Adobe adds HD video to Flash

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 22 August 2007 06:09

Business IT - Technology

Not to be outdone by Microsoft's Silverlight, Adobe has released a beta version of its Flash player with the ability to play high-definition video.

The new player adds support for H.264 video (as used in the Blu-ray and HD DVD standards) plus High Efficiency AAC audio.

"Adobe is committed to providing a seamless creation-to-playback solution that allows creatives and developers to produce video and rich-media once, and then deploy that content across the widest array of distribution and playback environments," said John Loiacono, Adobe's senior vice president of creative solutions.

The company's Premiere Pro and After Effects software for content creators already supports H.264 encoding, and support for the standard will also be added to Adobe's AIR platform for rich Internet applications.

Both Adobe and Microsoft are claiming support from the TV market. During a recent roadshow, Microsoft made a big thing of Discovery Channel's early adoption of Silverlight, while Adobe quoted Nick Rockwell, senior vice president and chief technology officer at MTV Networks as saying "Adobe's support of H.264 in Adobe Flash Player, Adobe AIR and the upcoming Adobe Media Player will ensure that we continue to deliver high-quality video to our diverse audiences who expect it."

Even if you're not interested in high-def video, support for H.264 and HE-AAC in Flash could mean an improvement in the technical quality of content from sites such as YouTube. YouTube has begun encoding videos in H.264 to support the Apple TV, and the changes to Flash Player would make it easy for the site to deliver those versions to other devices.

Adobe also announced that the upgraded Flash Player supports "hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback." With that many adjectives, it's got to be good.

Get the beta Flash Player here. The final release is expected during the next few months.