Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!mips!spool.mu.edu!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!dewey.lbl.gov!mspolin From: mspolin@dewey.lbl.gov (Mathew Spolin [summer intern]) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.multimedia Subject: Re: CDTV Motion Video Message-ID: <14805@dog.ee.lbl.gov> Date: 28 Jun 91 22:03:30 GMT References: <1991Jun18.144308.19783@en.ecn.purdue.edu> <1991Jun28.192059.27025@en.ecn.purdue.edu> Reply-To: mspolin@dewey.lbl.gov (Mathew Spolin [summer intern]) Organization: Human Genome Center at LBL Lines: 41 X-Local-Date: Fri, 28 Jun 91 15:03:30 PDT Amigas are cool! (Right, `Art'?) Bill Warner has made some great, important points about how just generally BAD Quicktime for the mac is. I've read your postings about how its not "close to TV," how it needs "special hardware," and how, in YOUR glorious opinion, it doesn't count as full motion video at all: "I'm SORRY," as you said. You're doing some great evangelizing for your computer, religion, etc... but you may have missed the forest for the trees. Computers are, after all, only tools. Do you believe that making a common data type for multimedia that incorperates video, audio, and animation, insulating developers from the hardware and software compression schemes, and making this a part of the system software and thereby all programs that run on that platform is a BAD idea? Computers are going to get faster, and more capable to deal with on-the-fly compression and decompression. The way Quicktime was designed, hardware and software advances such as this will not require a new file and data structure to handle the improved media source. Though Quicktime is a software standard, it offers important hooks to hardware devices that lets developers support many different devices (including some that haven't been created yet) without writing an extra line of code. Media formats that require specialized propreitary hardware such as Intel's Digital Video Interactive are less capable in this respect. Of course, the Intel board does FANTASIC presentaion-level video at CD-ROM data transfer rates, on a full 512 x 480 pixel full-color screen. But remember: Amigas are cool! What video compression/decompression options are there for the Amiga? Im sure there are a number of them, I would just like to what what they are and what capabilities they provide. --Matt Spolin