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Why is flash playback so bad?

G

Grafdude@gmail.

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 28, 2007
25
0
I'm using my macbook pro mainly for design, web design, such as photoshop and flash. The thing is that os x has trouble with the playback of flash animations. I created a flash animation totally made with adobe flash cs3 with my mbp but when I play it on a pc, it is faster and the frames render considerably faster on a pc. It's as if os x renders frame slower.

One thing for sure is that it is not the mbp but os x, since I installed windows xp on my mbp (windows boot camp) and I do not experience this "frame slowdown".

Anyone knows what's up with this?
 
Well-known fact that Flash handling in OS X is really subpar. Why Apple has yet to address this.....i do not know.
 
Maybe. My guess is that since the rest of the OS X applications Adobe has written run fine on Macs, chances are "fixing Flash" isn't a priority for them as Flash doesn't bring them a whole lot of money.
 
This is an Apple problem. I notice it most in Safari. If you click off the current web page or something flash slows to a crawl... It's fixed in Safari 3.
 
Bearxor said:
This is an Apple problem. I notice it most in Safari. If you click off the current web page or something flash slows to a crawl... It's fixed in Safari 3.
Click to expand...
It's not fixed in FireFox, and Apple didn't write that. :( So did Apple write a new version of Adobe's Flash for Safari 3?
 
I would belive it's the flash application which sucks, and the whole flash phenomen and webpages sucks major ass aswell.

I don't want to wait and tell someone how I should navigate images and what not. Also I don't like sound on webpages.

So I guess you are stuck until someone decides to release a better flash version. Maybe the old one are PPC aswell?

Until then going Safari + Pithelmet, Opera + builtin adblocker or Firefox/Camino + Adblock helps. But not for you who develops it :D
 
I don't have the problem in either Firefox or Camino.
Click to expand...

You probably don't have the problem because you do not develop flash content.

Flash videos on the other hand don't seem to have this problem probably because it uses a different engine than a typical flash animations, I guess.
 
Bearxor said:
I don't have the problem in either Firefox or Camino.
Click to expand...

I think you're talking about a different problem that the rest of us.

Flash runs like molasses on Macs in general and the problem is almost certainly in Adobe's software. It's a joke. Flash runs better on a 800 mHz Windows machine than on a brand new Mac Pro.
 
I think you're talking about a different problem that the rest of us.
Click to expand...
No, that's the problem I'm talking about, indeed flash runs better on a old, slow windows system ... terrible if you develop web graphics (flash) on a mac. I have to constantly check my animations on windows to make sure it runs at the desired speed.

Now I'm starting to see no advantages of using my mac on os x for making web graphics, I have installed windows xp on my mbp, thinking of totally making all my graphics in windows,it just makes no sense to develop flash on os x, for now, since the majority of people are running windows and what u see on os x is not what you see on windows.
 
I played a flash game. With Safari 2 if I clicked off the browser it would slow to a crawl. Same with Youtube. The audio would keep playing but the video would be chop city (which sucked because i usually wanted to watch it in a small corner of the screen while doing actual work).

This problem does not exist in Safari 3 Beta. I've never experienced it in Firefox and Camino. I understand how frustrating it can be if you develop flash on a Mac.
 
Grafdude@gmail. said:
No, that's the problem I'm talking about, indeed flash runs better on a old, slow windows system ... terrible if you develop web graphics (flash) on a mac. I have to constantly check my animations on windows to make sure it runs at the desired speed.

Now I'm starting to see no advantages of using my mac on os x for making web graphics, I have installed windows xp on my mbp, thinking of totally making all my graphics in windows,it just makes no sense to develop flash on os x, for now, since the majority of people are running windows and what u see on os x is not what you see on windows.
Click to expand...

Ahh... I wasn't even aware of the problem. I think flash playback on a Mac is just slow with or without the Safari issue.
 
"Adobe brings high definition to Flash videos"

It seems like maybe(???) this problem will be fixed in a new Flash Player update?

CNET has an article about a beta that's supposed to be released tomorrow:

The company on Tuesday is expected to announce the release of a beta version of its Flash Player, code-named Moviestar, that adds support for H.264, the video compression portion of the MPEG 4 standard.

The updated Flash Player also will be able to take advantage of hardware acceleration in most PCs' graphics cards and is optimized for dual-core processors, said Mark Randall, chief strategist for dynamic media at Adobe.
Click to expand...

Although it doesn't specifically reference Macs, most of the new intel macs are now dual-core (Intel's Core)... so I guess we'll have to wait and see if the "flash problems" are fixed...

Link: "Adobe brings high definition to Flash videos
 
I think Apple are the responsible ones. Animated GIFs are a bit of a problem on a mac too. Going to a page with lots of animated GIFs will heat your machine quite a it.
Seems to be a problems with graphic rendering. Maybe Quartz2DExtreme will help, if it ever gets released.
 
There are a couple of problems here.

The Flash plug-in on Windows uses OLE2/ActiveX, which has great throughput but is a natural security risk. Macromedia, who bought Flash way back when, never really got a handle on Mac development. They made some progress with Studio MX 2004 after a while and improved things to where they stand today. Things were really bad.

Flash playback will probably never be really good because there isn't any plug-in architecture like OLE2/ActiveX and they continue to use the same tired code. However, since Adobe are in control of Flash now and have made some progress lately with CS3, hopefully, they can re-work the whole plug-in and eliminate the problems.
 
What troubles me the most is that a flash platform for mac (flash CS3, Flash 8, etc...) is available to artists and developers, even though the playback of those is incorrect, now that's what I called very strange.

It's hard to believe that they will actually be able to sell those on the mac platform, except for those that fall into the trap, like me. I will replace my copy for a windows platform.
 
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