[LINK] High Definition Web Video
stephen at melbpc.org.au
stephen at melbpc.org.au
Fri Aug 31 01:18:34 AEST 2007
Coming Soon: Web Video in High Definition
By Brad Stone. August 21, 2007, 12:00 am
<http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/coming-soon-web-video-in-high-
definition/>
Video on the Web is going high-def. Today Adobe, the San Jose software
maker, will announce that it is integrating a standard format for high
definition video into the newest version of its immensely popular Flash
video player.
Flash players currently sit on 98 percent of all desktop computers and
hundreds of millions of portable and handheld devices.
Sites like YouTube, ABC.com and NBC.com favor Flash over competing players
like Apples QuickTime and Microsofts Windows Media, since Flash is
relatively easy to develop for and videos play directly in the browser.
The high-def standard that Adobe is embracing is called H.264. It is the
same video format used in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD video players and the latest
cable and satellite set-top boxes.
Adobe will integrate support for H.264, and for the high-performance AAC
audio standard, into the newest version of Flash, available for download
today.
But the changes will be gradually visible over the next year, as Flash
video producers begin to encode their video in the higher quality format.
Between now and a year from now I think the ambient video and audio
quality that we see in Internet video will be noticeably higher. As a
video guy myself that makes me incredibly excited, said Mark Randall,
Chief Strategist of the Dynamic Media Organization at Adobe.
H.264 is an open standard, and the result of an industry consortium.
Apple added H.264 support to QuickTime two years ago and has been
integrating it throughout its entire line of products this year.
Microsoft has its own proprietary high-def standard, called Windows Media
VC-9.
But Adobe jumping on the H.264 bandwagon means that more of the video we
interact with on the Web will have the quality we expect from our home
televisions.
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Cheers, people
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia
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