April 98


April 28, 1998

Apple has released HyperCard 2.4; you can read more about it and its extensive support for QuickTime, as well as download an updater from Apple's HyperCard page.

Apple has also released to the education market a G3 All-in-one Macintosh, which includes the Avid Cinema hardware and software for QuickTime capture and editing. Read about it in an Apple press release, "Apple Brings Video Editing to the Classroom."

Apple has posted an AudioTuneUp 2.0; it fixes bugs related to recording audio on certain Macs; you can read theinfo text or download the the software.

MyVidCap 2.2 and MyVidEdit 2.2 have been released. These are $25 shareware capture and editing tools which are AppleScriptable and offer some features not found in other applications.(For example, MyVidEdit can apply QuickTime 3.0 transitions between clips.) These tools are available at the MyVidCap and MyVidEdit page.

MacFixIt is tracking a bunch of QuickTime 3.0 problems; the reports are in the April 24th edition.

MacWEEK has a few items of interest this week . There's an article about Kaidan's new object rig and an article about new streaming technology for uncompressed video. There is also an excellent opinon piece on QuickTime licensing issues. And, for those interested in a quirky rumor: this week's Mac the Knife column is reporting a rumor that Macromedia isn't going to finish Final Cut (the long awaited video editing tool), and that Apple may buy it.

A Wrinkle in Time 2, the collection of QuickTime VR panoramas shot all over the world last month, is completely up. Check the Wrinkle 2 page.

The MacTimes State of the Macintosh page has a piece titled "The Correlation of Tux and the QT Penguin" covers the QuickTime penguin's history. (If you're interested, read this article soon; the page is changed regularly.)


April 21, 1998

Apple has posted some additional QuickTime-related articles in their Technical Infomation Library:

QuickTime: Differences between v2.5, v3 Standard & v3 Pro

QuickTime 3: AVI "required compressor could not be found"

QuickTime 3: Late Breaking Tips

Harry Norr has written a review of QuickTime 3 in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Apple is one of the partners of Netscape's newly announced Open Studio, a Web site and membership program for Internet content developers. The Open Studio Home Page has lots of links to good tutorials on Web technologies, as well as links to information about joining the program (which gets you more information, and discounts on software), and a contest in which you can win a loaded PowerBook G3. You may also want to read a press release about Open Studio.

A Wrinkle in Time 2, the collection of QuickTime VR panoramas shot all over the world last month, is supposed to be posted in full this week. Check the Wrinkle 2 page.

Pinnacle System has released two driver updates for its DC30 and DV3000 Macintosh cards. Get them at the Pinnacle Mac software page.

CNN has a "Windows 98 crashes during Gates' Comdex demo" page, where you can click to view a QuickTime movie of the demo. (However, if you have a slow connection, we don't recommend downloading the movie, since even the smaller version is over a megabyte and the footage isn't that great...)


April 14, 1998

Another week with lots of stuff to report...

For Director users waiting for that QT3 Xtra, Michael Seery has a post on the QTVR list with an update about the QT 3 Xtra, as well as a post which lists the tentative Lingo properties for the QT 3 Xtra.

MacFixit's April 9th Archive has tips on avoiding the annoying "Get QT 3 Pro" movie, as well as techniques for saving movies from Web pages even if you don't have QuickTime 3 Pro.

There are new versions of Nodester (QTVR panorama software) and Widgetizer (QTVR Object movie software), both of which come with QuickTime 3 Pro.(And if you already have Nodester 1.0 you can get the upgrade including QT 3 Pro for $29.95, what you'd normally pay for QT 3 Pro by itself!) For info about the products and prices, as well as downloadable demos, go to RoundAbout Logic's What's New page.

There's a QuickTime 3 FAQ in the Apple Tech Info Library that answers questions about obtaining QuickTime 3, upgrading to QuickTime 3 Pro, and getting support.

A MacWeek article titled "QuickTime 3 license terms irk developers" covers comments from Apple and small developers who feel they're being hurt by the new QuickTime license.

The QuickTime Gazette has a pointer to the RobinHood Xtra page, which contains info about and a download for a Director Xtra that installs the Get QuickTime Pro movie, and then (optionally) removes it. This is to help developers meet the terms of Apple's license for QuickTime distribution.

VersionTracker this week noted new versions of a few QuickTime-related apps:

The PlayMovie CMM (a contextual menu module that lets you play QT movies directly in the Finder) has been upgraded to 1.1.0.

The Movie Utilities CMM (which comes with a PlayMovie CMM, a ConvertToMovie CMM, a MovieConverter CMM, and a MovieMerger CMM) has been updated to version 1.2.

Barbabatch (a batch sound file converter for Mac) 2.3 adds support for the Qualcomm Pure Voice compressor that's built into QT 3.

There's a Sorenson vs. Cinepak page that shows a movie compressed two ways: one with Sorenson and QDesign (new codecs in QT 3) and one with Cinepak and IMA (frequently used compressors from before QT 3). There are also tips for using Sorenson and QDesign. (The movie used is the QuickTime Sample movie that's included in the QT 3 installation; it's not really the best test case, since it's computer generated graphics rather than video data, which is where Cinepak and Sorenson excel. On the other hand, we think the conclusion--that the new codecs are superior--is accurate anyway.)

