David Emery Online

Good and Bad

23 August 2007

It’s not too often that a company makes a move that is obviously good for their customers, but seemingly pretty bad for them. But that’s exactly what Adobe has just done by adding H.264 support to Flash (read a good write up at Read/WriteWeb or a more technical discussion at kaourantin.net).

Adobe has pretty much won the online video war, fighting off very strong competitors in the form of Apple, Real and Microsoft. Even with the rise of iTunes and hence the rise in QuickTime installs Flash video has completely overtaken pretty much everywhere – I can’t remember the last time I watched a video online that wasn’t played using Flash.

With the rise and domination of Flash as the primary delivery method for video content online so to has the FLV video format flourished. FLV is the proprietary video format created by Adobe (then Macromedia) used in the Flash Player to play video – it’s Flash’s native video format. Hence FLV is used by practically everybody that’s using Flash to play video.

Which is why this move is so odd, especially for Adobe who seem to be trying to become an ever more relevant ‘big’ software player. Supporting H.264 – which is probably FLV’s biggest rival as that’s what Apple is pushing at the moment – is quite probably going to kill adoption of FLV as a wider used video format at a stroke. H.264 is a much easier format to use – their are many more converters that support H.264; FLV is starting to catch up on this front, but the best video converters (that use the On2 VP6 Codec) aren’t normally free or open source.

So, just as FLV was beginning to get some momentum, Adobe have taken the wind out of its sails. The only thing I can think of – other then just trying to please their customers – is the prominence of H.264 in the new HD video standards. It’s used in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, and this move surely is linked to this: Adobe thinks the future of video is HD, and they’re positioning themselves to be compatible.

Don’t forget, though, that Flash isn’t all about the browser plugin – it’s used in a wide range of other devices like set-top boxes, console game interfaces and mobiles. I can see native H.264 support – and hence HD support – opening a lot of doors for them in these areas.

All in all, it’s a great thing for the consumer – iPod native videos that can be played in the browser using the rich interface Flash offers (and high userbase) without a format change has got to be a good thing.