Does an MPEG-2 license improve Flash video playback performance?

Question

I'm running Raspbian. I installed Gnash to enable Flash support (i.e. YouTube playback). The videos come up, but they're too slow to be watchable.

Does the MPEG-2 licence key improve YouTube playback using Gnash?

I wouldn't have thought so. It just allows you to decompress MPEG-2 encoded video. — Jivings, Apr 01 '13 at 08:15
@dangowans: FFMPEG supports multiple formats other than MPEG-2, for example H263 and H264, both of which can be included in FLV container and played back as a flash video. — Krzysztof Adamski, Apr 02 '13 at 14:13

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 02 '13 at 13:03

Unfortunately it won't. First of all, flash video does not support MPEG-2 for encoding. Secondly, in order to use RaspberryPi hardware decoding capabilities (and MPEG-2 licence is exactly for this decoding mechanism) you have to use RaspberryPi OpenMAX libraries. This means that only applications with specifically written to support RaspberryPi hardware decoding can benefit from it.

There is currently no good way to play YouTube video directly inside of web browser. You can, however, play this videos using hardware acceleration from external programs, giving them the URL. Here's an example of such program.

Does an MPEG-2 license improve Flash video playback performance?

1 Answers1