Flash Lite?

PermaBanned · 6 Mar 2010 at 11:49

I was just wondering if there's any possibility of using Adobe's Flash Lite, which is designed for mobile devices, on a standard PC. As you well know, Flash is notorious for being resource intensive and not good for older computers, but a flavour specifically designed for use on ultra low spec (0.5W 533MHz Qualcomms and the like) processors with little (256MB?) RAM available could solve these problems. Could be lighting fast and a good way of rejuvenating age old PII systems. What do you think?

mrk · 6 Mar 2010 at 14:11

Completely different architectures.

A PII system won't handle Flash HQ and beyond either way anyway unless coupled with a GPU capable of video acceleration which would mean AGP but I don't know of such a card supported today by Flash video acceleration.

Flash isn't really a hog at all either!

MagicBoy · 6 Mar 2010 at 14:18

Khaaan! said:
Flash isn't really a hog at all either!

Utter rot.

Playing video in flash uses multiple times more CPU than when played natively. It's wasteful, badly programmed rubbish. Unfortunately it's a "standard".

mrk · 6 Mar 2010 at 14:42

Well you're playing high quality video using a web standard initially designed for interactive content - of course you're going to get CPU usage, HQ/HD video requires x amount of processing power to decode, if you don't have the CPU power you offload it to the GPU. That doesn't make Flash a "hog" so you can take that utter rot comment back.

The sole reason Adobe have released Flash 10.1 is to take off all CPU strain when playing HD videos so the GFX card can decode the stream instead.

If you use your brain you'll also realise that ANY 1080p HD video uses high amounts of CPU %, play a H.264 video using a mediaplayer that doesn't support DXVA or GPU acceleration and you'll see CPU usage jump up. The lower spec the PC the higher the CPU usage will be. Does that make that media player a hog now just because the video causes it to use all the CPU?

No.

You'll also find it's not Flash that does the "hogging" but the h.264 video contained within.

MagicBoy · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:02

Khaaan! said:
Well you're playing high quality video using a web standard initially designed for interactive content - of course you're going to get CPU usage, HQ/HD video requires x amount of processing power to decode, if you don't have the CPU power you offload it to the GPU. That doesn't make Flash a "hog" so you can take that utter rot comment back.

I shall not. I'm very much entitled to my own reasoned opinion.

The sole reason Adobe have released Flash 10.1 is to take off all CPU strain when playing HD videos so the GFX card can decode the stream instead.

If you use your brain you'll also realise that ANY 1080p HD video uses high amounts of CPU %, play a H.264 video using a mediaplayer that doesn't support DXVA or GPU acceleration and you'll see CPU usage jump up. The lower spec the PC the higher the CPU usage will be. Does that make that media player a hog now just because the video causes it to use all the CPU?

No.

You'll also find it's not Flash that does the "hogging" but the h.264 video contained within.

I can play video (say a podcast) from the same source file through Flash (eg Youtube) or a well written software decoded media player, and the latter doesn't use nearly as much CPU.

What about the non-Windows users? DXVA isn't much use on a mobile device or a Mac/*nix machine.

mrk · 6 Mar 2010 at 15:06

Mobile devices using Flash at present use Flash 10.1 which is hardware accelerated and more efficient. Flash isn't any "lighter" than needs be and the onboard video accelerator on the mobile device is doing the bulk of the decoding.

Only a handful of devices have Flash capabilities at present, those with snapdragon chips for example among some others, you also need to remember mobile devices only need to play at a maximum resolution of 800x480 and that's only on the highest end phones like the Nexus one or Moto Droid, everything else is stuck at around 320x480. An iPhone would have had it too if apple had allowed it.

What Podcast uses masses of CPU for you, got a link? I highly doubt a simple podcast will do that unless it's at least 720p and even then you'd need a really low spec PC or an older netbook (N270 Atom, no dedicated GPU) to suffer the ill effects.

I shall not. I'm very much entitled to my own reasoned opinion.

Not when that opinion is wrong.