Originally Posted By: greenaccord02
That's true. I get better playback quality using the Adobe product. With Gnash, the processor utilization is much lower, but the video can be choppy.
And video playback is relatively new to Flash - Flash started off as a 2D vector animation platform (at the time, I think it might have been the only cross-platform, cross-browser way to see vector illustrations) AND in the last few years, and over the last few versions, it's added *heaps* of features that involve database interactions, composting, raster manipulation, CSS and PHP support and scads of other stuff that Gnash, and SWFDEC just cannot come close to keeping up with; not to mention that the open source plugins' video support is usually a version or two behind Adobe.
I did a vanilla install of Debian Squeeze a few months ago, which comes stock w/ SWFDEC as part of the desktop install. I went to youtube just to see if there really was an open source Flash substitute that actually worked for video, which is Flash's main shtick these days. Both Iceweasel (Debian's Firefox) and Epiphany crashed *immediately* at youtube and most other Flash-based video sites; so not only didn't they work for the most popular purpose of Flash, they screwed the whole thing up!
The light at the end of the tunnel, here, is that the latest version of the HTML specification (version 5) includes support for video (although browser makers cannot agree on which codecs to support), and javascript can handle most of the animation and gee-whiz eye candy that Flash can do, so the whole Flash platform may soon be rendered obsolete. (Flash also has it's own scripting language to perform some of it's advanced functions. It's very similar to javascript, but it's yet *another* language that web developers have to learn, and it's a pain in the arse to keep up with.)
