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.)
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...)
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
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
- a press release about the new version of the Media 100 editing software (4.5)
- a press release about Media 100 products for Windows NT (in the $2K to $5K range; won't be out until late summer)
- a press release about a new product called Finish for Windows NT (a high-end editingsuite)
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.