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3 total messages Started by Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato Uni... Thu, 05 Nov 1992 22:49
What's New in QuickTime 1.5
#712
Author: Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato Uni...
Date: Thu, 05 Nov 1992 22:49
51 lines
3568 bytes
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:

* The new Compact Video compressor, already mentioned. With an image size of
  360*240 pixels, you can get 10 frames per second playback on an LC, up to
  over 40 frames per second on a Quadra 950. Naturally smaller images will
  give even faster rates. The main drawback is that the compression stage is
  very slow.
* Real-time dithering on playback now works at 1 bit per pixel. You don't have
  to recreate your movies to take advantage of this one!
* Includes a standard "compression dialog" component. This lets a program
  ask the user for compression settings in a standard way, with preview
  options and so on. Also lets the programmer easily create a compression
  sequence based on settings specified by the user in the dialog.
* The "Things!" utility also reports the presence of a "progress dialog"
  component, but I have no documentation on this.
* Includes a decompressor for Kodak Photo CD images.
* The video digitizer interface adds support for digitizers which are capable
  of directly returning compressed images. This isn't just useful for high-end
  hardware like the RasterOps MoviePak or the SuperMac DigitalFilm; it can even
  be useful for a low-end card like the SuperMac VideoSpigot, which prefers
  to return data in YUV format rather than RGB format.
* Movie import/export components. Standard ones are provided for importing
  PICS files, and converting between QuickTime movies and various sound file
  formats, among others. And you can add your own. Check out the new MoviePlayer
  program from ftp.apple.com; this replaces the old Simple Player. It will
  open a PICS file, and convert it to a QuickTime movie for you!
* A new "text" standard media type. I have no documentation on its exact
  capabilities, but it looks like you can add captions to movies, with simple
  scrolling animations.
* Support for custom media types! You don't even have to write a new media
  handler entirely from scratch, as you can delegate a lot of functions
  (particularly scheduling ones) to the Apple-provided "generic" media handler.

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
Re: What's New in QuickTime 1.5
#721
Author: Daniel Schwabe
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1992 15:46
13 lines
1271 bytes
In article <1992Nov6.114936.11994@waikato.ac.nz> Lawrence D'Oliveiro,
ldo@waikato.ac.nz writes:
>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:

There is a file at ftp.apple.com, in the quicktime directory, (I don't
remember the name exactly, it has "Delta 7" in it...) which contains all
the new additions in QT 1.5

Daniel Schwabe                  Dept. de Informatica, PUC-Rio
Tel: +55-21-529 9544/274 4449   R. M. de S. Vicente, 225
Fax: +55-21-511 5645            Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22453-900, Brasil
Re: What's New in QuickTime 1.5
#729
Author: Scott Kelley
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1992 21:47
60 lines
3331 bytes
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
-------------------------------------------------
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