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Re: [OzSilverlight] RE: Hardware accelerated video?

David Connors
Sun, 02 Nov 2008 23:18:46 -0800

Scott Barnes wrote:


Few points:
· Let’s agree to disagree, as clearly we’re at opposite ends on this one J
· It looks pretty good? Any indication as to what you’re about to do with it
Do with it? Nothing. We're largely a Microsoft development shop. What I have been saying is that you shouldn't be so quick to write it off a new feature like hardware acceleration as one of "Flash 10s new toys". I dare say if you conducted a straw poll amongst developers and asked them if they thought it would be a good thing to enable that across the platform (and cross platform) then I can't imagine any would say no.
As a thought experiment, go and spend 20 minutes at www.kongregate.com and then ask yourself where it might be in 12-24 months if developers start making extensive use of the DirectX/OpenGL retargetting built into the runtime.
or is this just what you’ve read from first impressions off their initial press releases? (curious to see how well you’ve digested the entire story around this). 


Yep. I do all my research with press releases.     o  O
[... Lots of stuff about CDNs and other stuff with nothing to do with hardware acceleration on the client deleted ...] 

·         If flash is your cup of tea, that’s perfectly fine.


It isn't particularly.
I’m not going to think ill of folks adopting Flash, as it’s really comes down to what problems you’re trying to solve, how much investment your about to unload and where you think it will take you down the road. If Flash offers an edge over Silverlight, then my only query is – “tell me what we missed, so I can ensure the next releases cover it..”
How about full cross platform hardware acceleration across the entire runtime? 

David
*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] *On Behalf Of *David Connors 
*Sent:* Thursday, October 30, 2008 1:44 AM
*To:* listserver@ozsilverlight.com
*Subject:* Re: [OzSilverlight] RE: Hardware accelerated video?


Scott,
You probably think I'm yanking your chain and I know this is an SL list but seriously "I wouldn't be discouraged by Flash 10's new toys as in the end..Flash is still Flash :D" isn't really a good way to advocate a platform. Props where props are due - Flash 10 does look pretty good. 
Other replies inline...
On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 3:23 PM, Scott Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
Never stated hardware acceleration was a bad thing? You asked or assumed I implied that but I thought I rejected that and answered your question that it has to do with implementation. So to clarify what are the parts of the Adobe implementation that are bad that make you think the jury is out? 
    As for hardware acceleration in the runtime, in what way is that
    going to be beneficial overall (i.e. what are you expecting to see
or view in this case?). I dunno - I'd be expecting to see all of the normal sorts of eye candy enabled by using dedicated hardware: 1. High quality filtering and resampling - not computationally feasible in software
2. Alpha transparency of video - not computationally feasible in software
3. Transformation of video while playing - not computationally feasible in software
4. 3D with trilinear filtering so you can read text that has come out of the other end of the rendering pipeline. NFI if Flash 10 does that (probably not) but either way you're never going to do it in software. 


etc

    Cost has to do with Streaming not so much the client viewing, all
    those bytes add up and someone has to pay the bill, especially
    with CDN folks J
What bearing does the hardware acceleration model on the client have on the kbps of a video stream it is downloading? 
    Pre-computation? Could you elaborate on what you mean there?
I probably used a really poor example here that will confuse the conversation - but say I open a massive image in PS11/CS4. You can (relatively) smoothly zoom into it to your hearts content in real time because the scaling is retargetted to hardware. In that case their use of hardware acceleration (while not at all relevant to the discussion at hand) appears to be very good. I'd presume that if they can enable scenarios like that in an app as old and as complex as PS that they'd do a relatively good job of using it in a client runtime. Note: I am not saying that downloading a massive image and processing it on the client is a substitute for DeepZoom ... I just used that as an app that does something similar (hence I said bad example). The point of pre-computation is that when SL is displaying a Deep Zoom image it is only really working with screen resolution or something pretty close. I would be curious to know how it would go, performance wise, with a 30 meg source image for example. 
    I won't enter the debate around Sony vs. Samsung,
LOL. Okay ... but you're the one who brought up the analogy. 
    it's more towards the analogy than the depth of which two brands
    approach consumers in which ways. The fact here in the US, is that
    you walk into any best buy store, look at the TV's on full view
    and the decision comparisons around which to buy typically live in
    and around price, chrome presentation and warranties. It's
    extremely hard to spot the difference between each HD TV on
    display, there are certain tricks applied – like playing Finding
    Nemo with various tweeks to color profiles to give a "brighter vs.
    darker" visual queue that somehow one trumps the other.

    So meh :0
What was the point of your analogy? Are you saying that Flash is all tricks but SL is the real deal? Or that they're all the same and you can't tell? I don't understand? 
--

David Connors ([EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
Software Engineer
Codify Pty Ltd - www.codify.com <http://www.codify.com>
Phone: +61 (7) 3210 6268 | Facsimile: +61 (7) 3210 6269 | Mobile: +61 417 189 363 
Address Info: http://www.codify.com/contact
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