Manifest Tech Blog

Adobe announced today that its Flash Player 9 is being updated to add support for the H.264 video standard and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio, plus full screen video playback with hardware acceleration, and multi-core enhanced vector rendering.

The public beta version of the Adobe Flash Player 9 update, code-named "Moviestar," is available immediately as a free download from Adobe Labs. The final release is expected to be available via update in the fall.

This was an obvious need for Flash, as it has expanded from Web-based video to mobile phones and other portable devices. Supporting H.264 directly in Flash now allows the same video content to be played from desktop computers to mobile devices across the Internet.

As suggested on Adobe developer Tinic Uro's blog, this update was not just obvious, it was so much in demand by customers that Adobe could not hold it for the next revision in its typical development cycle.

See Uro's blog for more technical details. His bottom line: You should now be able to play H.264 files directly in Flash (i.e., from iTunes and Mobile phones, including .mp4, .m4v, .m4a, .mov and .3gp). Note that this is only the updated H.264 version of MPEG-4 (also known as Advanced Video Codec, AVC); the earlier MPEG-4 Part 2 is not supported.

See my previous article for more details on Flash formats and software: Flash Video: Downloading from YouTube and Converting Video Files

If you like playing with color, try out the Adobe kuler site to inspire creative inspiration about color -- especially finding, creating and sharing color harmonies

    kuler - Highest Rated color themes

Create harmonious color themes based on predefined color formulas, or by mixing your own color themes using an interactive color wheel in a variety of color spaces. View popular, top rated, and newest themes, or seach the on-line collection. Register free for an Adobe ID to tag, comment, and share themes.

    kuler - Create - Compound colors

Web developers can directly copy/paste hex values. And users of the Creative Suite 3 and 2 family of software can download kuler color themes as an Adobe Swatch Exchange file (.ASE).

kuler is implemented as a web-hosted application from Adobe Labs, built using Adobe Flash and ActionScript 3.0. Subscribe to RSS feeds of the popular, highest rated and newest color themes, or use an Apple Dashboard widget to subscribe to these feeds.

In addition, Adobe has opened the kuler APIs though its Adobe Labs site, so you can develop an application or website colored by kuler. Or try the cross-platform kuler desktop, using the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).

Flash animations make the Web come alive -- from fun little clips, to interactive tutorials, to full-up games, and now video as well.

Yet multimedia development with Flash -- now up to Adobe Flash CS3 Professional -- can be a new experience, whether you are approaching it from a background in graphics art (i.e., Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator) or from digital media (i.e., Adobe Premiere Pro and Encore DVD).

First, the terminology is similar, but different -- with timelines and layers and frames, but also scenes and stages. And there's the mix of develop styles -- visual drag and drop and/or full-up programming with ActionScript.

As a result, teaching Flash so it makes sense to a new user requires a delicate touch -- you need to explain this larger context and nomenclature before you can dive in to the gory details.

And Flash CS3: The Missing Manual by E. A. Vander Veer and Chris Grover, veteran Missing Manual authors, does the job well, living up to the well-deserved reputation of this David Pogue series.

The key is in how the book gets you started. The Introduction provides a nice overview of what Flash can be used for, and the basics of making animations. Part 1 starts with a tour of the Flash application, and then dives in to a simple example of creating drawings and making simple animations of them. Without much fuss, you're working with layers and even tweening, so that this overwhelmingly complicated tool has somehow been demystified (a different book series) and now seems actually possible to work with.

Part 2 continues on into advanced drawing and animation, with effects and included graphics, sound, and video. And Part 3 then dives in to adding interactivity, with some ActionScript, text input, and design with components. (There's not a lot more about video and programming in this book, but there's certainly enough to get you started.)

Part 4 then details how to publish and export your animations, but also with careful attention to testing and debugging strategies to make sure things really do work the way you expect them to.

The Appendixes have tips on installing Flash and getting help and more information, and a menu-by-menu reference to the software.

Like other Missing Manual books, there's no CD-ROM with the book, which reduces the cover price. Instead, the sample files used in the book are posted online for downloading.

Find Flash CS3: The Missing Manual book on Amazon.com
Find Adobe Flash CS3 Professional software on Amazon

Contents and more on Adobe Flash CS3 Professional below ...

