Is Windows just better than Mac at Flash Video?

[karmagician]

I have several Windows Machines (XP, 2KP), and several Macs (OS 9, OS X 10.3.9).

I have created .flv video files, and a flash video player. Using Flash 7 Players, Flash MX Pro 2004. I used Squeeze 4.1 to convert from QT files to .flv, encoding a data rate of 15 fps and about 1000 kbps.

It works great on Windows, terrible on the Mac (when deployed on the internet). The main problem seems to be that the frames per second rate (which is encoded at 15 fps in the Flash Files) cannot keep up on the Macs. I'm using NetConnectioon and NetStream classes to playback. With NetStream, there is the ns.currentFps property that you can watch to see what the current fps playback rate is.

But these are not necessarily slow Macs. The Windows machines are not amazingly fast either. Yet they consistently keep up at about 15 fps, and the whole experience just works, while the Macs have a hard time playing 12 fps, and keep dropping down to 4-5 fps for periods of time. So the video gets completely backed up and out of sync with the audio during playback. Also, the scrubber bar and other controls I've implemented seem more responsive on the Windows version.

I'm just wondering if Flash is just inherently better on Windows, if the Flash Player is just better, etc. I've noticed that creating content with Flash MX on Windows seems noticably more responsive than running the same program under Mac OS X.

All my experiments so far seem to indicate that Flash video and animations just playback choppy on Macs, and smoothly on Windows. Anybody know anything about this?

[Flash Gordon]

Windows isn't better at anything. Could depend a lot on the specs of the boxes running the swf.

[karmagician]

Normally I would tend to agree with you, coming from a Mac background. However, my Macs, while not blindingly fast, should be able to do a comparable job as my Windows machines, and in streaming Flash video content from a web site, as a user would do, they are clearly "hurting" (jerky playback, out of sync with audio, etc.), whereas the Windows boxes play the content smoothly and professionally.

So I just wondered whether there were any known issues where Flash didn't work as well on the Mac as Windows...

[Flash Gordon]

well...like I said, what are your specs? My old M$ box of 700 Mhz processor P3 does NOT play flash movies very well at all. A friend of mine with 2.0 Mhz M$ box flash system played very crappy until I clear his cache. He hadn't cleared it for like 2 years.

[oldnewbie]

Macs aren't as good as PCs when it comes to playing Flash movies...

That said, although with the player 6, the best framerate for Macs seemed to be 31fps, it now seems to be 34fps with the player 7...

Go figure... Macs are such sensitive machines... In fact, just as their owners & users. :rolleyes:

[cghughes]

(screaming)

I'M NOT SENSITIVE!
:p

[oldnewbie]

So it seems! :D

[gring]

On the same pc, an animation will run smoothly under windows and will be slooooow with linux. I think that it is because of the structure of the systems. In unix based systems, the flash player may receive less processing time...

[senocular]

Windows, being the dominant platform, also gets more attention from developers at Macromedia so more time will be spent optimizing for it. Linux, obviously, is a much lower priority, so less time would have been spent optimizing for that platform (plus there may be concerns with distribution compatibility that makes optimizing for Linux more difficult).

[oldnewbie]

Windows, being the dominant platform, also gets more attention from developers at Macromedia so more time will be spent optimizing for it. Linux, obviously, is a much lower priority, so less time would have been spent optimizing for that platform (plus there may be concerns with distribution compatibility that makes optimizing for Linux more difficult).

Wonder if that will still hold now that Adobe has acquired MM?