Why Flash 7 is used rather than a newer version

Why Flash 7 is used rather than a newer version

It seems that Flash 7 is the latest version available for licensing from Adobe. This means no Flash 9 for platforms not directly supported by Adobe.

Basically, in this case one has to rely on a closed implementation from a single vendor rather than an open standard. That vendor has chosen to prioritize things in a certain way.

Furthermore, what the Internet Channel is to support is decided by Nintendo.

Thanks for the heads up, haavard. I hope Nintendo can work something out with Adobe. Maybe spend a days worth of DS profits and fund that endeavor.


[on a personal note, my father is heading to Norway next summer to visit where our ancestors are from. I'm pretty sure he's making a stop in Oslo, too.]

Understood. Is it possible to obtain software for AVI, MPEG, WMV, QUICKTIME etc? Midi and Mp3 support would be outstanding. We could import Mp3's to an SD from a site for use in the photo channel etc.

Supports for all kinds of video and audio formats would probably make the download huge, and the Wii hardware would have to be able to cope with all of them. I hear that some codecs require a pretty powerful PC to work at all. Even Flash requires a fair bit of power to run.

Quicktime and Mpeg along with Midi, Wav, Mp3 would do it for me. Allow an advanced browser to run from SD (Talk with Nintendo) for those who desire it if space is an issue. I'm sure the Wii can more than cope with the above mentioned formats. By March 2007 when the final comes along, you will immediately have millions of potential people buying the product. For 500 points, i know even those who didn't care for the browser would get it to make their Wii seem more complete. This is potentially Opera's biggest boost for publicity and popularity. With no alternative available, the Wii user base is entirely yours! You could spread like wild fire! Basic file types should be supported or an underwhelmed impression could affect potentially great sales. Please consider this if you have both the power and the decision making influence. It certainly will pay off. So far the browser has really made me love you guys. I am teased for an ultimate one. Please, for all of us! Thank you.

Browsers are common on PC. With this on the Wii, i see a very potent market for you full of an excitable crew of millions of people! My mates are loving YouTube from my bedroom television and even feel as if there's something greater about browsing from the TV than on PC. This could soar for you and even boost the Wii for Nintendo. Pass the word and turn the wheels. Make it work! Awesome potential!

P.S. Sorry for 2 posts. Browser won't let me input enough on one message.

Originally posted by haavard:

Supports for all kinds of video and audio formats would probably make the download huge, and the Wii hardware would have to be able to cope with all of them. I hear that some codecs require a pretty powerful PC to work at all. Even Flash requires a fair bit of power to run.

Lol, the Wii is also a dedicated machine. If its GPU is 2-3x powerful than the Cube's not to mention a more powerful CPU, I see no problem with h.264, xvid, etc. My 800MHz P3, 512MB, nvidia 5200 (128MB) PC can run all these fine.

So you're just admitting to poor and/or lazy coding, lol....

I'm using a iBook G4 and it's not capable of handling many of the high-resolution movies I find. I doubt the Wii is faster.

Heh.

Deus Ex Machina, I wouldn't know how well it is coded since I haven't seen the code

But Wii only has 88 MB of memory according to Wikipedia (of which 24 MB is for graphics and 64 for RAM). So your PC has almost ten times more RAM than Wii.

As I don't know how much power is required to run all these things I can't say for certain whether Wii would be able to handle them. Just keep in mind that Wii is not a desktop computer.

Originally posted by Meophist:

I'm using a iBook G4 and it's not capable of handling many of the high-resolution movies I find. I doubt the Wii is faster.

The thing is the Wii doesn't have the OS overhead a normal PC has. This should free up RAM and other resources for running other video formats. I would not have a problem getting an SD card to save the browser.

Anyway we should send an e-mail to Adobe to get them to update the Flash SDK. Maybe if they see a demand they'll get it done. Besides I would assume some people who work there own a Wii, also.


-EDarkness

Since the Wii already has MP3 playback software in the photo channel, I imagine it shoudln't be a hard thing to get it all working.

Considering most of the music in the main menus are MIDI (it sounds like the Wii firmware has some kind of dedicated GM soundfont going on there), I imagine GM playback wouldn't be a hard thing.

But I wish people would stop offering suggestions of opensource libraries. It's obvious they can't use them, since this browser will eventually be "sold", using those libraries would be a breach of agreements with those sources, wouldn't it?

