Tech Shout!

Adobe has just released a beta update to its Flash Player 9 software, which has now been dubbed “Moviestar”. Thanks to this latest update, you will now be able to watch high-definition video content on the Internet.

Adobe’s new version of its Flash Player adds support for the H.264 video codec, which is also known as MPEG4 part 10, as well as the HE-AAC audio codec. In fact, the H.264 standard video support is the same standard that is being used in Blu-ray and HD-DVD high-definition players.

Besides, the new Adobe beta update also includes High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support, as well as hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback.

In simple words, the Adobe Flash player update introduces support for multi-core processors as well as a full screen movie mode with hardware scaling and a cache for platform components like the Flex network.

Even if you are not really interested in high-definition video, support for H-264 and HE-AAC is Flash could mean an improvement in the technical quality of content from video sharing sites such as YouTube.

In fact, YouTube has begun encoding videos in H.264 to support AppleTV. Now, these changes in Adobe’s Flash Player will make it easy for YouTube to deliver those versions to other devices.

John Loiacono is the senior vice president of creative solutions at Adobe. He says, “Adobe is committed to providing a seamless creation-to-playback solution that allows creatives and developers to produce video and rich-media once, and then deploy that content across the widest array of distribution and playback environments.”

Yet another enhancement in Adobe’s Flash Player 9 will be the ability to take advantage of hardware acceleration in most PCs’ graphics cards, says Mark Randall, chief strategist for dynamic media at Adobe.

Interestingly, the codec is already supported in a number of applications ranging from video services for mobile phones to the HD DVD and Blu-ray high-definition DVD standards.

The public beta version of the update to Adobe Flash Player 9 software (codename Moviestar) will be available as a free download from Adobe Labs. The final release is expected to be available via an update from Adobe in the next few months.

Sometime earlier this year, Microsoft had unveiled its Silverlight platform which many considered to be a direct rival to Adobe’s Flash technology. However, with the amount of adjectives describing this latest update to Adobe Flash Player 9, it’s bound to be real good.