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April 27, 2006
Viewing Flash on PSP
Viewing Flash on PSP: My weblog is read by lots of Flash developers, but this entry is written particularly for people trying to view WWW sites with Adobe Flash content on Sony PSP devices. The new v2.7 firmware upgrade includes an Adobe Flash Player specially tailored for this gaming console. But many of the sites on the World Wide Web use Flash files which were developed and tested for fullsized computers, and so not every website will play the same on both big box and little box. In the extended entry here I'm starting up a little FAQ for viewing Flash websites on the Sony PSP. I hope the content developers who regularly read this blog can help add to the tips, and with luck we'll be able to get a final FAQ in a better location for the PSP-owning public before too long. Let's go...!
It's great that Sony is now distributing an Adobe Flash Player in their firmware upgrade to their entire audience... developers will now have a predictable capability to test against for this device.
But most of the people using a PSP will likely go out to various sites on the World Wide Web, and see files that do not play as well as they do on the desktop computer. There are reasons for this, let's list some of them here:
- There's about 1.5 megabytes of RAM available for viewing content on this device. WWW pages with Flash content are tested on computers which have much more memory than the PSP. It's very easy to have made Flash/HTML files which exceeds the memory capabilities of the new device.
- Flash files have an optimized download size, but expand in memory when played. This is precisely the opposite from the way video is handled. Flash uses sprites, little graphical symbols which are defined once and used repeatedly, changing position, size, compositing mode and more. A video has large total download costs, but once a frame is viewed it can be purged from memory and the next scene loaded. Flash has very small download costs, but we need to keep this entire symbol dictionary in memory throughout playback. Result: download size is less related to actual application memory in Flash than for video, so playability on PSP will vary significantly with the particular content being viewed.
- Some Flash files overwhelm the processor. Although the Sony PSP has a respectable processor clock, research in the field indicates that this is often throttled down for battery life. If a Flash site requests a very high framerate, or uses complex logic loops, then this may strain the device.
- The Adobe Flash Player distributed by Sony is based on a version 6.0 Player. This was released for computers back towards 2002, and most consumers have installed the version 7.0 and 8.0 Players since then. This means that websites have confidently moved into offering newer files, with more features available. I don't know a way to research this offhand, but I suspect that many, many websites currently offer Flash files which are not playable within a 6.0 generation Player.
- There's one more website wrinkle: Lots of sites try to auto-detect their visitors' capabilities and offer helpful advice on what to upgrade, or present alternate content to older machines. The sites you visit may behave differently if you visit in a browser which the site's authors did not anticipate.
- The Sony announcement mentions that "not all Flash 6.0 features are supported", but in practice I don't think this will be much of an issue... if you check the early documentation you'll see that most of these are browser capabilities, like printing or LiveConnect or different device codecs. These missing features are used in *some* WWW Flash-enhanced sites, but the basic core rendering engine does seem to have good support in the PSP environment.
That's the bad news -- visiting random websites may not render Flash content well. But on the good side we've now got a predictable rendering engine in universal deployment on the Sony PSP, so starting now we'll be able to develop content deliberately optimized for this new device.
(Compare what's already done in the mobile world, with the Adobe Flash Lite rendering engine... the key difference between Mobile Flash and PSP Flash is that the former has content optimized for mobile hardware, while the Sony PSP is trying to view WWW sites which were optimized for full-sized computers.)
FAQ (in the "Favorite Anticipated Questions" deacronymization, because it's hard for me to guess the most frequent questions today.... ;-)
(Q) I heard some other people made a Flash player, maybe that will work better?
(A) Speaking personally, I'm seeing a lot more companies advertising "Flash support", but this usually means that they can import a SWF file and render some parts of it. Sometimes these claims are grandiose; rarely is there any technical info to back it up. In this case, Sony has deployed an actual Adobe Flash Player to their entire customer base, so the issue of alternative renderers is moot.
(Q) Will Adobe be improving the Flash Player on Sony PSP?
(A) I don't know, but I sure hope so... one of the major goals right now is for Adobe to provide predictable media and interactivity capabilities across the range of the world's devices... to not interfere with each device's basic nature but to provide a media layer that designers and developers can rely upon to render their work. Adobe works with Sony in many areas, and I'd like to see further work continue myself. Haven't seen any public announcements yet, though.
(Q) What can I do if a favorite site won't play?
(A) I'm not sure on this one yet... there is talk on PSP sites about ways to play content out of the browser, but I can't evaluate this conversation yet. I'd like to beef up this section of the FAQ; any tips?
