H.264 Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

H.265 video gets ITU approval

by Kelly Hodgkins (Jan 28th, 2013)

Web and mobile video will soon get a boost thanks to H.265, a new video codec recently approved by the ITU. H.265, known as High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), will deliver high-resolution video with half the bit rate of its predecessor, H.264. More than 80 percent of web video is now encoded ...

Flash Player 10.2 now available, boosts video performance and drops PPC support

by Matt Tinsley (Feb 9th, 2011)

Adobe has officially released Flash Player 10.2 for Mac, and it's available for download now. However, Power PC Macs of old are not supported in this version. One of the main new features of Flash Player 10.2 is Stage Video. Building on the H.264 hardware-accelerated decoding found in Flash ...

Google nixes direct H.264 support in Chrome

by Brett Terpstra (Jan 12th, 2011)

In a move likened to converting the US from English to Esperanto, Google has announced that its web browser, Chrome, will be removing support for direct HTML5 playback of H.264 video in the coming months, in favor of Google's WebM media container (which leverages the VP8 video codec, also supported ...

Royalty-free H.264 is a big win for HTML5, big loss for Flash

by Chris Rawson (Aug 26th, 2010)

Update: Mozilla responds, saying that by 2014 (when the original fee-free license for H.264 would have expired) chances are the codec won't be relevant anymore. So far, one of the main arguments against widespread implementation of HTML5 video has been the uncertain licensing future of the H.264 ...

Elgato Turbo.264 HD Software Edition converts video for iOS devices

by Steven Sande (Jul 15th, 2010)

Mac fans who work with high definition camcorder clips have been aware of Elgato's Turbo.264 HD for a while -- it's a USB dongle that provides hardware acceleration for editing HD clips without converting them first. Today the company has released a software edition of the hardware device. The ...

Microsoft embracing HTML5 / H.264 for IE 9

by Steven Sande (May 3rd, 2010)

Shortly after Steve Jobs delivered his "Thoughts on Flash" missive to the world last week, Microsoft's general manager for the Internet Explorer browser mentioned that the huge software company is putting its muscle behind the H.264 standard for HTML5 video content. Apple, of course, has been ...

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)

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 ...

Hulu coming to the iPad?

by Chris Rawson (Feb 10th, 2010)

Popular (US-only, grumble) television site Hulu is a name that comes up in just about every conversation about the iPad's lack of Flash support. Second only to YouTube's popularity, Hulu streams TV shows from several US networks, allowing for free (albeit ad-supported) access to shows that Apple's ...

Handbrake 0.9.4 released, includes 64-bit support

by Chris Rawson (Nov 24th, 2009)

It's been a year in coming, but Handbrake, the multiplatform, open-source video transcoder, has been updated to version 0.9.4. It's one of the tools I included in my list of 10 must-have apps for a new Mac. The Handbrake team has been busy indeed over the past year -- their change log shows over ...

Turbo.264 HD adds AVCHD transcoding savvy

by Michael Rose (Mar 20th, 2009)

When first we met the Turbo.264 hardware compression accelerator, it did a great job of speeding up video exports on older CPUs but didn't offer a tremendous boost on modern Intel hardware. True, it worked well with Elgato's EyeTV software to transcode TV recordings overnight for iPod or iPhone use, ...

QuickTime H.264 Compatibility Update is out

by Cory Bohon (Nov 17th, 2008)

Apple just released a software update for QuickTime. The update titled "H.264 Compatibility Update" claims to improve QuickTime compatibility with iChat. You can download this update by opening Software Update (Apple menu > Software Update), or by downloading the installer package directly from ...

WD TV provides subtle support for Mac-format drives

by Michael Rose (Nov 13th, 2008)

It wasn't the splashiest product introduction ever, but last week's launch of Western Digital's $130 WD TV high-definition media player may have caused a few smiles for Mac users. The playback unit -- a simple configuration of a USB2 port for connecting a hard drive, and either composite (SD) or ...

New MacBooks adding NVIDIA hardware H.264 decoding?

by Mat Lu (Oct 21st, 2008)

Something interesting has popped up with the new NVIDIA graphics hardware in the unibody MacBooks and MacBook Pros: hardware H.264 decoding. MacRumors is reporting that owners of the new MacBooks are seeing considerably less CPU usage when playing high definition H.264 content on the new machines ...

Adobe adds H.264 support to Flash Player 9 beta

by Scott McNulty (Aug 21st, 2007)

This video on the web thing is going to be big I tells ya! Read/Write Web is reporting that Adobe will be releasing an updated version of their Flash Player 9 beta tomorrow which has some new features aimed squarely at video on the web. The two biggies are: H.264 playback support. You might ...

Turbo.264 update brings iPhone formats, customizable encoding settings

by David Chartier (Aug 7th, 2007)

Erica took a first look at Elgato's Turbo.264 USB video encoder last month and found it to be a mixed bag. While it is indeed a powerful accessory to many Mac user's video encoding efforts, it's only compatible with apps that use QuickTime for encoding and export, so HandBrake and VisualHub ...