I take it the Opera devs have a Development unit there. If they could try and see how far they can get by making a ram drive out of the SD card slot that is available on the Wii ?

Slow memory rated at 10 mb/s would still be something for it and you guys certainly know your way around memory limitations.

An optional feature but never the less in general use something to look forward to since you can have 2gb SD memory cards on the Wii ....

Hi all,

Just signed up...I hope this is the best place to post my question.

We develop an application called DOT.TUNES http://www.dottunes.net

http://www.dottunes.net/wii.html

DOT.TUNES contains a built-in web server allowing a user to publish their iTunes library. The default method for remote users to list is via quicktime in their browser - I assume there is no short term plans for Quicktime support in the Wii Opera Browser?

..To the main question...

DOT.TUNES also contains a Flash Player which works really well on the Wii and allows a user to browse their iTunes tracks on the Wii and listen to tracks. This works perfectly on about 90% of tracks however some mp3 files will not play on the Wii. The same tracks play fine on the regular Opera Browser on a PC but they do not play via the Opera Wii browser.

Here is a link to DOT.TUNES:

http://www.dottunes.net

It comes with a 15 day trial so any interested parties can download and check it out. If anyone knows of a way to debug this issue that would be great. If we can disover why these certain mp3 files will not play I'll either make some code changes to DOT.TUNES or restrict certain files from being displayed in the Wii browser if they can not be played. Could it be a file size issue, an encoding issue, characters in the file name? Any thoughts as to why certain tracks will play on a PC but not on the Wii would be most appreciated.

Best regards


Jeff

sc1.jpg

Originally posted by dot.tunes:

DOT.TUNES contains a built-in web server allowing a user to publish their iTunes library.

Looks like a fun application..(c:

Originally posted by dot.tunes:

I assume there is no short term plans for Quicktime support in the Wii Opera Browser?

No, that will not be supported.

Originally posted by dot.tunes:

This works perfectly on about 90% of tracks however some mp3 files will not play on the Wii. The same tracks play fine on the regular Opera Browser on a PC but they do not play via the Opera Wii browser.

Have you tried playing these same files in a browser with Flash 7 installed? Does it work there?

Originally posted by dot.tunes:

Could it be a file size issue, an encoding issue, characters in the file name?

It could be any of these problems. What makes the files that do not work different from those who do? Are they much longer than the rest? Is the filename or metadata of the file in any way different? Is the bitrate or encoding different?

--
Wilhelm
Opera QA (Wii)

I noticed flash vids of greater than 5 mb's were not working on a site. Also i seriously expect Opera to consider QuickTime playback considering the photochannel plays both that and AVI. Mp3 is supported too.

Originally posted by wilhelmja:

Originally posted by dot.tunes:

DOT.TUNES contains a built-in web server allowing a user to publish their iTunes library.

Looks like a fun application..(c:

Originally posted by dot.tunes:

I assume there is no short term plans for Quicktime support in the Wii Opera Browser?

No, that will not be supported.

Originally posted by dot.tunes:

This works perfectly on about 90% of tracks however some mp3 files will not play on the Wii. The same tracks play fine on the regular Opera Browser on a PC but they do not play via the Opera Wii browser.

Have you tried playing these same files in a browser with Flash 7 installed? Does it work there?

Originally posted by dot.tunes:

Could it be a file size issue, an encoding issue, characters in the file name?

It could be any of these problems. What makes the files that do not work different from those who do? Are they much longer than the rest? Is the filename or metadata of the file in any way different? Is the bitrate or encoding different?

--
Wilhelm
Opera QA (Wii)

I have been having the same problems that the Dot.Tunes guy has been having with my own experiments running a personal streaming MP3 server from my laptop. While it works fine on Opera/Flash on my PC, some files don't load, others seem to crash/reset Flash, and there is no immediate explanation for why. Removing ID3v2 tags seemed to work for some bizzare reason for a lot of them, but it still has occasional problems. Sometimes different bitrates trip it up, but not ALWAYS, and sometimes streaming hiccups or changing bitrates cause unpredictable results. Meanwhile the exact same thing works just fine on the PC version.

Since there is no error messages or debugging output whatsoever, it is REALLY hard to figure out what is going on.

Originally posted by haavard:

It seems that Flash 7 is the latest version available for licensing from Adobe. This means no Flash 9 for platforms not directly supported by Adobe.

