Adobe Flash has become the standard protocol for web video over the last few years. And while Flash is capable of some pretty excellent video quality, it's not exactly light on system resources. In fact, it's kind of a CPU-hog, which is why some computers with slower processors (and most netbooks) struggle to play high quality of high definition video from YouTube, Hulu, and other online video sites.

But that's about toe change. Kind of. Adobe has announced that Flash 10.1 will support GPU acceleration for NVIDIA graphics, which means that if you've got a computer with NVIDIA GeForce, ION, or Tegra graphics in it, you should be able to watch high definition Flash video in fullscreen mode even if you have a slow processor like an Intel Atom or ARM-based chip.

What's more, Adobe is going to bring Flash 10.1 to Smartphones, ending the separate but unequal era of Flash Lite. Flash 10.1 will be available for Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Google Android, Palm WebOS, and Symbian phones. The iPhone's not on that list because Adobe still hasn't worked out an arrangement with Apple to add support for Flash 10.1 to the iPhone's Safari web browser, but that could still happen.

Flash 10.1 is due to hit the streets in the first half of 2010. But there should be beta versions available before the end of 2009.

You can check out videos of Flash Player 10.1 on the Palm Pre and Toshiba TG01 at Adobe Labs.

Just in case you had any doubt that Google had a heck of a lot of server space, the company has increased the file size limit for uploads to Google Video. A few days ago, the max was 1GB. Today, it's a whopping 16GB.

In order to take advantage, you'll need a few things:

• A Google Apps Premier or Education Edition account
  
• Google Gears
• A fairly speedy internet connection (unless you're cool with your videos taking a year or two to upload)

The change only affects Google Video, not Google's other video site. YouTube uploads are still limited to 2GB. Google also killed uploads to Google Video for the general public a while back, limiting the feature to Google Apps users. So it's doubtful that the company really expects to buckle under the pressure of all those 16GB file uploads.

[via AppScout]

YouTube may be an online video site, but that doesn't mean you can't use it to distribute podcasts, audio interviews, music (which you own the rights to) and other audio files. In order to upload an audio file to YouTube, you'll need to convert it to a video format by using software to add your audio to a video track, photo slideshow, or a static image.

But if you don't feel like taking the time to edit a video using desktop software, you can convert an MP3 file to a video file quickly and easily with MP32Tube, a web-based service that will create a video file for you and even upload the finished product to your YouTube account.

All you have to do is sign in with your Google Account (using Google's API), choose a background image, pick an MP3 file, and hit convert. A few minutes later the file should be available on your YouTube page.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

Some YouTube videos are really only worth it for the audio portion. I've seen tons of songs posted to YouTube with still images instead of real videos, and often wished I could just download the audio in one step. Dirpy lets you easily save the sound from a YouTube video as an mp3 for later listening, or save the whole video if you really want to.

One of Dirpy's best features is the ability to specify the portion of the audio you want to download by entering start and stop times, which really helps when you come across a video with a long intro. Dirpy also lets you set ID3 tags for your ripped audio files, so they're probably labeled in iTunes and other players. You can find videos to rip by searching on Dirpy or using the bookmarklet on any YouTube video page.

[via Lifehacker]

12seconds.tv is extending its bite-sized video service - 12 seconds per video, as the name implies - into the mobile universe, with a nice-looking video messaging app for the iPhone. 12mail [app store link] lets you send short video messages to your contacts, which it can pull from your Facebook or Twitter accounts, if you like. Recording a new video (if you have an iPhone 3GS) and sending a saved video are both supported. You can even take a still picture and record an audio track instead of going for a full video.

If your friends have 12mail, they'll get push notifications when they receive your messages, and they'll be able to watch them using the iPhone's built-in video app. If they don't, the messages can be posted on their Facebook walls or sent privately via Twitter direct message. The 12-second time limit really works in 12mail's favor on the iPhone, considering the limited upload speeds on 3G and EDGE. 12Mail is also free, in case you needed another reason to give it a shot.

