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Price for Flash animation is anywhere from $150.00
to $1000 depending on how complicated the animation |
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Adobe Labs (previously called Macromedia
Labs) is a source for news and pre-release versions of
emerging products and technologies from Adobe. Most
innovations, such as Flash 9, Flex 3, and ActionScript 3.0
have all been discussed and/or trialled on the site.
One area Adobe is focusing on (as of February 2009) is the
deployment of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). To this
end, they released Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a
cross-platform runtime environment which can be used to
build, using Adobe Flash, rich Internet applications that
can be deployed as a desktop application. It surpassed 100
million installations worldwide in February 2009.[4]. This
is mainly due to the fact that it is installed silently when
Acrobat Reader is installed. Many users are unaware of its
residence on their system. citation needed]
Two additional components designed for large-scale
implementation have been proposed by Adobe for future
releases of Flash: first, the option to require an ad to be
played in full before the main video piece is played; and
second, the integration of digital rights management (DRM)
capabilities. This way Adobe can give companies the option
to link an advertisement with content and make sure that
both are played and remain unchanged.[5] The current status
of these two projects is unclear.[dated info]
Flash Player for smart phones is expected to be available to
handset manufacturers at the end of 2009.[6]
[edit] Open Screen Project
On May 1, 2008 Adobe announced Open Screen Project, which
hopes to provide a consistent application interface across
devices such as personal computers, mobile devices and
consumer electronics.[7] When the project was announced,
several goals were outlined: the abolition of licensing fees
for Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Integrated Runtime, the
removal of restrictions on the use of the Shockwave Flash
(SWF) and Flash Video (FLV) file format, the publishing of
application programming interfaces for porting Flash to new
devices and the publishing of The Flash Cast protocol and
Action Message Format (AMF), which let Flash applications
receive information from remote databases.[7]
As of February 2009, the specifications removing the
restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV/F4V specs have been
published.[8] The Flash Cast protocol—now known as the
Mobile Content Delivery Protocol—and AMF protocols have also
been made available,[8] with AMF available as an open source
implementation, BlazeDS. Work on the device porting layers
is in the early stages. Adobe intends to remove the
licensing fees for Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices at
their release for the Open Screen Project.
The list of mobile device providers who have joined the
project includes Palm, Motorola and Nokia,[9] who, together
with Adobe, have announced a $10 million Open Screen Project
fund.[10]
[edit] Format
Flash files are in the SWF format, traditionally called "ShockWave
Flash" movies, "Flash movies," or "Flash games", usually
have a .swf file extension, and may be used in the form of a
Web-page plug-in, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash
Player, or incorporated into a self-executing Projector
movie (with the .exe extension in Microsoft Windows). Flash
Video files[spec 1] have a .flv file extension and are
either used from within .swf files or played through a flv-aware
player, such as VLC, or QuickTime and Windows Media Player
with external codecs added.
The use of vector graphics combined with program code allows
Flash files to be smaller — and thus for streams to use less
bandwidth — than the corresponding bitmaps or video clips.
For content in a single format (such as just text, video, or
audio), other alternatives may provide better performance
and consume less CPU power than the corresponding Flash
movie, for example when using transparency or making large
screen updates such as photographic or text fades.
In addition to a vector-rendering engine, the Flash Player
includes a virtual machine called the ActionScript Virtual
Machine (AVM) for scripting interactivity at run-time,
support for video, MP3-based audio, and bitmap graphics. As
of Flash Player 8, it offers two video codecs: On2
Technologies VP6 and Sorenson Spark, and run-time support
for JPEG, Progressive JPEG, PNG, and GIF. In the next
version, Flash is slated to use a just-in-time compiler for
the ActionScript engine.
Flash Player is a browser plugin, and cannot run within a
usual e-mail client, such as Outlook. Instead, a link must
open a browser window. A Gmail labs feature allows playback
of YouTube videos linked in emails.
[edit] Flash Video
Main article: Flash Video
Until the advent of HTML5, displaying video on a web page
required browser plugins, which are uniquely implemented by
third party vendors. Virtually all browser plugins for video
are free and cross-platform, including Adobe's offering of
Flash Video, which was first introduced with Flash version
6. Flash Video has been a popular choice for websites due to
the large installed user base and programmability of Flash.
In 2010, Apple has publicly criticized Adobe's
implementation of Flash Video playback for not taking
advantage of hardware acceleration, as well as criticizing
Flash technology in general which has been cited as reason
for not implementing Apple's mobile devices. Soon after
Apple's criticism, Adobe demoed and released a beta version
of Flash 10.1, which takes advantage of hardware
acceleration even on a Mac.
[edit] Flash Audio
Flash Audio is most commonly encoded in MP3 or AAC (Advanced
Audio Coding) however it does also support ADPCM, Nellymoser
(Nellymoser Asao Codec) and Speex audio codecs. Flash allows
sample rates of 11, 22 and 44.1 kHz. It does not support 48
kHz audio sample rate which is the standard Tv, DVD sample
rate.
On August 20, 2007, Adobe announced on its blog that with
Update 3 of Flash Player 9, Flash Video will also support
some parts of the MPEG-4 international standards.[11]
Specifically, Flash Player will have support for video
compressed in H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10), audio compressed using
AAC (MPEG-4 Part 3), the F4V, MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), M4V,
M4A, 3GP and MOV multimedia container formats, 3GPP Timed
Text specification (MPEG-4 Part 17) which is a standardized
subtitle format and partial parsing support for the 'ilst'
atom which is the ID3 equivalent iTunes uses to store
metadata. MPEG-4 Part 2 and H.263 will not be supported in
F4V file format. Adobe also announced that they will be
gradually moving away from the FLV format to the standard
ISO base media file format (MPEG-4 Part 12) owing to
functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming
H.264. The final release of the Flash Player supporting some
parts of MPEG-4 standards had become available in Fall
2007.[12]
Adobe Flash Player 10.1 does not support acoustic echo
cancellation, unlike the VoIP offerings of Skype and Google
Voice. This makes Flash less suitable for group calling or
meetings, as use of headphones for all participants is
essential, or at least highly advised. |
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