Basically, in this case one has to rely on a closed implementation from a single vendor rather than an open standard. That vendor has chosen to prioritize things in a certain way.

How about writting a "wrapper" for the PPC version is that an option ?

Hi all,

Jeff here from DOT.TUNES.

I have been hard at work since my last post trying to discover why one mp3 file will play on the Wii via our Flash player and why another file will not play.

I think I am now very close to a solution.

I found a file which would not play and I removed the album art via iTunes, saved a new album art file as a jpg and imported as the new album art in iTunes and the file player perfectly.

Then I deleted the art from that file, saved the new album art as a png file and imported it into the file and it would no longer play.

iTunes supports jpg and png album art and it appears that png art results in the file not being player on the flash player on the Wii.

Does this help at all for anyone to be able to shed any light as to why this would be?

Would Opera be able to assist at all in debugging this issue?

I could help set up someone at Opera with a version of DOT.TUNES and two identical mp3 files - 1 with jpg art which works fine and one with png art which does not play - both work in a standard web browser but not on the Wii.

Any thoughts would be great.

Thanks


Jeff
DOT.TUNES
http://www.dottunes.net

Hi Jeff,

As far as I know Flash v7 doesn't handle PNGs.

Please try Dot Tunes with version 7 of the plugin on a PC (you can get it at http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=tn_14266).

If it doesn't work there isn't much we can do about it. If it does work on a PC I can look into it if you supply me with the necessary files and instructions to reproduce the problem.


Regards,
Fredrik

Great - thanks for your assistance.

The strange thing is - we don't even want to extract the png for use in the Flash Player - we just want to serve the mp3 file and it appears that the simple presence of the png contained in the mp3 prevents the mp3 from loading correctly in the player.

Does this sound correct to you - that the png residing inside an mp3 would stop the mp3 from loading into the flash player?

Thanks for the link to Flash 7 - testing now.

I'll report back shortly.


Cheers


Jeff

Hi there,

I have installed Flash 7 ( MAC 7,0,69,0 ) and I can confirm that the mp3 files containing png artwork load fine in the flash player. However the same mp3 files containing png artwork do not load on the Wii with ( Wii 7,0,70,0 )

Any further assistance or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks


Jeff

an update on Jeff's last post... this is Phil and I am with the Flash development team for DotTunes. We have done some thorough testing and have confirmed the following about playback on the Wii:

- MP3 files with PNG artwork do NOT play when the song utilizes the autoplay functionality in Flash. (as in play back file as it is downloaded)

- MP3 files with PNG artwork DO load when they are completely downloaded first before playback.

I have to get my programmer to give me the actual function names for each instance. But the result is obvious. Any mp3 with PNG art does not play if you try to 'stream' it. However normal loading of the data and then playing back does work fine. Also, the streaming works in Flash 7 on Win and OSX and there are no other issues.

Would love to resolve this by the rollout date of the official Wii version (is this still planned for March?)

Thanks

THE PNG EMBDEDED MP3 FILES DO NOT PLAY WHEN
my_sound.loadSound(http://...filename.mp3),true);

THEY DO PLAY WHEN
my_sound.loadSound(http://...filename.mp3),false);


So it is somehow not loading these files in streaming mode, but it does work in download mode.

Originally posted by Opteron-pv:

I take it the Opera devs have a Development unit there. If they could try and see how far they can get by making a ram drive out of the SD card slot that is available on the Wii ?

Slow memory rated at 10 mb/s would still be something for it and you guys certainly know your way around memory limitations.

An optional feature but never the less in general use something to look forward to since you can have 2gb SD memory cards on the Wii ....

The same idea I had some weeks ago, technically it's possile to use the SD-Card as RAM-Disk (as far as I know).
Question is how fast would this solution be (I know that original Wii SD 1 GB Card is 20x but I use 2 GB Corsair 60x which also works great and seems a bit faster),

and

is Nintendo/Opera willing to use optional SD-Cards for caching?

I think using a SD-Card as cache would not only speed up Opera it would also speed up channels (weather-, news, wii-shop-channel and future channels). Nintendo and Opera should really think about!

Originally posted by ouzo23:

Originally posted by Opteron-pv:

I take it the Opera devs have a Development unit there. If they could try and see how far they can get by making a ram drive out of the SD card slot that is available on the Wii ?

