[linux-audio-user] Solved: flash movie buffering problems

[Rob]

On Saturday 23 September 2006 11:20, Lee Revell wrote:
> What's wrong with embedded .mpg or .wmv, other than being easy
> to download (or "pirate" if you talk to the content people). 
> Those work on a much wider range of OSes than Flash.

MPEG-1 would be unwatchable at the bandwidth Youtube uses.  WMV 
using WMP codecs is only playable on my Linux box if I pirate 
some Windows code.  (I'd settle for embedded MPEG-4 AVI's, 
though.)  Flash sucks, but it is here and it's legal, even if 
it's not free software.

Whoever said Flash was just a bunch of XML in a container like 
SVG was wrong, I think; that's like what Flash would have been 
like 10 years ago if XML had been around.  Actionscript may just 
be Javascript, but the objects it exposes start with vectors and 
animation and go way off from there.  SVG also has no sound 
support, and since this thread started by talking about sound 
sync problems in Flash, it's clearly not a suitable replacement 
as things stand now.  That SMIL or whatever it was a couple 
years ago that was supposed to provide audio capabilities 
through Javascript doesn't seem to have taken off, to the point 
where people are even using Flash just to stream MP3's.

There will be a day when all browsers will have SVG, canvas 
support, inbuilt access to video codecs or a standardized 
interface to video player plugins, audio support, some kind of 
synchronization framework, and a development environment that 
entices designers to use all those technologies together, like 
Flash has now.  Probably it'll have a catchy acronym like Ajax 
to sell it as well.  That day will be far enough in the future 
that I can't see it.  

In the meantime, I look forward to the eventual maturity of 
Gnash.

Rob