 11-09-2009
Well that's lame, but thanks for the information. I don't think I'll be pulling myself away from Firefox anytime soon though.
Damn Adobe and their crappy Flash.
gamba said 12:37AM on 11-09-2009
Well, unless I'm missing something,
ClickToFlash cannot convert FLA to MP4
just use it if there is one on the YouTube.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
If NeoSmart handles conversion well then
it would be very helpful.
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