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Adobe releases Flash Player "Gala" preview with H.264 video hardware decoding for Mac OS X 10.6.3

by Michael Grothaus Apr 29th 2010 at 5:30PM

Apple and Adobe may be at each others' throats, but that won't stop the software from going out. Adobe has released "Gala," a Flash Player preview that introduces support for H.264 video hardware decoding on Mac OS X 10.6.3. While Flash Player H.264 video hardware decoding has been available on Windows for some time, Apple has only recently made available to developers APIs that support H.264 hardware video decoding in the browser, with the release of Mac OS X 10.6.3. Gala's hardware decoding "enables supported Macs running the current version of OS X to deliver smooth, flicker-free HD video with substantially decreased power consumption," according to Adobe.

In order to take advantage of Gala's hardware decoding, users will be required to have Mac OS X 10.6.3 running on a Mac with one of the following graphics cards: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M. Those Macs include MacBooks shipped after January 21st, 2009, Mac Minis shipped after March 3rd, 2009, MacBook Pros shipped after October 14th, 2008, and iMacs that shipped after the first quarter of 2009. Mac Pros are not supported at this time.

The Gala preview is available for download now. Until the release is finalized, users will see a small white square in the upper left corner of the Flash video while video is hardware decoding. I've only played around with it for a few minutes, but I can happily report that I've noticed huge improvements in the playback of HD Flash video on YouTube on my 2009 MacBook Pro.

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Apple and Adobe may be at each others' throats, but that won't stop the software from going out. Adobe has released "Gala," a Flash Player...
 

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Rboyett

I wonder if they will eventually support some of the older MacBook Pros with ATI graphics cards.

It not that important to me at this time because I'm on the verge of upgrading to a new iMac but I am still curious.

April 30 2010 at 9:31 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Techy

I am sorry, let me reword that. Hardware accelerated decode requires Mac OS X 10.6.3 and either NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M GPUs. Basically the new and the latest model Graphic Cards will only support the hardware acceleration.

April 30 2010 at 3:57 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Techy

it is only supported on the latest graphic cards on the macbook pros

April 30 2010 at 3:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
chris.odonnell13

I have a 2008 Unibody MacBook (the first in the series) and that has a 9400M, just incase anyone in the same situation was curious.

April 30 2010 at 3:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
stef

it seems to wrk wel for me, late 09 13" mbp, watching the 1080p version of ironman it was smooth and only used around 30% of my cpu, much better than the choppy 80% that i had before

April 29 2010 at 9:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mike

I don't know if something changed with the 9400GT's interface, but it sucks this doesn't work with the 8600GT. It has full h.264 decoding, but even iTunes doesn't make use of it.

April 29 2010 at 9:10 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael

My curiosity is, why can you get hardware acceleration on a ATI card on windows yet not on Mac? This tells me the issue is with Adobe, rather than Apple.

Even before Apple released the code to the hardware to Adobe, and before Adobe used Hardware acceleration in ANY of their builds for OS' windows always had a lower CPU utilisation than Mac. It isn't a problem with Apple not offering hardware support, it's a problem with Adobe's antiquated software.

April 29 2010 at 9:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hickeroar

I don't think this had anything to do with flash, and everything to do with Steam. Notice the timing of the enabling with the timing of the release of steam...and then take the steam minimum requirements into account...

April 29 2010 at 8:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Hpe60m5

On my MacBook Pro with a 9400m GPU:

With the "older" Flash 10.1, I get about 110% average CPU usage with HD YouTube video.

With Gala, I get an average 65% CPU usage with the same video.

Using ClickToFlash, I selected the option to watch fullscreen with QuickTime and I got 25% CPU usage...

They still got a ways to go I think :)

April 29 2010 at 7:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mike

I get 60% CPU utilization with a bunch of flash ads running on websites on an older windows machine. Flash is performing poorly - on any OS. And hardware acceleration of h264 is not going to speed up regular animations in ads.

April 29 2010 at 7:04 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to mike's comment
hedbluntincharge

that is why 'im a big proponent of glimmerblocker, makes it possible to filter out those annoying flash ads, especially the auto-playing video ones. i HATE HATE HATE those ones and it makes browsing some forums and websites absolutely unbearable. and people want this experience on their iphones and ipads? are they completely asinine sadomasochists?? it boggles the mind

April 29 2010 at 7:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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