There's a (fairly) new Sorenson Video Codec Tips page at Terran's CodecCentral. The page mostly concerns the Developer edition of Sorenson, but it's pretty interesting reading if you want to understand more about this codec.

Joel Cannon has started a couple of QTVR WebRings, one for Web sites containing QTVR samples and one for Web sites containing QTVR technical info. The idea of a WebRing is that all sites in the ring contain a link to another site in the ring, but you can see a listing of all the sites in each of these QTVR rings at the QuickTime VR WebRing page and the QuickTime VR Technology WebRing page. (And if you're interested in adding your site to one of the rings, you can submit sites that have QTVR samples at the QuickTime VR WebRing Site Submission page or submit sites that have QTVR technical info at the QuickTime VR Technology WebRing Site Submission page; you'll hear back from Joel about whether your site was accepted.)

MacWeek's 4/9 Macintouch column
is about QuickTime 3, and has some insightful comments about Apple's QuickTime strategy.

If you want to find out how QuickTime fared at NAB last week check out MacWeek's "NAB focuses on the desktop" article (run-down of products and updates announced) and MacWeek's "Technologies spar in Vegas" article (covers some of the competing technologies shown or announced).

There's a MacCentral interview with the head of Apple's QuickTime for Java team, in which some questions about the significance of QuickTime for Java are answered.

Our apologies for the fact that this page didn't go up promptly last week. Our ISP was having server problems again...

Judy & Robert


April 7, 1998

We have created PDF files of the documentation for MoviePlayer 3.0 (These are the html documents that are available on Apple's QuickTime web site; we wrote them and Apple has given us permission to post them here, after a number of requests for a single downloadable document.) Here's the Mac version and here's the Windows version; each is about 1.2 megs. (The only links that work are on the top level table of contents page.Our apologies.)

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show is this week in Las Vegas, NV and there are a lot of media reports and press releases surrounding the show:

There's a short MacWeek article, "Jobs pumps up QuickTime 3.0 at NAB keynote", and a longer Wired News article, "Jobs to Broadcasters: I Got Your Technology"

Apple's got a press release about all the industry support for QuickTime 3.

Terran announced a new version (3.0) of Media Cleaner Pro; read the announcement of Media Cleaner Pro 3.0. Also, if you upgrade to our purchase this version, you'll get QuickTime 3 Pro, free. Get information about this video compression and optimization tool atTerran's Media Cleaner Pro 3.0 page.

Terran is also selling the Sorenson Developer Edition (the professional version of the low bit-rate QuickTime compressor) and the Pro Edition of the QDesign Music Codec (the professional version of the low bit-rate sound/music compressor) . You can get information about bundles including Media Cleaner Pro 3.0 and one or both compressors at Terran's Media Cleaner Pro and Sorenson Video Codec page. (Though it looks like MCP 3.0 won't actually be out for another month.)

There's a Radius press release announcing the 1.5 version of EditDV. (EditDV is the software used with the MotoDV system for editing video in the DV format.)

Media 100 also had several announcements about new products, all based on QuickTime 3. You can read

Having problems downloading QuickTime 3.0? Go to MacFixIt's "QuickTime 3.0: a closer look" page for some helpful tips.

If you go to Christian Graham's QuickTime VR Tutorial page, and click on the Tools link, you'll find a QuickTime 3.0 embed tag wizard, which helps you generate the proper html for embedding QuickTime and QuickTime VR movies on a web page.

There's a MacWEEK review of Premiere 5 (beta).

You can begin to view QuickTime VR panoramas from Wrinkle 2, the recent event during which photographers from around the world shot panoramas at the same time (the Spring Equinox, March 20th/21st). The idea is that they'll all be up on Earth Day (April 22), but until then you can see a "Pano a Day" if you go to the Wrinkle 2 page.

Microsoft introduced yet another multimedia file format, seemingly in response to the release of QuickTime 3.0. You can check out Microsoft's Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) page. Also, Macintouch has posted Charles Wiltgen's reply to this new AAF format.

There's been a lot of noise from content developers unhappy with the new QuickTime licensing policies. (See MacWeek article, "QuickTime licensing upsets developers"). We're hoping for official news of revised licensing terms from Apple, but in the meantime there's a QuickTime 3 Developer Q&A from Charles Wiltgen that answers some questions about licensing.

Another thing developers are unhappy about is the fact that the free version of the QuickTime plug-in won't let users save movies on a Web page. A post on the QuickTime-VR list, "How to make a download link..." has the html for a workaround (i.e.so developers can make it easy for viewers to save a movie).

And there are new releases of several shareware tools:

QuickMovie, a $10 shareware tool for creating QuickTime movies from still images is at the Chaotic Software's QuickMovie page.

MyVidCap 2.1 and MyVidEdit 2.1 (shareware QuickTime capture and editing tools) are available at the MyVidCap and MyVidEdit page.

QuickEditor, a shareware QuickTime editing tool, available for both Mac and Windows is at the QuickEditor page.


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