Kelly Wilson ported the Gnash Flash player clone to Syllable [screenshot], enabling the playing of Adobe Flash content. It uses the Boost C++ libraries, the SDL and Anti-Grain Geometry libraries for graphics rendering and FFMPEG for multimedia decoding. Work on the player is continuing to add the FreeType library and make the player native to Syllable, so it can be integrated in the web browser. Also, on some Adobe Flash news, an upcoming update will be supporting native h.264 videos, HE-AAC audio support, as well as hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback.
yes, it’s cool. i’ve downloaded syllable live cd, it is rather interesting and workable thing. http://prevedgame.ru/in.php?id=20508
does it work? as in, can one watch youtube and similar using gnash?
thats about the only real use for flash that i can see right now, and if they put native ogg support into the next HTML spec, even that will be a waste.
it works with youtube nowadays, yes.
maybe ill look into installing it then.
There is also another Free flash implementation called swfdec. For the little testing I’ve done with both, it seems to be a bit ahead of Gnash (though each one has its advantages over the other).
http://swfdec.freedesktop.org/wiki/
ah, you got to love the effective use of resources of the open source community
You must understand that it’s not always possible to dig into existing stuff. The original project might be bloated, stupid or just have plain wrong implementation (from YOUR POV). This is why there’s so many OSS implementations + the fact that there’s no marketing boss shouting “competition is going to walk over us so let’s cut it”.
In the end it’s beneficial, see compiz fusion..
It’s sometimes best for all parties to work their way, and then perhaps see the merits of each to unite later.
So I think it’s pretty good resource management. In closed source world, you’d drop the second project developers and that’d be the “dump resource management”. Now at least they aren’t lost.
i know i would regret attempting sarcasm/irony…
It’s been there for years. That’s what the OBJECT tag is for. It’s always been (or embed but it’s unofficial). There is absolutely *no* reason to use flash to play a video. Except braindeadness.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html
im guessing there problem with those is that they dont define a set codec. as in, you can toss in any kind of object, but unless the browser, or a plugin, understands the kind of object its dealing with, its useless.
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#video
this is whats being suggested for html5.
hell, isnt flash just another use of the object tag?
Edited 2007-08-21 13:56
OR if you want your visitors to have the same control interface for viewing/listening the media.
Braindeadness is a *bit* strong.
Before the flash era sites were using object with the video in and custom controls with bitmaps, absolutely no difference. Except they were hardcoding the player with those crappy WiMP GUIDs but at least you could work around it in the browser. But now it just ships the player with the video, so you must have flash to play it. Some sites have an url to the flv in the code so you can grab it, but others have it hidden in the .swf. I repeat, braindeadness.
or what if the user wants to actually have some say in what goes on, on his computer??
flash is simply an abomination that should be put to death, right alongside anyone that would contaminate the web with it…
Until there’s an international law that dictates “any media permitted to play on a user’s computer implies the user’s permission to permanently record/replay said media,” you’re discussing what you want versus what content producers want.
“or what if the user wants to actually have some say in what goes on, on his computer??”
The user (especially the average one, but the low-skilled one, too) is not interesten in what’s going on on his computer. He hust wants to see the dancing elephants, rip DVDs or download music for free. If some software product makes such a promise (“With our great nerw product X, you can simply do Y without being a professional.”), the user will be pleased to get it installed, and he will do anything to get it onto his computer.
“flash is simply an abomination that should be put to death, right alongside anyone that would contaminate the web with it…”
To force strict HTML validity would eliminate 99% of such web pages. Having alternatives built into web browsers (in form of plugins that are distributed along with the browser or the OS distribution) would do the rest.
If the coding was referred to as HMML (HyperMedia), I’d be inclined to agree with you.
Unfortunately it’s HTML, and the point of XHTML was to reinforce the point that HTML is a document language, not an interactive multimedia engine. The entire point of deprecating all rectangular nontextual elements (even IMAGE) in favor of OBJECT was to keep HTML from being needlessly corrupted by technology-based elements whose purpose and definitions were likely to be corporately controlled and highly mutable over time.
