New Flash 10.2 to see 10x improvement in performance

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geK7geL3I40&w=640&h=390]
Here’s a demo showing a 10X reduction in CPU usage:

The video is from November but Adobe’s John Nack reports that Flash video sites across the web are updating their content to be optimized for the new version of Flash which purports to deliver video with 1/10th the CPU utilization of the current Flash plug-in.  YouTube, the biggie, is on board.  The original Flash 10.2 beta was released two weeks ago.

Good news, though: the new Flash Player 10.2 (download the beta) offers a new, video-playback-optimized mode called Stage Video.  Building on top of the GPU acceleration added earlier this year, Stage Video can leverage complete hardware acceleration of the video rendering pipeline, from video decoding to scaling/blitting, enabling best-in-class playback performance. Stage Video can dramatically decrease processor usage and enables higher frame rates, reduced memory usage, and greater pixel fidelity and quality.

Stage Video requires Flash developers to update the code in video players, so simply updating to the new player won’t automatically improve CPU usage on all sites, but YouTube has already updates its player & others will follow. If you’re a Flash developer and want to start experimenting, check out this tutorial from Lee Brimelow.