Flash Player 9 is going HD with H.264 Support

Adobe is going to release a new version of its Flash Player (Version 9 Update 3 Beta 2). The new version is a quantum leap with added support for the video codec H.264 (MPeg-4), and the mobile video standard 3GP. Aslo added to the package is High Efficiency AAC and hardware accelerated “multi-core” fullscreen playback. Adobe claims that these advancement will enable the delivery of HD-TV quality video on the internet.

 This is the first major improvement to the Flash player since the last update in June 2006. The usage of the H.264 codec is key to high definition video on the web. Popular video sites such as YouTube are already encodeing their videos in this format and the two phisical HD flavours HD-DVD and Bluray are based on H.264 as well.  TheI predict a massive move to higher resolutions for videos on the web untill the end of the year.

The support of 3GP shows that Adobe wants to embrace the mobile market even more by implementing the the standard codec for mobile videos into Flash.

Adobe engineer Tinic Uro has posted an extensive article about the new version on his blog.

The new version is going to be available at the Adobe Labs.