Jiffiness - Flash Player 10.1 gets a new clock!
DIGG IT!
Published
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
at
9:28 AM
.
Tinic Uro of the Adobe Flash Player engineering team knows way to much about time. Tinic posted on some internal changes to Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 and is the first to talk publicly about the timing model updates. These changes are very significant for Flash and Flex developers and designers as they impact how content runs cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device.
Changes:
- New Timer - Flash Player 10.1 beta 3 introduces its own periodic timer that delivers consistent cross platform behavior and eliminates the dependency on different browser timer implementations.
- Less Polling - The timing model change decouples the SWF frame rate from, for example, the video playback frame rate inside the SWF and eliminates having the Flash Player poll up to 120 times a second even if nothing is happening.
- Throttling - Non-visible SWFs and SWFs on hidden tabs are throttled down to 2 frames per second. No rendering occurs unless the SWF becomes visible again. Timers and local connections are also clocked down to 2 FPS. Video is decoded but not rendered or displayed using idle CPU time while audio plays back at 8 FPS to preserve backwards compatibility.
- Synchronized - Frame rates of visible SWFs, timers and local connections are limited and aligned to the player's periodic timer. Video can play back at any frame rate, increasing video playback fidelity.
Benefits:
- Significantly lower CPU utilization with non-visible SWF content
- Extended battery life
- Consistent, cross-platform timer behavior improves application performance consistency for developers
- Improved audio/video synchronization and video playback fidelity
- Backwards compatible - audio and video continue to play in hidden tabs
It is a great change for Flash Player 10.1. Regardless of which browser or operating systems or device you use, we will see Flash content playback more consistent and performant across screens.
Cheers,
Ted :)