Last week we told you about some problems with Avid Cinema. We
suggested that you check out Ted Landau's MacFixIt
page. MacFixIt has some more info about the problems as well as a reply from Glenn
McElhoe of Avid.
With QuickTime 2.5, Apple implemented a simple way to import graphics of
different file formats into various applications that support still images.
Graphics importers built into QuickTime 2.5 included Photoshop, SGI,
MacPaint, and others. Now, a third party developer, Sam Bushell, has created
an importer (installed as an extension) that can import PNG images.
(PNG, which stands for Portable Network Graphics, is a new format for the
web that will likely supplant GIF.) Apple's got more info and the
PNG importer at a special
PNG page.
There should be a new beta version of Apple's QuickTime browser plug-in
for Macintosh (1.1f1) as well as betas of the plug-in for Windows 3.1/95/NT,
all available from the QuickTime
beta software page.
For those who want to get started with QuickTimeVR, check out a Macworld
Online article on QTVR by Jim Heid, which covers how to make QTVR panoramas,
including a sidebar ("Economy-Class VR") with step-by-step instructions.
Also, there's QTVR
piece at Jim's "Heidsite", which has links to his panos, and
other QTVR-related sites (utilities, more samples, and panoramic camera
and tripod vendors.)
At Comdex last week, Apple pushed QuickTime and the QuickTime Media Layer
very hard. There's a MacWeek
story about the QuickTime Media Layer. And, Apple has a nice, simple page
explaining the QuickTime Media Layer.
Apple also talked more about version 2.5 for Windows and the industry
support behind it; see their 11/18
press release. In addition, Apple had more to say about the TriMedia
coprocessor cards (multimedia acceleration) that will be available for
Macs; check out David
Morgenstern's MacWeek story and Macworld
Online's story.
Joel Cannon, of Apple's QTVR team, has released a new tool for doing
QuickTime VR hotspots called VRL. This comes just in the nick
of time for those who want to use the capabilities of the new QuickTime
plug-in (now in beta) which allows URL hotspot-linking. You can
download a package at Joel's
QTVR Workbook. which includes VRL as well as a new version of the Make
QTVR Panorama tool (1.0b5). You'll also find a link there to the page
where you can get the beta plug-in.
Truevision this week put out a press
release stating that version 2.0 of their software will support "Universal
Motion-JPEG" (Motion-JPEG A or B). This means that you'll be able
to open Truevision-compressed movies on any computer running QuickTime
2.5, without Truevision's hardware.
Apple released something called QuickTime 2.5 Extras 1.0.1 at one
of their FTP
sites. This 4 MB package contains MoviePlayer 2.5 (with plug-ins), and
some sample movies (4 music movies, one movie that's a series
of still photos, and one that's a 3D animation in a video track).
If you're not interested in the samples, the package isn't worth dowloading,
since the software is the same as what you can find on the QuickTime FAQ
software page and Apple's QuickTime Software page.
There is a MacWeek
article about the QuickTime Media Layer (QTML) and QuickTime for Windows
2.5 . (The article doesn't really say too much that we haven't already
reported, but you may want to check it out anyway.)
There are a number of bugs with Avid Cinema. The MacFixIt
Home Page (Friday November 15th; scroll to 5th bullet) mentions this
and sends you to a page that gives you lots more info.
Comdex is this week. Expect a flurry of press releases and news.
It's a QuickTime VR week:
Apple released a beta of the next version (1.1) of the QuickTime browser
plug-in for MacOS computers. For QTVR users, the cool thing about this
version is that you can assign URLs to hotspots. It's got features
of interest to non-QTVR users, too: it supports more media types
(midi, aiff, mpeg, au, check list), more browsers (Navigator 2.x
and 3.x and Explorer 2.x and 3.x), and allows caching of QuickTime movies.
You can find the beta (1.1b1) on Apple's
software page.
Here are some sample pages using QuickTime VR and URL linking with the 1.1b1
of the plug-in:
http://solutions.apple.com/pub/quicktime-vr/Goodies/HotSpots/Hotspots.html
http://awi.aw.com/personal/erik/QTVRurlTest/QTVRnav.html
http://www.Wind-River.com/Multimedia/QTVR/Office2.html
http://www.turntable.com/vr
develop, Apple's developer publication, has an interesting
article on QuickDraw 3D and QuickTime VR. The article is fairly technical
but does refer to sample applications for turning 3DMF files into QuickTime
VR objects and panoramas. You can download an archive containing sample
code and the applications from an Apple
developer ftp server, it's 5.2 megabytes. You will need to have QuickDraw3D too.
Also, there's a new page put up by Delta
Centre for Learning Technologies, which allows you to search the
QuickTime VR list archives. And, Joel and Charles released yet another
beta (b6) of Sanity SaVR, their friendly front-end to the Quicktime
VR Authoring Tools; you can get it at the QuickTime
FAQ software page.
Netscape and Apple have released a new beta of CoolTalk
for the Macintosh based on Apple's QuickTime Conferencing. Apple
has a page
where you can read more and a page
where you can download the beta.
Joel Cannon and Charles Wiltgen have released a new beta (1.0b4) of Sanity
SaVR, a user-friendly front-end for the QuickTime VR Authoring
Tools. You can get it from the QuickTime
FAQ software page.
Paceworks Inc released 1.0b11 version
of Dancer. Dancer is an animation creation tool that makes extensive
use of QuickTime tracks.
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