why is flash so slow on macs?

[mnm]

anyone know why flash player and the plugins are so slow and jerky on macs when they are much faster at other things like quake?

is it a poorly compiled flash player and plugin not taking advantage of multithreading of may be the graphics drivers?

i know my g4 is faster than pc's at so many other things so there must be a problem

even better anyone know how to fix it?

Marcus, UK

[diavolo]

The the flash player/plugin code for mac's have always been screwed up...

I am not sure if that's all MM fault or the Mac Os. But Macs will always play your movie slower than a pc.

sam

[ndl]

I don't think the 'fault' lies with either Macromedia or Apple, but it is just Macromedia's varied understanding of how the Macintosh OS works. When many popular games and applications do use OpenGL on a Mac, they 'appear' to be better than on a PC.

Between the new OS [Mac OS X] and Macromedia's continued effort, I think that the Flash viewability will soon be similar to the PC current view.

ndl

[mnm]

just been looking at the shockwave 8.5 beta, it seems there is an option to use hardware (graphics card and open gl) or software rendering (main cpu), maybe the flash team should get some help from the shockwave people.

M

[Peter H]

Without getting to techie on this the reason that the MAC player is slower is to do with the operating system.

On the PC, the player plugs into the native Windows commands for screen rendering, therfroe less calculations have to be made.

On the Mac however, the player cant do this, and so new commands had to be written fot the software to control the appearence on screen. This takes up more CPU time

The new shockwave player uses external hardware for rendering to make more use of 3D. To add this functioality to the flash player is likely to greatly increase the foot print of the player.

Who knows though for flash 6 ?

P

[mnm]

I also have OSX on my G4 and was looking forward to seeing the difference.
I was amazed that it was the same poor performance, i wonder if macromedia will optimise it for that or even if apple would help them ,since they probably don't want their machines appearing slower to flash viewers as oposed to gamers for example?

[Peter H]

Originally posted by mnm
I also have OSX on my G4 and was looking forward to seeing the difference.
I was amazed that it was the same poor performance, i wonder if macromedia will optimise it for that or even if apple would help them ,since they probably don't want their machines appearing slower to flash viewers as oposed to gamers for example?

having the New OsX wont make a difference of you only have an old player, its still the same code. I dont knopw if there's a OsX only version due for release, but I doubt it - at least not b 4 v.6

[me2222]

hi,
i just have read a note at macromedias flash support site, that there is now a carbonized version of the player available for download that fully (?) supports OSX.

[mnm]

does anyone know what the linux version plays like, maybe they can recompile that for Mac OSX since they are both unix kernels? I read have found Omni-web 4.0 for mac OSX to be at least 4 times faster than internet explorer 5.1 on OSX due to tidier coding and processor multithreading.
[Edited by mnm on 04-17-2001 at 09:57 AM]

[monkii]

Personally, I'm A little surprised on this issue...

I swapped to a G4 after too many years doing music production on a pc.
In the music world Mac absolutely kills the PC.

So it irks me a little when my pentium2 at work beats my g4 at home for flash...

Anyways, I'd still take a mac over a pc...
-m

[aldorr]

it's pretty frustrating, especially when you're trying to sync sound, and on the mac it seems to work, even though it logically doesn't make sense from the timing in the time line... then you look at it on a pc, and it seems that it's as fast as it looks to be in the timeline...
gosh darnit.
i'd like to see that osx native version of the flash player. mm is going freehand x already, but i think it's going to be a while before flash for x really comes out. cause otherwise they wouldn't be so fast to start selling freehand x flash 5 studio bundles.
we'll see. maybe they'll at least release a unix standalone player soon...
--aldorr

[johnblaze74]

jsut do what i do! whenever i need to see my flash movie play the right speeds i convert my movie into a quicktime movie and and play it that way!

[aldorr]

that would be nice if all flash movies were linear and they had no actionscript in them... that loads external movies or duplicates mc's or loads sound from external movies, etc, etc, etc...
nowhadahmean?
--aldorr

[Dr.Slanky]

You can achieve close to proper frame rates by sticking to this method:

when you set the fps of your movie to 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 or 20 it will playback on the Mac at around 15.6fps.
when you set the fps anywhere between 21-30 it will playback at 20fps.
set it between 31 and 59 it will playback at 30fps.
anything higher will playback at around 61fps.

Some say the playback inconsistencies have to do with the PC using Active X and the Mac doesn't.
Who knows what the real answer is.
I usually stick with 21 fps for all my projects-that way it plays at 20 on the Mac and 21 on the PC

For now you should always test your .swf files with the moock fps MC.
http://www.moock.org/webdesign/flash...ter/index.html

I have found it to be invaluable for testing on the Mac.

[mnm]

just foung out that there is a DUAL 500 daughterboard upgrade card available for all g4's (including cubes as far as i can tell) it costs £600/$999 which is less than the difference between what i paid for my g4 400 and the cost of the g4 500mp.

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/encore_st.html

well since i seen to be stuck with a plugin that is emulating a program rather than actually being one then i'd may as well get the raw power to speed it up instead, with the added advantage of being able to run more plugins in logic audio (my other vice)

thanx for all the info, very interesting, keep it coming

alt

[ScooterMcGrooter]

I've also noticed (on the Mac) a conciderable difference in playback between testing a movie inside of flash and just opening up the .swf in flash player.

But all being said, I still love my Mac

[artsmart]

I won't go into reasons, as you've received enough of them already. I will tell you that if you close all other applications (or as many as possible) this will improve the viewing of the file, as the processor is less taxed. Even applications that are open, yet idle, seem to affect performance. Also, I would like to see MM address the initial html generated from Flash, as this is very poor. Professionally I have generally had a programmer re-write the code to improve performance.

Take heart though. Since OS X should incorrporate fmore funtion directly into the operating system, performance of these types of programs should continue to improve on Mac OS in the future.

Originally posted by mnm
anyone know why flash player and the plugins are so slow and jerky on macs when they are much faster at other things like quake?

is it a poorly compiled flash player and plugin not taking advantage of multithreading of may be the graphics drivers?

i know my g4 is faster than pc's at so many other things so there must be a problem

even better anyone know how to fix it?

Marcus, UK

[jubeik]

I hope everyone has done this but...

In the Energy Controls Panel there is a check box for allow processor cycling. This should not be checked. What happens is that with many of the newer Macs it will slow down the processor when ever the cursor is not moving. This is to improve battery life on PowerBook's and save energy overall with desktops. Flash seems to be one of the few things affected by this.

Funny that many of you have so many problems, here I am on my Home computer a G3/300 with a Voodoo 3 2000 and have really not had that much a problem with Flash. My machine is two years old, but there are very few sites which get to bogged down. Unless of course there is a internal script which cause the slow down. IE 5 usually will give you the choice to abort the script (but this is rare).

So try this and maybe use this link as a test.
http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~agallisa/

It will bog on anything slower than a G3/300. If you have something faster than there is something else which seems to be slowing down.

Hope this helps !

[mnm]

thanks everyone, very interesting!!

hopes up for flash6 on mac osx but i'd still like flash 5 for os 9 improved.

[me2222]

Originally posted by mnm
thanks everyone, very interesting!!

hopes up for flash6 on mac osx but i'd still like flash 5 for os 9 improved.

Looks like GOOD News:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/ge...sx_support.htm