Flash 10.1 preview releases adds h.264 hardware support


It appears Adobe found some fire beneath itself as it moves quickly to take advantage of new OS X hardware APIs.

Mac OS X 10.6.3 introduced some programming hooks for developers to add hardware accelerated h.264 video playback. h.264 of course is the widely used video codec that favors CPU horsepower to deliver high quality video at smaller file sizes. Running solely on the CPU, as Adobe protests, can depending on the situation cause performance issues regardless of the intermediate layer such as Flash. Apple apparently responded by granting third-party access in its update to OS X Snow Leopard late last month.

Adobe in turn jumped right on that as today the company released a preview release featuring the hardware support. The "Gala" preview release of Flash Player 10.1 for OS X will provide hardware accelerated h.264 video playback on Macs running OS X 10.6.3 with NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M, or GeForce GT 330M graphics processors. The support is to be offered in the final release of Flash Player 10.1 when it is officially released.

Despite the much public feuding between the companies, this is certainly good news for Mac users. Adobe seems keen on improving Flash's image, particularly among Apple customers. Perhaps other areas of Adobe's portfolio on the Mac will improve also.

Flash Player "Gala" Preview Release