Re: Quicktime

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <19970901002501.UAA18940@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
ZippedGS <zippedgs@aol.com> wrote:
>QuickTime uses a complex vector-quantization compression scheme, but a
>simple lookup-table decompression scheme. The problem however is that the
>throughput requirements may not be feasible on a GS. 

   So write a Quicktime -> Paintworks Animation converter; don't try
and unpack and playback at once. The major thing is that most movie
playbacks try and dither to increase the semblance of more
colors/resolution; such solutions are almost counterproductive on the
GS (and especially with Paintworks animations) where bandwidth to
video memory is at a serious premium (blame Apple for that drop to
1Mhz bus speeds on all video screen writes), and more dithering would
send the Paintworks 'compression' scheme into a spasm.

>I don't believe anybody here wants to wait for a 256/1000/1000000
>bit depth change to 16 or 256 multi-palette colors on a GS in 1000+
>frame movies.

   So just crunch to grayscale. 

> If you want QuickTime, get a Mac.

    There's a Quicktime player for Windoze that seems to work just
fine; you're not locked down to hardware with the fruity logo for that
one particular format.

   However, I find most computer video playbacks to be quite cruddy in
quality (well, the intros to a bunch of Sony Playstation games are
quite good looking and fullscreen/color, but that's due to the builtin
hardware decompression). If I want to watch something, I turn on my
laserdisc player, dolby surround system, and use that.

Nathan Mates
 
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
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