Browser script for HW accelerated flash web-videos

[Stears555]

Hello!

Most flash-based web-video hosting services have not automatically supported HW (videocard) accelerated playback, despite the flasplayer can handle the HW acceleration.

The biggest major web video hosting services (like youtube vimeo) have HW acceleration support, however other web-video sharing sites are not supported.....

YousableTubeFix for Greasemonkey created script for the perfect handle of Youtube, but it supports only Youtube.
Are there any web-browser script which allow the general HW video acceleration in all flash-based web-video sites ?

Thank you!

[Stears555]

Are you here?

[Cornucopia]

I don't think you are understanding what "hardware accelleration support" is referring to.

This is something that is incorporated at the end-user's application/plugin/player and OS level. What the host/server provides is the script (which may include hints to the playback smoothness, as well as expected/directed players to use) and the media file itself. The media file may be easy to decode (mpg1, h.263) through to hard to decode (h.264, vc1, webm), and if hard, may make it necessary for the clients' player(s) to support hardware accelleration.

For example, the "YousableTubeFix" that you referred to is a client-side script addon that modifies the client's browser to add a few more features (and remove a few "features" that consumer may want to avoid, like ads), but it does NOTHING to the video itself (other than allow the player/plugin to make use of certain inherent embedded features that may normally be "locked out") and it doesn't interact with the server (excepting times where the server allows for choice from multiple stream types/rates, and the plugin/script enables user control).

So, if you want "hardware accelleration" of decoding, you should look into the choices of players: WMP, Flash PLayer, VLC, mplayer, mpchc, kmplayer, etc.
Then, when you've found which player/plugin helps accellerate the decoding of the codec you expect to be using/watching, then you can look for a script that interfaces (and "enables expanded featuresets") with that player/plugin.

To reiterate: it's not the server/service, it's the client/player.

Scott

[Stears555]

I don't think you are understanding what "hardware accelleration support" is referring to.

This is something that is incorporated at the end-user's application/plugin/player and OS level. What the host/server provides is the script (which may include hints to the playback smoothness, as well as expected/directed players to use) and the media file itself. The media file may be easy to decode (mpg1, h.263) through to hard to decode (h.264, vc1, webm), and if hard, may make it necessary for the clients' player(s) to support hardware accelleration.

For example, the "YousableTubeFix" that you referred to is a client-side script addon that modifies the client's browser to add a few more features (and remove a few "features" that consumer may want to avoid, like ads), but it does NOTHING to the video itself (other than allow the player/plugin to make use of certain inherent embedded features that may normally be "locked out") and it doesn't interact with the server (excepting times where the server allows for choice from multiple stream types/rates, and the plugin/script enables user control).

So, if you want "hardware accelleration" of decoding, you should look into the choices of players: WMP, Flash PLayer, VLC, mplayer, mpchc, kmplayer, etc.
Then, when you've found which player/plugin helps accellerate the decoding of the codec you expect to be using/watching, then you can look for a script that interfaces (and "enables expanded featuresets") with that player/plugin.

To reiterate: it's not the server/service, it's the client/player.

Scott

Hello!

Sorry, but you are wrong:

I use HW accelerated (Both Nvidia and ATI cards) h.264 video-players and/or codecs from the very beginnings.
Flash player (after version 10.1) is supported by HW flash (h.264) web-video acceleration. All h.264 flash videos were HW accelerated by flash-players until late 2011.

[Cornucopia]

You said it yourself: PLAYERS. (not servers).

The codec is not "hardware accellerated". Advanced codecs such as h.264 may make use of certain quality-efficient algorithms which require hardware accelleration to play smoothly, and the decoder program that the player makes use of may take advantage of HWaccell, but not the media itself and not the server.

Scott

[poisondeathray]

10.2 introduced Stage Video API, which allows HW acceleration if the player has it enabled. This is a lot better than 10.1 acceleration, about anywhere from 1-30x faster depending on the setup

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/stage_video.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/stagevideo.html

BUT - It has to be enabled and configured on the server side as well. If it isn't then you get no Stage Video benefit. That's probably why there is no end user script to enable it on all websites (if the server doesn' t have it enabled, there is nothing you can do as a client)

e.g flow player script for configuring it on your own site
http://flowplayer.org/demos/configuration/accelerated.html

I don't know if it falls back to 10.1 style acceleration if Stage Video is disabled; or maybe you can downgrade to 10.1

[Stears555]

You said it yourself: PLAYERS. (not servers).

The codec is not "hardware accellerated". Advanced codecs such as h.264 may make use of certain quality-efficient algorithms which require hardware accelleration to play smoothly, and the decoder program that the player makes use of may take advantage of HWaccell, but not the media itself and not the server.

Scott

Read about COREAVC codec: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreavc OR DXVA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DXVA or CUDA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA


Or FFDSHOW, or LAV codec.




"h.264 may make use of certain quality-efficient algorithms"

The videos are HW accelerated by videocards with special codec. The players haven't HW acceleration functions, only the codec has which is used by the player. (Two types: internal and external codec)

[Cornucopia]

@pdr,
Yeah, that's what one of the things I was talking about when I said

What the host/server provides is the script (which may include hints to the playback smoothness, as well as expected/directed players to use)

.

@Stears555,

I've read about ALL those things.

E.g.:
CoreAVC is a specific encoder/decoder implementation of AVC/h.264. If an encoding system on the server side has made use of that particular implementation of AVC, and that implementation uses specific "quality-efficient algorithms" which require HW accell, then that means that the CLIENT/PLAYER (and it's associated decoder) must rely on that same implementation in order to take advantage of HWaccell. And it is USELESS to users/clients/players/apps where CoreAVC & the hardware to take advantage of it (or to be taken advantage of) is not installed.

Again, while a server script could Poll for the existence of the client's decoder+HW, and switch to a stream that has those extra Q features, but otherwise, the brunt of the work is on the client side.

BTW, ffdshow and LAV could only be called "codecs" using the loosest, sloppiest sense of the term. They are muxer/splitter APIs which link to banks of codecs that they sponsor.

Scott

[Stears555]

No, the solution of HW accelerated video playback is the ADOBE STAGE VIDEO (advanced flash player technology which is used by Youtube.com for flash-video playback.

Read about here:




ABOUT STAGE-VIDEO
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/stagevideo.html

[Stears555]

How can I create a stage-video supported flash web-video?