Epix is a new premium TV channel that's a partnership between Viacom, Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate. Today the company is announcing that Verizon is the first distributor to sign the channel, which means that Verizon customers will be able to watch thousands of movies in the channel's library. Now here's where it gets interesting: Epix isn't just a TV channel. As part of its offering, the group is also beta testing a web-based video service where users can stream thousands of titles. And today Epix announced it would be adding 3,000 HD videos to the lineup.

The problem is that Epix Megaplex (the web component) won't be open to the general public. It'll only be available to payng subscribers of the TV channel. And in fact Verizon hasn't even committed to making Megaplex available to FiOS TV customers yet, which means that not a single TV distributor is currently promising to make use of the Epix web video offering.

There are two problems with Epix Megaplex as a I see it. First, the company is using old paradigm thinking and making the web component available as a value added feature for TV subscribers when Epix could probably convince a fair number of domestic and international users to sign up as web-only subscribers or pay-per-view users.

Second, as TechCrunch's MG Siegler points out, why is it that you can walk into a video store and grab virtually any new release the day it's available, but you might have to visit a dozen web sites to find the same content available for download or streaming online -- if it's available at all? Wouldn't it be nice if Viacom, Paramount, MGM, Lionsgate, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, and all the other companies offering online video would come to some sort of agreement that would let you find all of the videos you want in one place while making sure that the appropriate rights holders get paid?

Believe me, I'm as shocked as anyone to be writing this post, but RealPlayer SP ships with a substantially reduced amount of suck compared to previous versions. Yes, the new version sucks so much less that I'm actually ok with using it to download and convert web video.

There are still glimpses of the past, of course. The installer does offer a toolbar (at least it's Google and not Ass...er, Ask). It also offers the pro version and a 14 day trial of something, but I can't tell you specifically what it was. Instead of reading, I quickly located the "leave me the hell alone" button and closed the screen.

Shiver me timbers! It's been a swash-buckling week here aboard HMS Download Squad, but if you've been off plunderin' other shores and missed the maelstrom of news here's a fair summary of what's been happening..

Over the past year or so Hulu has quickly become one of the most popular online video sites even though it's only open to US viewers. Hulu's success likely comes from a number of factors including a focus on high quality professionally produced content including network TV shows and movies, a simple user interface, and relatively unobtrusive advertisements that are much easier to put up with than the 18 minutes of ads in every hour of US broadcast television.

But Hulu's focus on advertising supported content has likely prevented some premium content owners like HBO and Showtime from making full length content available. Now it looks like Hulu is testing out a subscription-based service.

I really hope any subscription service would offer content that's not currently available to Hulu customers. I'd hate to see some of the content that's currently available for free disappear behind a paywall. But at this point it's too early to say exactly what the service will look like, or even it will ever appear.

[via Business Insider]

Look, there are a lot of places to find online video these days. And in many ways, Clicker is just another one of these sites. But the service, which launched in private beta at TechCrunch 50 this week certainly has a lot going for it.

First off, in terms of content, it's hard to find a site with a better list of web video including network TV shows, webisodes, and high quality content from professional and amateur sources. The site is also extraordinarily easy to navigate. You can search for shows by title, genre, or media type (TV, movies, web shows, or music). Or you can just start typing in a search box to see what pops up. And results, with thumbnail images, will start to appear once you've entered a few letters.

One thing that's nice about Clicker is that right at the top of each show page is a link that tells you how many episodes are available online. Clicker doesn't host the videos, but rather scours the web for videos that are already online. If a video can be embedded in Clicker's site, it is, so you can watch without leaving the web page. If not, Clicker provides a link to the site where you can watch the video.

The site lets you subscribe to videos by creating playlists, and you have a nice array of options for each video. For instance, say you're watching one of the latest episodes of The Guild and decide you'd like to subscribe to the show. You can add all episodes to your playlist, just new episodes, or just the latest season. Then when you click your Playlist link, you can see a list of episodes you've watched or have yet to watch. There's also a "Season Pass" section that lets you see the shows you've subscribed to, although I'm guessing TiVo isn't going to be happy with Clicker co-opting its phrase for a series subscription.

You can request an invite for Clicker by visiting the service's homepage.

YouTube Auto Buffer is a userscript that fixes a lot of the things that annoy me most about YouTube. It's a beefed up version of the barebones one Lee wrote about last December. Instead of autoplaying a couple seconds of video and having to stop and start because nothing's buffered, this script turns autoplay off and clips fully buffer before playing.

