Streaming Flash Video Will Go HD, Says Adobe

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Originally published at Internet.com

Streaming video will get a little sharper and a little richer soon, as Adobe announced today that the next release version of its Flash Player 9 will support the H.264 standard.

Codenamed "Moviestar," the update will also support High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio, hardware acceleration, and multi-core enhanced full-screen video. While the final release version of the player won't be available until the fall, a beta version of the update is currently downloadable from Adobe Labs.

This improvement will let video creators shooting in HD bring that footage directly to the Web, without converting their work to standard definition video. As the latest version of Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects support H.264 encoding, Adobe is now offering a complete workflow for online HD.

Currently, over 98 percent of Internet-connected computers support Flash, so there won't be a problem with users not having the software to view the H.264 Flash video. Viewers who don't upgrade on their own will simply be prompted to upgrade their software the first time they attempt to view video made with the H.264 codec.

An Adobe representative couldn't comment on the bit rate of streaming H.264 Flash, since the rate depends on the resolution of the particular clip. So the bandwidth required to play the higher-resolution video remains to be seen. Viewers will need to have a newer computer to get the full benefits of the H.264-supported Flash Player, though: Adobe suggests that viewers have a 3.0-GHz Windows computer or a2.0-GHz Macintosh computer to view 720p or 1080p hi-def content.

Likewise, the Adobe representative couldn't comment on how much greater video quality the average user would see with the new Flash Player, since that will depend on how the material is encocded. While the rep thought people would notice the difference in quality, he couldn't say by how much.

It will be interesting to see how H.264 support broadens high-definition video on the Web. For example, YouTube has already encoded all of its files into streaming H.264 MOV files for Apple TV and iPhone playback. Those same files will play on the new Flash Player, although YouTube hasn't announced if it will broadly distribute them.