Directions for how to add sound to QTVR panoramas can be found at David
Burket's "Sound in a QTVR Panorama page. (The sound is provided by a sprite
track written by Bill Meikle, who's also the VRScript guy: check out Meikle's Unofficial VRScript Support
Page --he's got lots of new demos showing what can be done with VRScript.)
There's been a lot of noise in the last week about Microsoft's competition tactics,
including rumors that Microsoft tried to get Apple not to market QuickTime to Windows
users. A good overview can be found at the July
23rd thessaSource archive.
At Apple's Technical Information Library (TIL) there's a new technote
about the QuickTime MPEG extension's incompatibility with 3rd party cards
and a Q
& A on the PowerBook G3 series and DVD-Video.
There's a MacWeek article
about VR Toolbox, a new company that will have QTVR pano, object, and scene
creation tools.
An updater for HyperCard 2.4.1 is available at a HyperCard
2.4.1 Update ftp site.
There's a message
at the QuickTime-Announce archive listing anti-virus utilities that deal with the
the AutoStart 9805 worm. (You should definitely know about this if you've
got QuickTime 2 or later installed; read the MacFixIt
"All About AutoStart 9805 Worm" page.)
We're back! We've just finished "QuickTime and MoviePlayer Pro 3: A Visual QuickStart Guide", which should be on the streets in four to six weeks. If you've sent email to us, we hope to respond within the week.
Judy and Robert
Here are what we consider the most significant and/or useful QuickTime-related
items from the last month:
There's a new version of QuickTime available (3.0.1) at the QuickTime
download page. If you haven't purchased QuickTime 3 Pro, you'll probably want
to download this, as its main new feature is that the QuickTime plug-in no longer
constantly plays the Get QuickTime Pro ad. If you have purchased Pro, you probably
don't need to take the time to download it.
The new software distribution agreement, for those who want to distribute
QuickTime 3 or QuickTime 3 Pro is available at the Apple
Developer News page. (For more info see our May 12 page
or a MacWeek
article from 6/12 titled "Apple releases new QT license") After you
return the completed agreement to Software Licensing, you'll be sent instructions
on how to get the developer versions of the new installers.
Radius is offering an entry-level version of it's EditDV software for free.You'll
need to have a Radius or Apple Firewire card.Go to the EditDV
Unplugged page.
The Iomega Buz card for the Mac finally came out. It's a $399 video capture
card, only for G3 PowerMacs, and comes with QuickTime 3 Pro and Adobe
Premiere 4.2 LE (with an option to upgrade to Premiere 5 for $199).Check out
the Buz for Apple PowerMac G3 page.
Media Cleaner Pro 3.0 is now shipping. This dedicated optimization and
compression tool is a must-have if you want your QuickTime movies to look
their absolute best. It also makes it easy to take advantage of the new QuickTime
3 features, such as alternate data rate movies, and text tracks which fire URLs.
The price is $359; $99 for upgrades ($199 from the EZ version) . See the Media
Cleaner 3.0 Product Info page for lots more info. You can download a demo version
at the Media Cleaner
3.0 Demo page.
For consumers with G3 PowerMacs with video I/O capabilities, there's a new
AVID Cinema product available. It's a $139 consumer-level capture and editing
software package. This one is software-only and has a JPEG codec that works in
conjunction with the G3 built-in video capture card.For more info, read a press
release, "Avid Announces Avid Cinema for the Power Macintosh G3" or
go to the Avid Cinema Products
page.
For the scripters among you, check out the beta of VideoScript, a new scripting
language that allows you to write scripts that automate many QuickTime-related tasks,
including capture, movement detection, adding effects, and other editing functions.
You'll find lots of info, a free download, documentation and sample scripts at the
VideoScript home page.
Media 100 will ship its QuickTime 3-compatible qx and qxc products for both
Mac and Windows. (At $2000 and $4000, these are the products at the low end of
their offerings.) These systems use Adobe Premiere 5 as their software interface
rather than the Media 100 software. You can read more in a Media
100 7/21 press release.
On the QuickTime VR front:
Baron Sekiya has put up a page with instructions for putting watermarks on your QTVR image. (It's not a complicated process, but if you've never done this before, you'll like this page because it's got screen shots.)
Pro Rental, a company that rents QTVR equipment, has a QTVR Resource Page which includes a short tutorial for making object movies. It's geared towards using their own PhaseOne products, but worth a quick browse.
For Windows 95 and NT, there are two stitching products in the $50 range that can output as QTVR. PanaVue has Visual Stitcher; info and links to download a free demo version can be found at the Visual Stitcher page.VideoBrush will soon release a version of its Panorama product that can support QTVR; read a press release about Panorama 2.0.
mTropolis users needing QuickTime 3 support may want to go to the
AX Logic home page where you can download a
beta version of th AX QuickTime Kit.
Digital Renaisssance has a public beta
version of their T.A.G. editor for the Mac OS and QuickTime 3. This is a tool that
lets you create interactive hot spots on your video.
Many other product announcements can be found at the QuickTime-Announce
List Archive. Some that we think are most interesting are:Totally
Hip WebPainter 3 (an animation creation tool), Duck's
TrueMotion 2 (a good CD-ROM codec), Adrenaline
Charts Pro (a program for creating dynamic charts), GoLive
CyberStudio 3.1 (a Web page authoring tool that has QT 3 support).
There's an article
titled "Apple Computer Romances the Stone", at Digital Chicago. It's
a good overview article about QuickTime 3.