Adobe Launches Flash Player ‘Gala’ Preview for Mac OS X

Following Apple’s move to open APIs for developers looking to tap into hardware-accelerated video, Adobe Systems Incorporated has released a preview of the 10.1 Flash Player for Mac OS X. The software supports H.264 video hardware decoding on the third revision to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.3).

Tech sites around the world (Softpedia being one of them) reported earlier this month that Apple had released information to allow 3rd-party developers to take advantage of hardware acceleration of H.264 video on the Mac. “This reference describes the Video Decode Acceleration framework available on Mac OS X 10.6.3 and later with Mac models equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M,” Apple said on the Developer section of its site.

Adobe now acknowledges that, “Hardware video decoding allows Flash Player to offload H.264 video decoding tasks from the CPU to deliver smooth, high quality video with minimal overhead, improving video playback performance, reducing system resource utilization, and extending battery life.”

“The Flash Player ‘Gala’ preview release introduces H.264 hardware decoding on supported Mac computers running Mac OS X 10.6.3 or higher. This preview is based on the latest Flash Player 10.1 release candidate for Mac OS,” a more formal description goes at Adobe Labs.

Its new Flash Player, code-named “Gala,” requires certain graphics solutions, like NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M or GeForce GT 330M. Macs equipped with such hardware include the MacBooks that shipped after January 21st, 2009; Mac Minis shipping after March 3rd, 2009; MacBook Pros launched after October 14th, 2008; and the iMacs that filled up stock during the first quarter of 2009.

Non-supported computers such as Mac Pro workstations, and other conditions that hardware support may, or may not be available for the time being are also detailed in Adobe’s blog post. The Flash maker makes one final important note in saying that, in the preview release, users will be able to recognize when hardware decoding is in use thanks to a small, white square displayed in the upper-left corner of the video frame.