(Q) The PSP has some games which play great, so why is this one Flash game so sucky?
(A) You're right, the PSP is capable of very high performance. But the best games are designed and tested for that device, take advantage of its strengths, minimize its weaknesses. Most Flash content we see right now has been designed for a totally different class of machine, so some examples will likely look really bad on a different device. But now that we've got the Flash Player engine on the PSP we can test against this device during development... there's a lot of really creative Flash professionals out there, and now they've got the keys to the highway. Future's looking good.
Some general references (and my apologies in advance for not crediting these links!):
ExtremeTech's PSP Media Guide March 2005. Primer on memory sticks, handling digital photographs, MPEG-4, etc.
Geek.com explains how the CPU speed in the PSP is throttled down for better battery life.
Web Design for Sony PSP, Oct 05, focuses on getting WWW content to render better in this browser.
Sony PSP Web Design Primer, Jan 06, offers a readable introduction to the display capabilities of the device.
Developing Web Sites and Applications for Sony PSP has some technical details I haven't seen elsewhere.
PSPUpdates links to a technique for playing Flash files outside of the browser. I have not investigated this, and do not yet have any useful context of my own to offer.
Comment policy: I'm really concerned about making this particular weblog entry useful for PSP owners who may not know much about Flash, and so I'll be fairly ruthless in culling out issues better discussed elsewhere. I'll also be revising my body text throughout the week, so this document will be in major flux for awhile.
Got more advice on viewing Flash-enhanced WWW sites in the Sony PSP? I'd appreciate 'em in comments here, thanks!
First written: 5pm PDT, Thu Apr 27 2006
Last update: 8pm PDT, Thu 0427 [PSPUpdates.com link, text edits]
Posted by JohnDowdell at April 27, 2006 05:06 PM
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Comments
There's some info here about the PSP browser's tab system
http://testing.onlytherightanswers.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=29
To maximize the amount of memory availble, it's a good idea to make sure the other browser tabs are empty.
Some users are reporting that reducing the browser cache size makes more memory available, and that running flash files from the memory stick does the same. I can understand why that might work, however, I haven't perceived a difference with the content I've tested using either of those techniques.
(JD - Feel free to edit/remove this comment as better knowledge is created)
Posted by: Alexander McCabe at April 27, 2006 08:12 PM
Since the PSP doesn't stream and if you wanted to load and unload a swf movieclip playing back in a psp browser... you would think that by doing this you would gain back memory... but it doesn't seem to free up any space. I thought it might "dump" the old movie from memory on unload, but it doesn't.
anyone have any ideas on how to purge memory like this?
I also seem to have more success with the cache off than on.
and... one of the only sites I've seen thus far that's talking specifically about flash for psp is arcomics.com - while I think they are on the right track - but they are using a one size fits all approach which is working, but perhaps it would be better if they created specifically for the smaller stage size of a PSP.
Of course if you ran it on your computer it will be "tiny" in comparison to your screen real estate... or if you run something full screen it may look awful if it uses bitmaps/jpegs.
just thoughts...
Posted by: ganjin at April 28, 2006 03:01 PM
Gregg Wygonik has observations as a Flash coder troubleshooting the play of desktop-oriented SWFs -- audio quality, interaction input differences, fonts available on the device, more.
Update: Followup report from Gregg, and David Williamson has hands-on info too.
Posted by: John Dowdell at May 3, 2006 09:41 PM
Hi there
We just launched a sister site for fingertime.com, dedicated to free PSP flash games:
http://ftpsp.com/
We're converting some of our existing games to PSP format (screen size/optimised for playback as much as possible) and we'll be creating new content for it in the coming weeks.
From a development point of view, while the PSP might not have as much RAM or speed as you'd like for Flash playback, it's great to have a new platform to develop on with just one browser, one screensize, and one set of limitations!
I'm a firm believer that constraint breeds creativity, so it's going to be interesting to see what developers can squeeze out of that little black brick.
Posted by: Pete at May 5, 2006 01:24 AM
As far as I understand it's better for developers but not for the targeted audience?
Posted by: Helen at May 18, 2006 03:19 AM
Keep an eye out for a sight call Folder6psp.tk, its not officailly launched yet, but will be soon. It is a flash version of the popular site www.folder6.tk, and has much to offer for psp users. We have been developing it for a few weeks now, and is in the final stages. so keep a eye out for it, coz this site is gonna rock your PSP!
