The Little QuickTime Page will be on hiatus until August 1, 2000, which will mark the beginning of our 5th year of publishing the Little QuickTime Page!
If you'll be at the Macworld New York Conference, July 18th to 21st, we hope to see you. There's a bunch of QuickTime-related talks happening at the conference. Check out the Digital Video and Streaming Media Track Schedule for a slew of QuickTime-related Pro Conference talks. For the User Conference, there's a smaller number: Digital Video Everywhere, iMovie Magic, The Apple DV Editing Solutions, Desktop Movies in the Classroom, and Intro to QuickTime on the Web (our talk!)
For even more on Real's licensing of QuickTime, see a MacCentral article "What's the appeal of the Apple/Real deal?"
Looking for QuickTime software? Here are some choices:
BTV, shareware QuickTime capture and playback software for the Mac, has been renamed BTV View, and the company has introduced BTV Edit, a tool that has all the features of BTV View, plus simple editing features. Find more info, and download the software at the BTV web site.
iCanStream has a page where you can download free DV tools: FreeDV (a free version of Digital Origin's IntroDV) for Windows, and EditDV Unplugged and Media Cleaner EZ for Macintosh. Go to iCanStream's Free Video Tools page.
And if you're wondering whether you want to use EditDV at all, there's a MacUser UK review of EditDV 2.0.
Check out DDPTV.com, a new internet webcasting site providing news and entertainment via QuickTime Streaming.
Rhino Handmade, part of Rhino Records, has posted a request for proposal (RFP) for someone to create QuickTime streaming song player application. If you're a developer, or simply interested in what Rhino is up to, read the RFP at Rhino Handmade Streaming Voice Page.
A few QuickTime VR items this week:
Apple's Hardware Gallery has QuickTime VR object movies of Apple hardware products. (Nice to see Apple using their own technology to market their products.)
There's a new utility called SwingTime, that exports a series of images from a QuickTime VR panorama. Go to the Empire Visualization web site for more info and to purchase this $113 tool.
If you have a need to display QuickTime VR panos using Shockwave/Director (rather than using QuickTime itself), and you're willing to pay for it, check out the Pseudo QTVR page.
An article at MacWeek, "Kaidan, MGI team up for Mirage", talks about the announcement of a hardware and software kit for creating panoramas, in QuickTime VR as well as other VR formats.
Aurora Video Systems has a new version (2.2) of their Igniter Drivers. VersionTracker has a More Info page re. Igniter that's got details and links to the download site.
Apple's got a new web space, Desktop Movies in Education, which has examples, lesson plans, tips, and information about the educational value of integrating desktop video in the curriculum.
Apple announced the QuickTime Live conference which will be held in Beverly Hills from October 9 through 12. For more details, go to Apple's QuickTime Live page.
More commentary on Real's licensing of QuickTime can be found in an article at Red Herring, "Realnetworks and Apple form halfway alliance"
VersionTracker reports the following QuickTime-related updates this week:
Version 1.6.1 of EditDV Unplugged (a FireWire capture and editing tool). Details and links to the download page are at the VersionTracker EditDV More Info page.
Version 2.0 of FinalChapter (for adding and editing chapter list tracks). Details and links to a download page are at the VersionTracker FinalChapter More Info page.
Version 2.1b16 of LiveStage Pro (for creating interactive QuickTime movies). Details and links are at the VersionTracker LiveStage Pro page.
Beta 10 of LiveSlideShow, a really easy-to-use tool for creating interactive QuickTime slideshows, is now available (for Macs) for download from Totally Hip's LiveSlideShow ftp page.
Version 1.2 of QDesign's MVP, which lets you create, play, and manage MP3 and QDesign Music files is now available. You can get more info and download a free version of MVP for either MacOS and Windows at the MVP site.
Version 3.41 of Play it Cool (a shareware Mac QuickTime movie player). Get it at the About Play It Cool page.
Version 2.0 of MakeRefMovie (Apple's free tool for creating reference movies) is finally (again) up at Apple's QuickTime Tools and Utilities page. (This is essentially the same as the 2.0 version that was up about a year ago, that we wrote about in our QuickTime Pro 4 Book. It was replaced last summer by an older 1.x version, which remained on the web site until recently.)
Luke Wonderly, the creator of Virtual Reality Bakersfield (which has won a number of awards), has posted, on the VRBakersfield Tips and Techniques page, steps detailing his procedure for creating QuickTime VR panos from images shot with an Olympus Digital 2500 images, using Photoshop and QuickTime VR Authoring Studio.
There's a new media player available, that will play back QuickTime movies, as well as Real and Windows Media. Check out the ChoiceCaster web site.