Flash video is sweeping the Web -- and you can be using it too. If you're new to Flash, you can encode your videos to Flash video to post on the Web, and embed then in your Web pages using simple video players as provided, for example, by Adobe Dreamweaver. Or if you're already a developer with Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, you can integrate videos into your Flash animations.

Rob Reinhardt, lead author of the Flash Bible series, shows you how in Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Video Studio Techniques, from Adobe Press.

(You can also follow his blog and support forums at FlashSupport.com.)

To get you started, the entire Part 1 of the book is dedicated to Working Foundations -- pre-production and shooting tips, capturing and processing video in Adobe After Effects, compression formats and parameters, and Web delivery options and formats. Almost every page also includes Tips and Notes with additional information and references.

Part 2 then digs into Production Essentials, using Flash video with Dreamweaver, using the Flash Pro FLVPlayback components, encoding with Sorenson Squeeze, and then building your own Flash player. There's also a chapter on planning your bitrate budget, with an associated Excel spreadsheet (and an interactive Flash version now posted to the blog).

By this point, the book is deep in ActionScript code allowing you to customize your own animations. The book includes a DVD-ROM with almost 9 GB of Flash projects, source files, and video clips. The book also cleverly uses public domain video clips from the Prelinger archives -- www.archive.org/details/prelinger -- all public domain and royalty-free for you to experiment with.

Finally, Part 3 adds further Creative Explorations, including building a video index and playlist, creating an interactive talking head overlay, and tips for optimizing the video playback.

The Appendices cover installing the Adobe software and third-party tools and utilities, encoding options, troubleshooting tips, and a project checklist for Flash video projects.

Find Adobe Flash CS3 Professional Video Studio Techniques book on Amazon.com
Find Adobe Flash CS3 Professional software on Amazon

Contents below ...

Are you sharing your videos online? Each day, on YouTube alone, visitors view hundreds of millions of videos and upload hundreds of thousands of videos.

See my article -- Sharing Videos on YouTube -- for details on how to upload to YouTube, embed clips in your own website, and then go further to customize your videos and how they are presented.

It's hard to imagine in this world of online video, but YouTube was founded only three years ago in February 2005. The power of this idea of user-generated content (UGC) then was validated when Google purchased YouTube in November 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock.

If you'd like to share your videos with the world -- or even with friends and family -- YouTube makes it amazingly easy to upload your clips for visitors to view, and for free.

The latest versions of consumer video editing tools also have built-in Web uploading. For example, CyberLink PowerDirector 6 uploads to YouTube and Pinnacle Studio 11 publishes directly to Yahoo! Video.

Once you've uploaded your clips, you can send visitors to YouTube to play them, or embed them within pages on your own website or blog. But there's more you can do with YouTube, including customizing the look of the player, and restricting clips for private viewing by a specific list of contacts.

While these video sites are a great way to get started, you do give up ownership of your clip and control over how it is presented (for example, YouTube uses an older version of Adobe Flash video compression, so the video quality is not as good as it could be).

Instead, you can prepare and host your clips under your control -- compress them for better quality, and design your own web pages with a Flash video player using tools like Adobe Dreamweaver CS3.

The YouTube / Google Help Center has good explanations of setting up and using YouTube.

See full article for more details -- Sharing Videos on YouTube.

    Find Adobe Flash CS3 Professional on Amazon.com

In response to user feedback, Adobe has revised the Terms of Use for the Photoshop Express beta site (www.photoshop.com/express) -- its free Web-based photo editing and sharing application (see previous post).

The terms of use for the Adobe sites basically grant away all rights to your personal content once it is uploaded to the Adobe site.

The updated terms of use specifically for Photoshop Express beta are effective on April 10, and now focus on granting Adobe only the limited rights required to operate the site, as well as clarifying the rights granted to other users when you choose to publicly share your content.

Bottom line: Adobe doesn’t claim ownership of your content and won’t sell your images.

Again, be sure to check the terms for any site where you upload your personal work -- You may be surprised to find you've essentially lost control of your work, while the site can profit from it in any way.

See my full article on the Photoshop Elements applications: Editing in Adobe Premiere Elements 4 and Photoshop Elements 6

See also Summary - Photoshop Elements 6

My strongest take-away from the Streaming Media East 2008 show last week is that video is really taking off on the Internet.

I know ... that's a "D'oh!" kind of statement -- but bear with me.

