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FLASH - SAVIOUR OF THE UNIVERSE?

Brian Grainger

brianATgrainger1.freeserve.co.uk

What does Flash mean to you? There seems to be a wide variation between what various computer users think it is. This article discusses the present state of Flash and where it might be going.

To many people Flash is a video format in which YouTube videos are encoded. To these people Flash is like a video codec, the only difference being that it has various versions. I think we are up to version 10.1 at the moment. You say you have a problem displaying Flash video on your computer and these people will say that they have tried it and had no problem, even with the same version of Flash. The trouble is that Flash is NOT like a video codec.

Flash is more like a container for video files. The actual codec used to encode the video file can vary. Two videos can both be using Flash 9 but one that has been on YouTube for a long time can be encoded with something that will play on an old computer whereas a more recent video will be encoded with H264, which doesn't play.

However, Flash is not even a container for videos. As you are probably aware a lot of adverts on web pages use Flash video and some of these adverts are interactive. A recent Hewlett Packard touch screen advert would suddenly display a moving hand on the screen when the mouse was moved over the advert window. Clearly, this was not simply a video being displayed. What was displayed depended on where the mouse was positioned. In an extreme case, a whole web page or web site could be developed with Flash.

Ultimately, therefore, Flash is a programming tool for developing visual applications.

Flash was originally developed by a company called Macromedia and, if you look, you still see early versions of the flash decoder stored in a Macromedia folder on your computer. Some time ago Macromedia was bought by Adobe, who at that time were more known for development of the pdf document format. Most recent Flash decoders are stored in a folder labeled Adobe on your computer. Adobe have a reputation for developing bloatware and certainly as time has gone on the stability of Flash has become an issue.

As regard the use of Flash on web pages there are a lot of people, myself included, who find it irritating, if not downright impossible, to display, due to the machine power required to render the Flash portions. Those who don't like the intrusion of Flash adverts will run an add-on to disable Flash.

Very recently, there have been two developments both affecting Flash and its usage. First has been the design decision by Apple that the iPad would not support Flash. Second has been Google's take up of the VP8 video codec.

Apple have stated that Flash is the most likely reason for its hardware to hang up and this the reason behind its decision to not support Flash. While there is some truth in this I think there is also a 'not invented here' problem. Apple have taken steps, with its operating system for the iPad, to make sure third parties cannot develop applications that will support Flash. Apple are not only demanding that you use their hardware but also demanding that you do not use software they dislike. Hmm!

Apple have stated that the future lies with HTML5 and the use of the video codec H264.

I think most people that might read these pages know that web pages are created in a language called HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). We are currently at version 4 and have been for a long time. HTML uses tags to define objects, such as <img> for pictures and <table> for tables. As the web took off and applications were written to be web based it soon became clear that HTML could not provide tags to cover all the possibilities. The solution to this problem was supposed to be XML, (Extensible Markup Language). With XML you could extend standard HTML by being able to define your own tags. It is not quite as simple as that because in order to be useful we should all agree to define the extra tags the same way. XML is behind the two competing office document formats, ODF from the open source community and OOXML from Microsoft, but they are implemented in different ways so the corresponding documents are not directly interchangeable.

When HTML was first developed it was for text. The need to include pictures was realised and HTML catered for them with the <img> tag. That the web would host video was a long way down the line. The initial bandwidth of the web precluded video so a special tag for video was not even considered. Skip forward to the present and it is obviously a glaring omission. Flash was developed to allow video embedded within a web page.

The next update of HTML, HTML5, is supposed to address this point. A lot of people, especially Apple, mention HTML5 as if video is the only reason for it. This is not true. However, in order that we can all use the new HTML5 video attribute we need to agree on a common video format that all browsers will support. Herein lies the problem. The big players Microsoft and Apple want to keep things as proprietary as possible. Remember in the early days Apple developed Quicktime (mov) and Microsoft Windows Media Video (wmv) format, which is why we now have to have multiple media players or codecs to view web video. YouTube, which is owned by Google, uses Flash with an underlying H264 codec at the moment.

HTML5 is currently a draft specification and intially defined the support for Ogg Theora video format. Theora is actually the video codec and Ogg is the container. For good measure the audio component is Vorbis, another open codec. In a later draft this was removed from the spec because the major players could not agree.

Presently no video format is defined in the HTML5 draft, only that it should be compatible with the open source model, not require a licence fee, be of sufficient quality and have no risk from patents. The present posturing by Apple and Google is their respective attempts to solve this problem. Microsoft seem to be leaning on the Apple side of the fence although they have said they will support Google's proposals if enough people use it.

So, it is clear that Apple are looking for H264 to be the standard - but not wrapped up in Flash. The problem with it is that it is covered by Patents and licence fees may well become payable to the MPEG LA group. Curiously, no fees are levied for web use at the moment. MPEG LA have allowed royalty free use until 2015. Those against the use of H264 say what happens after that? Once everybody is using the codec do MPEG LA levy a fee to recover their losses up to 2015? It is interesting that Microsoft and Apple are members of the MPEG LA group so they have vested interests in promoting H264.

So far I have not said what position Google has taken. Despite the use of H264 on YouTube at the moment, Google are promoting a very different solution.

The story starts with a company called On2 that in the 1990s developed a video codec for use in video games. In 1999 On2 bought into a UK company to produce the V3 codec. This has formed the basic of all work since at On2 and was also released, along with the patents, into the open source community, to form the basis of the Theora codec. In 2004 VP6 was selected as the basic for the Flash8 codec, when Flash was part of Macromedia. In 2005 Skype licenced the codec for use in Skype 2.

In early 2010 Google took over On2 and have been working on the V8 codec. It has since announced the WebM project that is intended to be a royalty free, open source release of VP8 with Vorbis audio in a Matroska container.

After an initial query as to whether the licence for VP8 was truly open source it has now been agreed that it is. It would seem that VP8 sits between Theora (at the lower end) and H264 (at the upper end) in quality.

What is clear is that Google are going all out to implement WebM. In June 2010 it was announced that large videos on YouTube were being delivered via WebM. The ultimate intention of Google seems to be to replace Flash on YouTube with WebM. If this happens what is to stop WebM from becoming ubiquitous?

At the moment Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome browsers support WebM. It remains to be seen if and when Internet Explore and Apple Safari decide to support it but can they afford not to if it is the only way to view YouTube videos?

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