Will Apple Suit Endanger Flash MX video?
Apple is suing Sorensen to prevent Sorensen's video technology from being used in Macromedia's Flash Player. Is this is big deal? Yes and no. There is a lot more to Flash than video, but video support is a feature that many developers are excited about.
Because the Flash Player incorporates Sorensen video playback technology, Flash users can view video without QuickTime installed. This has to annoy Apple, as they thought they had an exclusive deal with Sorensen.
Even if Macromedia isn't party to the suit, if they are enjoined from supporting Sorensen video in the Flash Player, one of their high profile features will have to be dropped or reengineered.
Macromedia often updates the Flash Player, and deploying a new player is largely transparent to users. But it would be impossible for Macromedia to "recall" existing plugins. While sites can encourage site visitors to upgrade their plugin, they can't force them to. All Macromedia can do is upload the desired plugin to their site and wait for users to download it.
If Sorensen loses the case, this will have much more impact on Flash than Adobe's unrelated patent suit against Macromedia, which my earlier blog entry concludes is a non-event.
Do you plan on using Flash MX's video feature?
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Nice! Thanks to author.
Wow! How old post! Your really great Mr. Bruce A. Epstein
Quick Flash Player is a stand-alone flash player that enables Flash Users to quickly browse the SWF files. Quick Flash Player offers a variety of playback capabilities including full screen mode. A seek bar has been provided to navigate SWF files very easily.
http://www.purchaseshareware.com/multimedia-design-video/quick-flash-player8890-3.htm
Its not the end of the world.
As already mentioned another codec can be used or there is still Simulated Video which is native flash and only needs player 4 and above to be seen. In a poll of 1000 viewers it was rated 82% as good as DV codecs. Besides that its not constrained by a bounding box, fully integratable with vector text and graphics and can animate across the entire stage without incurring file size penalty. Now also with full transperant backgrounds Flashers dont have to worry to much about video support. If you want to see what I am talking about go to http://www.mantaproductions.com and wait for the 6th picture in the slide show. This kind of design lattitude is only available through Flash.
Cheers
Flash and Quicktime do NOT use the same Sorenson codec
From what I've read, Flash Player 6 includes the Sorenson "Spark" H323 video codec, which is a DIFFERENT codec than the Sorenson video codec used in Apple's Quicktime. So Sorenson exclusive deal with Apple for the Quicktime video codec is probably unrelated to Sorenson's other products.
Even if Apple's lawsuit forced Macromedia to remove the Sorenson Spark codec, it could "easily" be replaced because the Spark codec is an implementation of the H323 video standard. Macromedia could just plug in another vendor's H323 codec into their Flash Player code.
Also, this article implies that the Flash Player 6 can play Quicktime video files. That is NOT true. One, the video codecs are different, so they are NOT interoperable. Two, the Flash Player videos are embedded in the SWF files, not external MOV files.
hey you're back
You've been away for a long time (from this weblogs section). Anyway, interesting to know that Apple is sueing Macromedia over this, often their legal department seems to be located in a different Universe from the rest of the company.
Although it's become quite a religous issue of late (I'm sure you'll have seen this article by Simon St Laurent on this website), it does seem that with Flash MX macromedia are attempting to expand the plug-in to become the browser - a bit like the hubris of Andreessen's 'It will make Windows just a set of badly debugged drivers', or Microsoft's urge to own everything, even those areas to which their product isn't suited. One of the things I love about the web is its anarchic, free for all nature, something which Macromedia now seems determined to stamp out.
I'd be interested to see your take on their new direction (i've just been reading the white paper about rich clients on their MX website - richclient.pdf).
The frame I'm writing this in has an OS specific text pane, with OS specific scrollbars. Unfortunately in a flash only world that just doesn't happen. Ditto for say OS specific quicktime controllers for movie playback. This isn't a complaint about a particular flash application or interface, more a problem with the 'must own everything to make it better' approach.