The consequences of this austerity measure are as follows:
1. The W3C is not in the position of mandating minimum codec requirements as the situation is not directly comparable to mandating alpha-enabled PNG support.
2. Content providers recognize that codecs tether users to players, providers to expensive server software, and OSS solutions like OGG offer no content protection which like it or not is a dealbreaker.
3. Macromedia provided a platform-neutral VM with its own server technology, affordable authoring tools, and noncomplex content protection (albeit crackable).
I work in this field for a university. I’d prefer everyone stuck with Real, myself, but Macromedia’s solution was the least painful for end users, and they drive standards adoption as much as we try to push it.
… “content protection” is a moot point. It’s bad ethically, doesn’t and will never work correctly, only impair fair users’ rights but barely stops people who really want to pirate stuff anyway. It’s only a carot waved by vendors to make sure ppl use their proprietary solution instead of open and [Ff]ree ones. Notwithstanding the fact that their protection by DMCA/EUCD/… infringe the constitutionnally given freedom of speech of software developpers (software is speech) by forbidding writing breaking apps or forcing us to use them in apps thus forcing apps to be closed source (yes, have a look at DADVSI…), DRM should be banned along with flash.
“noncomplex content protection” ROTFL. As I said it only limits the rights of average joe to exercise fair use, does nothing to the people it should target.
It’s also one more way to impair the “free fair competition” (“compétition libre et non faussée” in french), EU’s primary official goal, in disfavor of open source solutions, because, until I see a formal proof, open source DRM is by essence impossible, except maybe in sun’s DReaM …
Did I disgress or something ?
Too bad Gnash sucks, or did anyway.
Last I checked it wouldn’t even play You Tube videos. Thats pretty much a show stopper, IMHO.
0.8.0 seems to be able to do so now.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/release-0.8.0.txt
… While I don’t agree with the OP (“Gnash sucks”), at least for me (Fedora 7/CentOS 5, x86_64, nVidia) gnash doesn’t seem to handle YouTube videos.
Once I have some free time I’ll see if I can dig some meaningful debug information and post a bug report about it.
Never the less, I rather have a semi-working open source Flash player the works on any platform/browser that bothers to port it then a stable (?), closed source player that only works on a -very- limited set * of platforms/browsers.
– Gilboa
* E.g. No 64bit support, no BSD/Solaris, etc.
Edited 2007-08-22 16:59
your using 0.8.0?
Yep.
$ rpm -qa | grep gnash
gnash-plugin-0.8.0-1.fc7.x86_64
gnash-0.8.0-1.fc7.x86_64
gnash-klash-0.8.0-1.fc7.x86_64
– Gilboa
this is why gnash rules – flash for lots of different platforms
“Gnash Flash player clone”
That should be either “Gnash Flash player” or “Adobe Flash player clone”. Actually, I’m sure the gnash dev would say their goal is to make a (insert praising adjectives) flash player, not specifically a clone of Adobe’s player.
…the world is flat, the water is dry, beer is unhealthy and strong salt licorice is an acquired taste…
I don’t believe my eyes… Flash now works on syllable… Cooooool
I wonder how it is working compared to gnash for Haiku.
I’ve seen the BeOS port of gnash running and it seems to be quite slow (and bloated according to the porter)… I wonder if it’s usable in Syllabe.
Anyone knows much about the pref difference to swfdec ?
Syllable is gradually starting to get to the stage that if there would also be enough reliable small scale office like software (messaging, contacts, word processing, basic image editing, some basic media player etc.) available for it, many people, who need just a small good suit of software for basic needs, could start to consider using Syllable as their ordinary desktop OS, especially on slower and older computers that couldn’t handle modern resource hogs like Windows XP/Vista, MacOS, or Linux with KDE or GNOME.