Of course, it's obvious that sites like YouTube have become amazingly popular -- comScore reports as of March that YouTube was the top video site, with 84.8 million viewers watching 4.3 billion videos (that's 50.4 videos per viewer!):

"Google Sites once again ranked as the top U.S. video property with more than 4.3 billion videos viewed (38 percent share of all videos), gaining 2.6 share points versus the previous month. YouTube.com accounted for 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 477 million videos (4.2 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 328 million (2.9 percent) and Viacom Digital with 249 million (2.2 percent)."

And the numbers keep growing: comScore's March numbers show U.S. Internet users viewed 11.5 billion online videos during the month -- a 13 percent gain in one month and a 64 percent gain over the past year:

• Nearly 139 million U.S. Internet users viewed online video in March
      or 73.7 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience
• U.S. Internet users watched an average of 83 videos per viewer
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes.
• The average online video viewer watched 235 minutes of video

But this online video thing is not just about stupid viral videos and stolen clips on YouTube, this is a mass migration of entertainment content becoming available on the Web.

Content companies are opening their vaults to provide free (ad-supported) access to movies and TV shows online. According to Nielson, the recent Hulu joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. has quickly grown to be the top network site. Hulu includes material from more than 50 top broadcast networks, cable networks, movie studios and web-centric content providers. And CBS.com is now offering a "couple hundred" shows, deep into its archives.

Social media sites are also exploding -- As of January, Akamai was delivering more than 1 million requests per second for social media sites. And comScore's March report saw 47.7 million viewers watching 400 million videos on MySpace alone (8.4 videos per viewer).

Finally, beyond all this consumer excitement, CDN (Content Delivery Network) companies I spoke to at the show also see expanding use of video in non-entertainment and corporate sites -- as an important part of a web presence. All of which will continue to drive growing demand for video bandwith.

And it's not just low-res "web" video -- A recent survey from Akamai and Broadband Directions reports that nearly 75 percent of leading broadcasters said they have plans to offer high-definition video content to their online audiences, half within the next 12 months.

Says Tim Napoleon, chief strategist, Media & Entertainment, at Akamai: "Even six months ago, a 500 or 700 kbps bitrate was pushing it. Now while 500-700 kbps is more of the norm, we're seeing companies really pushing the envelope with 1.5 to 2 Mbps and HD, in the ranges of up to 6 megabits per second bitrates."

Or as Homer would say, "Woohoo!"

See the StreamingMedia.com site for show coverage and podcasts.

NBC is piling on the online programming from the Beijing 2008 Olympics, August 8-24 -- planning to offer over 3600 hours on its NBCOlympics.com site, and free (with 30-second pre-roll commercials). NBC reports that the site had 70 million page views last Friday, 10 times more than the 7 million views on the opening day of the Athens Games.

The NBCOlympics.com site offers news, photos, and videos from the 34 medal sports, searchable by sport, country, athlete name, type (live, highlights, etc.), and relevance (see the Site Map for a complete listing). The NBC Olympics Video section includes live feeds, replays of broadcast shows, highlights, special features and interviews, and local interest. And there's lots of ways to see the videos -- watch a streaming video, watch higher res video or even four events at a time, watch low-res video on a mobile phone, or download a highlight clip or entire event to watch later.

To display the videos, NBC is using the Microsoft Silverlight video technology -- Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash for platform-independent Web (and desktop) video playback. Silverlight runs on Windows and Macintosh (Intel only), under recent versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, and/or Safari. It does require installing the latest update -- Silverlight 2 beta 2.

Actually, Windows users can watch individual clips even without installing Silverlight, using the Windows Media Player (at ~ 600 x 300 resolution). But the full enhanced Silverlight player experience provides larger-size video (~ 850 x 480 res), plus the ability to watch up to four simultaneous live events at once. (For more on watching videos, see the NBC Video FAQ.)

Although the Olympics is an international event, NBC has the rights to broadcast on the Internet only for the U.S. & Territories (excluding Puerto Rico). So when you click to play an event video, the site prompts you for your zip code and TV provider / local broadcaster. As a result, the site can nicely display event information using local times (and dates), and offers video from your local station, including local athletes and related blogs.

The official site of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games also provides information and results in multiple languages, and photo galleries.

More on NBC Olympics Video Options ...