Posted by: jonny at May 19, 2006 02:00 PM
Keep an eye out for a sight call Folder6psp.tk, its not officailly launched yet, but will be soon. It is a flash version of the popular site www.folder6.tk, and has much to offer for psp users. We have been developing it for a few weeks now, and is in the final stages. so keep a eye out for it, coz this site is gonna rock your PSP!
Posted by: Andrew at May 19, 2006 02:01 PM
folder6psp.tk is a little bit wrong for the 2 above entrys the site is being launched as folderpsp.tk but i will ensure anyone who accidently uses folder6psp.tk get redirected so anyway is good but when i get the second name sorted but for now its www.folderpsp.tk thankz for mentioning us
Posted by: Tobias at May 27, 2006 05:52 AM
i really want the psp to improve there flash player will they do it soon? Cause i like this web site youtube.com that has videos and i can never watch them.
[jd sez: Sorry, Joe, I think not yet... if I remember the Sony docs correctly this first release on their device used the earlier Flash Player 6, and I think that YouTube tests for a later version of the engine. I'm not sure what feedback routes Sony offers PSP owners, but letting them know you want more abilities would be strongest.]
Posted by: joe pucci at July 7, 2006 06:59 AM
they took out all streaming capabilities on purpose. It was done to increase sales of their location free media streaming utility.
Sony's excuse is that there is not enough memory to include all the codes; yet, all they would need to do is enable certain codecs, or make it so the codecs can be pulled from the memmory card, and voila... we would be able to watch streaming video without all hassle of converting to mp4.
THe same could be done for the flash player... we could have at least 7 with all the bells and whistles enabled just by pulling from the memory card.
I also wish to add that the browser should be storing media in the available space on the damn memory stick, before giving the out of memory error.
[jd sez: Sounds like mindreading to me -- assuming that the knowledge one knows is all the knowledge which exists.]
Posted by: Anthony at July 11, 2006 02:24 AM
it must be a good experience to viewing flash on psp, i also enjoy it!
Posted by: Kurt Granroth at September 5, 2006 05:35 PM
can someone please tell me how to make flash work on the psp and tell me where to download the files from
[jd sez: SWF rendering is included in recent PSP firmware updates. Check Sony site for info on their setup and advice.]
and tell me where to get the new devhook installer from
if u know anything let me no my email add is
pakiboy_sohail@hotmail.com
Posted by: psp786 at January 10, 2007 09:23 AM
i like this website
Posted by: jason at March 4, 2007 06:28 PM
Are there any other sites like psponme.com that have Flash games for PSP?
Posted by: malmedia at March 6, 2007 10:02 PM
Yes theres a few that are similar to www.psponme.com www.pspflashgaming.com www.psp411.com www.liquidarcade.com http://www.freewebs.com/psp117/pspdownloads.htm and also the one mentioned above www.ftpsp.com
Posted by: Leatherface at March 8, 2007 04:46 PM
i suck with online stuff so they might have mentioned this already but how do you watch youtube videos?
Posted by: cj at March 26, 2007 08:23 PM
When I go to a website it always install adobe I try to download it on my Psp but it wont let me.
Posted by: Peden at May 26, 2007 10:56 PM
Name some PSP friendly .SWF Video clip websites?
Posted by: leigh at May 28, 2007 06:14 PM
You can't view video directly through the current PSP Flash browser plug-in. But you can use an online convertor with your PSP http://www.vixy.net or you can download videos already formated for the PSP at http://www.guba.com/home_free or http://vidoe.connect
Posted by: Mal at August 2, 2007 07:25 PM
I have little experience programming Flash on PSP, but but I have many questions. Сould you advise me where I can take good information on this?
[jd sez: I don't know... this blog entry was written a year-and-a-half ago, and I imagine the search engine which brought you here would reveal info from people who actually do SWF-on-PSP work on a regular basis.]
Posted by: Alex, developer at October 1, 2007 11:14 PM
how can i watch shows and stuff if doesnt allow me to download the flash player, can u help
Posted by: robert at January 21, 2008 11:48 PM
i cant watch you tube videos HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[jd sez: Well, let's see, we've already confirmed you have access to a computer....]
Posted by: jake at January 27, 2008 11:53 AM
were can i find a couple of websites were i can get a up to date flash player for psp so i can watch videos right on the psp like you tube, newgrounds and myspace?
[jd sez: I think it's Sony which is supplying the ability, with their firmware updates.]
Posted by: kevin at February 13, 2008 08:42 PM