Artile on the new Flash video format

[eric_darling]

This has some good insights through interview format:
http://www.flashmagazine.com/1128.htm

[Corey]

Wow, some pretty bad disinformation being strewn about, this guy is full of "mistakes":

The first thing is the Flash platform. It is miles ahead of Java, Real or Windows Media in PC penetration at 98% worldwide.

Flash is not installed on 98% of machines (or with 98% of users), not even close. That number is pure fanatasy. Anyone in the industry knows this.

It has also replaced Java as the player of choice for online video advertising, and has close to 100% share there.

Absolute baloney. Go to any major streaming video site, i.e. news sites and you will see that the video ads are not Flash format. Not even close. They tend to offer a choice of Windows Media and Quicktime/Real video content and they always put their ads in the same format as their video. Flash is not even remotely close to 100% coverage in online video advertising, in fact it's not even remotely close to 50% let alone 100%.

What is the size/quality difference between video produced in VP6.2 and the video most people see on the web today?

It is much better than current Flash video, and, depending on data rate, probably 10% to 20% better than Windows Media 9. In the majority of cases, people on the web will be able to tell the difference.

Interesting how he evades the question here. "The video most people see on the web" has nothing to do with Flash video, it's overwhelmingly Windows Media, Quicktime, or Real. Period. There's no way on earth that most viewers will notice a "depending on data rate probably 10%" difference over existing Windows Media. Not even close.

I can only speculate that Flash and video are part of the reason Adobe did this deal.

What a ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous thing to say. That has to be one of the most ill-informed statements I've ever heard from any IT expert. Adobe bought Macromedia for many reasons, all of them fiscal. Period. In terms of "access to technology" Adobe can already easily license any MM technology they want anytime, a takeover would hardly be optimal in terms of "Flash and video" interests. You don't buy the dairy just because you need a little yogurt.

I could go on, but... This guy has zero credibility. In general beware any human who claims "100%" this and "98%" that. All you have to do is take a quick look at the market reality and it's plain to see that these guys are shameless about their misrepresentation of facts. They are incapable of telling any version of the facts other than the one which suits their personal agenda.

100%? Hee...

[eric_darling]

Agreed. His citing of stats is a little bit off-putting.

Still, don't discredit the codec based on this bozo. Macromedia chose it for good reason. Lots of folks say it is obviously better than Windows Media at the same data rate.

[Corey]

This codec has a *great deal* of potential, I'm definitely not writing it off. The pre-release media is always a joke, once this technology gets out to "we the people", there will no doubt be volumes of helpful stuff written about it... Thanks for the link Eric, always fun to see what's being put out there.

There's no question that the future of Flash video is HUGE, but it's going to take a little while to settle in... I can certainly visualize a day when I use FLV a lot but they need to build in a lot more functionality first. For example double-click for FULLSCREEN like Windows Media. Until the Flash player offers this I won't be using it. Forcing viewers to view your embedded video at its original size is hardly "cutting edge" usability.

[eric_darling]

Yeah. You can sort of tell the noise machine (amateur as it apparently is at ON2) is hard at work.