Slow memory rated at 10 mb/s would still be something for it and you guys certainly know your way around memory limitations.

An optional feature but never the less in general use something to look forward to since you can have 2gb SD memory cards on the Wii ....

The same idea I had some weeks ago, technically it's possile to use the SD-Card as RAM-Disk (as far as I know).
Question is how fast would this solution be (I know that original Wii SD 1 GB Card is 20x but I use 2 GB Corsair 60x which also works great and seems a bit faster),

and

is Nintendo/Opera willing to use optional SD-Cards for caching?

I think using a SD-Card as cache would not only speed up Opera it would also speed up channels (weather-, news, wii-shop-channel and future channels). Nintendo and Opera should really think about!

Would that not be very similar to the N64 Expansion port that was on the Console, needed for when you bought Zelda (for N64). I would think that SD would be good for extra 'Swap' Memory, but I'm not sure on how well the calls to SD while in game would work, or if it would just create more overhead.

Sorry for continuing the Off-Topic (for the most part) on the Flash Memory Use. and for those concerned about the Flash 7 Stop Gap, go Flame Adobe.

Originally posted by ouzo23:

I think using a SD-Card as cache would not only speed up Opera it would also speed up channels (weather-, news, wii-shop-channel and future channels). Nintendo and Opera should really think about!

Or maybe they should spend their time fixing/adding stuff that actually benefits a lot more people than something like this...

Hi all,

Jeff here from DOT.TUNES ( http://www.dottunes.net ).

Firstly I would like to thank the Opera team for their assistance with the issues we have been working on. I have received word from Opera that the issue has been fixed and will appear in the final release.

In the mean time we have added a feature to DOT.TUNES whereby all album artwork is stripped from the mp3 file when the file is served to the Wii. The original file is not touched - a temp file is created with the stripped artwork and then served to the Wii. At this stage testing has been fantastic with 100% of all mp3 files now playing on the Wii.

We are now asking for any interested Wii users to email us at team@dotpod.net to help test this new feature. We will then email back a link to the new release.

The final glitch that we are experiencing is that the Wii/Opera browser seems to suddenly refresh without warning and return either to the main menu or to the url presently being viewed. Could someone at Opera please confirm that you are aware of this glitchand that it should be fixed in the final release.

Thanks to everyone who has assisted - the end result is that we can all now stream our iTunes music from our Mac or Windows computers to our Wii :-) Sweeeet!


Cheers



Jeff

Originally posted by dot.tunes:

The final glitch that we are experiencing is that the Wii/Opera browser seems to suddenly refresh without warning and return either to the main menu or to the url presently being viewed. Could someone at Opera please confirm that you are aware of this glitchand that it should be fixed in the final release.

That happens when the browser runs out of memory. Use less resources.

/Fredrik

Hi Fredrik,

Thanks for your reply.

Does this mean that there will be no change to this functionallity in the final release? Or is there a slightly more elegant way to handle this memory issue?

Thanks


Jeff

Hi all,

Does anyone have detailed memory figures on Wii/Opera/Flash memory limitations?

What is the maximum size mp3 we are likely to be able to play via the Opera/Wii browser? and considering we have the size of the actual player plus some html, the xml data feed from DOT.TUNES ( http://www.dottunes.net ) we need to calulate how much remaining memory there will be to play an mp3. Once we have an idea of the maximum memory allocated to the Opera browser and to content displayed within the browser we will be able to attempt to play only those files which are not going to cause the browser to overload.


Thanks


Jeff

Originally posted by haavard:

It seems that Flash 7 is the latest version available for licensing from Adobe. This means no Flash 9 for platforms not directly supported by Adobe.

When/if Adobe does license Flash 9, might Opera for the Wii make use of it? That is, must the "final" version be final? (And if there is a post-final, would it be free for owners of the final?)

How about that wrapper for flash 9 is that against contract you guys signed with Macromedia ? I mean March is closing and you guys tend to be very quiet.

Will there be a final todo/done (on features for final) post in this forum?

This should be fairly obvious by now. If Adobe doesn't port Flash 9 there will be no Flash 9.

Remember it is only the trial version and it dousn't have the features that the finished product will. Theres a note saying the full version will be able to do more! let time tell

The final version will obviously not use anything newer than Flash 7 unless Adobe updates its SDK. Don't pretend that it's going to happen even though Opera says it won't. You are just setting yourself up for major disappointment.

