h.264 tends to be more cpu intensive than older flash video codecs. Playing h.264 via a flash wrapper in a browser can use a lot more cpu than playing it via native operating system video player/browser plugin. But the latest beta of flash player features significantly lower cpu use when playing video, and various computers & operating systems are tending to shift h.264 playback to the gpu rather than cpu, and flash is trying to do this also.
As for the broader question of video compression, h.264 is quite firmly entrenched now, and for most people it will continue to be the best option as they are not affected by licensing issues. If you sell your videos and they are less than 12 minutes long or you have less than 100,000 users, its not an issue. If you give awa your videos then its not an issue, although the license does change at the end of 2010, it probably still wont affect many people unless they have really big audiences, its the usual story of them only targeting people with revenue who could reasonably afford to pay. If you make hardware or software that does encoding, or if you are offering a video hosting site on the internet, it could be an issue. And as even Microsoft have had to come to the h.264 party, I dont think there is going to be a shift away from h.264 any time soon. Cheers Steve Elbows --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com, Joly MacFie <j...@...> wrote: > > Beg pardon, Forest - are you suggesting that flash is more > cpu-intensive than baseline h.264? > > Is that so? > > joly > > On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Mars Forest <for...@...> wrote: > > > While there has been much rampant speculation, and Apple has > > said/implied different things at different times, I'm inclined to > > believe them when they indicate the client-side cpu requirements, which > > is one of the things that makes flash so appealing, were a decisive factor. > > > > > > -- > --------------------------------------------------------------- > Joly MacFie 917 442 8665 Skype:punkcast > WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com > http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com > --------------------------------------------------------------- >