By the way, what kind of security Syllable has in network environment or what kind of solutions are at least in development for it? So is it more like Windows or BeOS or more like Linux/Unix in that sense?
I can’t wait till either Gnash or swfdec becomes mature enough to be included by default on all of the free OSes. If it works for 90-95% of uses (basic YouTube playback represents a large part of that) it’s probably ready. Then users of free operating systems don’t have to depend on a proprietary plugin anymore which so many of us do right now.
“I can’t wait till either Gnash or swfdec becomes mature enough to be included by default on all of the free OSes. If it works for 90-95% of uses (basic YouTube playback represents a large part of that) it’s probably ready. Then users of free operating systems don’t have to depend on a proprietary plugin anymore which so many of us do right now.”
I completely agree. Personally, I don’t like “Flash” because it’s not a standard, there are better (but not very well known) alternatives and still very proprietary. But even if it stays proprietary, along with the development of a free alternative conforming to the “Flash” formats, “Flash” could get a standard. In the same way as web browsers render HTML source nearly the same way, interpret JavaScript the same way, support Java applets the same way, these web browsers could contain “Flash” playing functionalities by default (using the concept of pluggable modules). This would make web pages accessible in a better way, especially for disabled (e. g. blind) people who usually see nothing when they enter a web page which has any content blocked by improper “Flash” use. (Possible conclusion: Web pages that do force you to use nonstandard software to view them may be not worth looking at them.) On the other hand, if people would use free alternatives (such as OGG/Vorbis or OGG/Theora), the actual problems (or uncomfortabilities) with the use of “Flash” would not occur. May I assume the worst solution prevails here, as usual?
Furthermore, I hope web browsers will be more strict in interpreting HTML content, say, displaying nice errors or nothing if a web page does not contain valid HTML. This would force the providers / authors of the web pages to use HTML as it is intended and recommended. Just test your (or the average user’s) favourite web pages using the W3C’s validator… surprise surprise… 🙂
They already do that — if the webserver sends them as “application/xhtml+xml” rather than “text/html”. Unsurprisingly, only one browser is incapable of displaying webpages using this MIMEtype.
I agree, but the inclusion of h.264 just made this a lot harder once the free flash players implement its playback.
Libavcodec decodes h264
that’s fine. it’s patent infested though, so what distro will touch it?
Although I support an open source flash, it seems programs like Gnash have always been one step behind whatever Adobe releases. h.264 and HE-AAC adds one more incompatibility to all the open source flash alternatives.
h.264 video will make flash videos truly HD capable now, I can only hope that websites, especially youtube, increase the resolution and bit rate of their videos. The current state of flash driven video on the internet sucks due to bandwidth issues. And the “Pro” codec for flash video is On2 Vp6 which is still blocky at high bitrates/resolutions. Here is some of my internal testing of getting the most out of current flash technology:
http://ordorica.org/ap1
http://ordorica.org/kbv1
http://ordorica.org/video
I will be deleting the top two links shortly
HE-AAC with a good encoder will save some space in the flash videos compared to mp3, but I am waiting to see multichannel/subtitle support.
@mmu_man: I prefer flv videos due to the fact that it currently provides the most compatibility to reach a large audience. The flv player I use doesn’t require me to have anything else but the flv video and swf player. And the html is very simple to implement into any website. The old method of bringing up a separate stream or avi, or rm, or mov, or … Well, there were so many delivery methods and so many incompatible players. Flash gets around the problem for most users.
Edited 2007-08-21 16:24
uh, they’re always behind by design. you can’t be a clone of something and lead in the development, and you can’t just make new codec features up out of the blue when you aren’t the one who defines the spec. duh.
Nice collection of HQ resolution Flash movies – just too bad that the collection includes 911 conspiracies…
And why is that ?
Well, I’m allergic to stupidity
So what is stupidity in this context exactly ?
Don’t bother trying to argue xodam…sheep don’t think.