You mean that Nintendo and Opera will take pride is supporting a soon to be obsolete media player?
And the player wont support some of the more mainstream Nintendo websites either, does that make sense to you then ?

Originally posted by Opteron-pv:

You mean that Nintendo and Opera will take pride is supporting a soon to be obsolete media player?
And the player wont support some of the more mainstream Nintendo websites either, does that make sense to you then ?

Kinda hard to upgrade Flash when the company holding all the cards won't budge.

Originally posted by Opteron-pv:

You mean that Nintendo and Opera will take pride is supporting a soon to be obsolete media player?

I don't know why this hasn't gotten through to you:

It is impossible to support anything newer than Flash 7 because the latest SDK version from Adobe is version 7. Only Adobe can update this SDK, but they have not done so.

It's got nothing to do what so ever with what Opera or Nintendo want or take pride in, because they have no choice.

Thats why i said they should consider a wrapper for the PPC version ?

Why does Opera have it integrated in the first place?

Originally posted by AnotherUser:

Why does Opera have it integrated in the first place?

What kind of question is this?!

Originally posted by Niqhead:

Originally posted by AnotherUser:

Why does Opera have it integrated in the first place?

What kind of question is this?!

Well think about it. There isn't a set rule that you have to include Adobe Flash in an installation of a browser. Firefox doesn't come with it, allowing users to install it with their own choice, not be 'forced' into running a sub-program that all the advertisements use (on some Pentium IIs I opt to not use Flash at all, for instance).

Originally posted by AnotherUser:

Why does Opera have it integrated in the first place?

If it didn't, you'd be unable to use Flash at all. (Hint: the version of Flash you download from Adobe's site for Opera-Windows doesn't work with Opera-FreeBSD on the same PC, let alone with Opera on the Wii.)

Originally posted by emagius:

Originally posted by AnotherUser:

Why does Opera have it integrated in the first place?

If it didn't, you'd be unable to use Flash at all. (Hint: the version of Flash you download from Adobe's site for Opera-Windows doesn't work with Opera-FreeBSD on the same PC, let alone with Opera on the Wii.)

I'd rather not use Flash at all than an outdated one (which I've had crash my browser on my PC, which why I leave it off on IE). Also to be honest, I don't use Opera on my PC.

Originally posted by AnotherUser:

Originally posted by emagius:

Originally posted by AnotherUser:

Why does Opera have it integrated in the first place?

If it didn't, you'd be unable to use Flash at all. (Hint: the version of Flash you download from Adobe's site for Opera-Windows doesn't work with Opera-FreeBSD on the same PC, let alone with Opera on the Wii.)

I'd rather not use Flash at all than an outdated one (which I've had crash my browser on my PC, which why I leave it off on IE). Also to be honest, I don't use Opera on my PC.

Well, you are not the Majority, and if you would rather not use Flash @ all, get a DS Web Browser.

I am happy with Flash 7, and I'm not going to fault Opera for not integrating a non-existent SDK for the Wii. Software development takes more the Pixie Dust and requests for non-existent plugins.

You have the option to uninstall the browser from your Wii Completely.

Case Closed, GG.

The Opera Wii Final version is very usefull !

But I think that latest flash and quictime plugin supports are very essential.
I wish that the dev find the way to get that !

We wait the next updates.

cheers.

Flash will not be updated unless Adobe allows it. Please see the sticky thread in the thread view here in the Wii forum.

Right, so Adobe need to say yes but what is being done to put pressure on them?

As it stands, any site with Flash is virtually unusable. And that leaves the internet channel as a fairly limited gimmick. :-(

Adobe doesn't just have to say yes, they have to spend time, money and resources on creating an SDK for Flash 9. A newer SDK simply doesn't exist at all currently.

"As it stands, any site with Flash is virtually unusable. And that leaves the internet channel as a fairly limited gimmick. :-("

That depends on the site you are visiting and what flash version they have used.
some need flash 9 for their content, other have not used flash before and created in flash 9.

Many pages has changed their flash and page so that Wii can be used.

Perhaps if you send an email to the administrator of the page they will change it?

ive learned in the past from linux that adobe sucks @ supporting everyone

ex: linux x86 runs flash 7, & cannot run flash 9 or even flash 7 x86_64 without jumping through hoops

so sad