🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov6.114936.11994@waikato.ac.nz>, ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
> A number of people seem to believe that QuickTime 1.5 includes speedups for
> playing back existing movies. Let's get this quite clear: this is *NOT* true.
> I've noticed that scaling movies to half- and double-size works better,
> but you are not going to see any improvements in playing back existing movies
> at their normal size.
> 
> The big speed improvement comes in the new Compact Video compressor. However,
> to take advantage of this, you must recreate your movies using the new
> compressor. Decompressing your existing movies and recompressing them with
> Compact Video will work, but you're going to lose image quality. For best
> results, you should go back to your original image sources to recreate the
> movies.
> 
> Just for interest, here's a list of the important new features of QuickTime 1.5,
> as best as I can determine from the information currently available:

  [feature list deleted to save bandwidth]
 
> Lawrence D'Oliveiro                       fone: +64-7-856-2889
> Computer Services Dept                     fax: +64-7-838-4066
> University of Waikato            electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz
> Hamilton, New Zealand    37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00

Do you have/have you seen the document "QuickHit Delta 7"? I picked it
up on AppleLink, or ftp.apple.com, or somewhere like that. According to
it, the data handler has been enhanced to work better over CD or
networks. And I assume those changes would work the same to give a
marginal improvement on playback from disk. But, to be honest, I can't
really tell the difference, and haven't tried to benchmark it yet. It
also doesn't say exactly what they changed-- it could be modifications
to the scheduler or something like that that simply allows it to drop
frames more gracefully. I really don't know; I wish the 1.5 developer's
kit would hurry up and come out.

Here's the relevant stuff from "QuickHit Delta 7":

   Better CD playback

   Playback from CD is better. Enhancements were made to the low level data
   handler which optimized data transfer from CD. As far as CD players, if
   you combine QuickTime 1.5 and a Performa 600, you have the ultimate CD
   performance! 

   Better network performance

   The data handler was also optimized to perform better over an Ethernet
   network running AppleShare.  With AppleShare 3.0 and QuickTime 1.5, your
   movies will play back better.

The big question still left open is what they mean by "better".
Better does not necessarily mean faster.

Scott

-------------------------------------------------
Scott Kelley, sakelley@ucsd.edu, (619) 534-8560
Multimedia Interactive Learning Laboratory (MILL)
Department of Biology, UC San Diego
-------------------------------------------------