StudentReel.com is a web site where students can stream their QuickTime movies free of charge.
Real Networks has licensed Apple's QuickTime Streaming Server to be incorporated into Real Server 8. This means that if you are running Real Server 8, you can also serve QuickTime movies to the QuickTime Player and/or plug-in. Both companies have also signed on to the "Ask, Tell, & Help" initiative; this is designed to help alleviate some of the problems that happen during the use of media playback software. You can read about both agreements in an Apple press release. Some industry commentary can be found in a MacWeek.com article, "Apple, Real announce QuickTime deal", in an article at The Register, "MPEG-4 progress prompts Apple, Real collaboration", and in the 6/13 Coop's Corner piece at ZDNet.
There's a MacCentral article, "Totally Hip LiveSlideShow to have sponsored version", which describes Totally Hip's new distribution scheme for their easy-to-use tool for creating interactive QuickTime slideshows. (The basic idea is that individual developers can freely distribute LiveSlideShow with their logo, getting more copies of the tool out, and showing off QuickTime's interactive capabilities.)
There's a Macintouch Reader Report on the QuickTime DV codec. (The QuickTime DV codec is the codec that's built into QuickTime that allows compression and decompression of DV streams, i.e. those captured from DV cameras. There's been talk about the quality of this codec, and how it compares to other DV codecs.)
Version 1 of the iPIX Support QuickTime Component (which lets users view iPIX panoramic images in any QuickTime-enabled application) is available at the iPIX QuickTime Component page. More info is at a MacCentral article, " iPIX images and QT getting to be good buddies".
Apple and Terran are offering a bundle of Final Cut Pro, Media Cleaner Pro, the Developer Edition of the Sorenson Video codec, the Professional Edition of the QDesign Music Codec, Sorenson Broadcaster and Terran's "How to Produce High Quality QuickTime" guide. The price for all this is $1,848 at the Apple Store, quite a savings over the price you'd pay if you bought these items individually. (Educational pricing is available on the same bundle and is also very good.) More details are at a 6/13 Business Wire story.
Check out an article on the Marlin Project, the port of the QuickTime Streaming Server for Mac OS 9.
The latest book on QuickTime, "QuickTime for the Web" is finally out! (We had a chance to see this book before it was printed; it looks to be a really good resource for lots of different folks.) You can order it at Amazon's page for "QuickTime for the Web" or at the Morgan Kaufman "QuickTime for the Web" page. Steven Gulie, the author, has set up a web page that will contain updates and corrections
More commentary on QuickTime vs. RealSystem, and QuickTime's future is at big g media and an analysis piece at MacUser UK, "Slow, Slow, QuickTime Slow"
A short Hands-on Report on the XLR8 Interview product at Macs Only! is worth reading if you're in the market for an inexpensive (under $100) analog video capture device.
Apple has updated the FireWire driver for Macs with FireWire. Read more and get the software at article 11719 of Apple's Software Downloads library.
An update to version 1.2.5 of Final Cut Pro is available at the Final Cut Pro download page.There's more on the previously reported compatibility problems with QuickTime 4.1.2 and Final Cut Pro in a 2-Pop.com article,"Answers From Apple".
According to VersionTracker, Apple has updated the AppleScripts for QuickTime Player. (Go to the VersionTracker QuickTime 4 scripts More Info page.)
Apple has a tutorial on QuickTime for Java at their Developer QT for Java tutorial page. (It's aimed at intermediate Java programmers.)
There's an article called "Lights, Camera, QuickTime!", about scripting QuickTime at Plug-in Central.
There's now a version (2.0.1) of the Darwin Streaming Server (technology for setting up a QuickTime streaming server) for Windows NT/2000 servers. You can get it (as well as version 2.0.1 for FreeBSD, Red Hat Linux, and Solaris) at the Apple Open Source- Darwin Streaming Server page.
Also, check out the Marlin Project; it's a QuickTime streaming server that runs on the Mac OS 8.x or 9.x!
Scott Myers at MacWEEK.com has written an article about the the Digital Hollywood conference in New York. Thearticle, "Digital Hollywood in the Big Apple" has info about the newest version of iShell (multimedia authoring tool) , as well as other QuickTime tidbits.
Apple U.K. is offering free seminars on QuickTime in Education, in June, in
London, Glasgow, and Manchester. More info is at an Apple
U.K. QuickTime in Education Seminar Series page.
A HyperCard-based, Mac-only utility for creating QuickTime text tracks is
at the 36n 121w site.
(Thanks to Stan Soria for alerting us to this one.)