I don't know about you, but I was doing that manually whenever I loaded a YouTube vid anyway. On top of that, it also turns HQ/HD on by default, so you're watching the best available version of each video, and hides the in-video ads that YouTube occasionally shows.

You'll need the Greasemonkey add-on to run YouTube Auto Buffer in Firefox, and the equivalent in other browsers (for Safari, it's GreaseKit). If you don't like all three of Auto Buffer's features, you can turn any of them off in the script's preferences. They're hiding in plain sight underneath YouTube's search box -- not in the Greasemonkey menu as you might expect.

[via Lifehacker]

Real Alternative is an awesome little Windows utility that lets you watch RealVideo and listen to RealAudio files without installing RealPlayer. Although RealPlayer has come a long way in recent years, many people still find it cumbersome and awkward to use.

Real Alternative installs the codecs you need to access much of the content available in RealPlayer using a light weight media player called Media Player Classic. There are also plugins for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome that let you interact with RealMedia content from your browser.

The application hit version 2.0 recently, but despite the rather monumental name, it looks like the update brings a handful of relatively minor updates. Probably the most significant change is that the browser plugin now works in Internet Explorer 8. The versions of Media Player Clasice and the RealMedia components have also been updated. But I figured the anniversary was a good time to point out three things:

1. Real Alternative is kind of awesome.
2. It's been chugging along quietly for years.
3. Flash has all-but replaced RealMedia as the default media platform for the web.

That last point was driven home when I installed Real Alternative 2.0 today to test it out. It took me a good 10 minutes to find a web site that actually streamed audio or video in RealMedia. A few years ago, it would have been hard to find a site using any other media format.

YouTube's most popular content has always been user-generated, with a lot of self-produced stars making a name for themselves on the site. People go there to watch the latest viral videos, and maybe TV shows that haven't yet been taken down due to copyright. That's why it might sound strange that YouTube is reportedly getting into the business of streaming Hollywood movies, a la Hulu or Netflix. According to the Wall Street Journal, heavy-hitting movie studios like Sony and Warner Brothers are already in talks with YouTube.

Streaming rentals would be available for a limited time, and would either cost a flat fee (like iTunes) or be ad-supported (like Hulu). The WSJ speculates that $4 would be the price to rent a new release. Although this squares with what iTunes charges, iTunes movies are downloadable, and don't necessarily need a speedy internet connection like streaming does. YouTube is no-commenting the story, except to say that they're developing their relationships with movie studios.

[via Wired]

Broadcast television is full of reruns. No surprise there. And the truth is, plenty of people will watch rebroadcasts of television programs. In fact, it was recently reported that The Late Show with David Letterman was beating The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien in the ratings -- even though Letterman was in reruns while Conan was producing new episodes.

But generally reruns aren't as exciting as first-run broadcasts, and fewer people tune in. So it's interesting to see Fox take a new media approach to an old media problem. The network is introducing "tweet-peats" for two of its shows, Fringe and Glee.

The idea is that you'll be able to watch the show and see a scroll across the bottom of messages from Twitter. Of course, you're not going to see every message that some schlub posts with the proper #hashtag. Most of the messages will come from the show's producers and cast members. For example, Joshua Jackson and John Noble will be tweeting during Thursday night's rerun of Fringe.

But some fans wll be able to get their messages through as well. Fans can sign up to follow Fringe and Glee on Twitter and ask questions or leave comments and the producers may include some of those comments during the show.

[via Mashable]

Free Screen to Video is a free screen capture utility for Windows. You can capture video of an entire display, just a window, or a selected area. The program can handle audio and video or just video. And you can save your files in a variety of formats including FLV, AVI, WMV, and SWF.

You don't get a ton of bells and whistles like the ability to edit or even resize videos within the application. But really, what were you expecting from a free screen capture utility? Just use VirtualDub or your editor of choice if you need to edit your screen capture.

The developer of Free Screen to Video also has a number of other apps including a CD ripper and several tools for editing and converting audio and video files. You can find them all at the developer's home page.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]