Re: Quicktime

[spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector)]

In article khorster@attila.stevens-tech.edu (Karl Horster) writes...

>       So can the //gs do Quicktime movies?  Or does it require a lot
>more processing power and is there a chance of ever getting a viewer?

    As in play existing Macintosh QuickTime movies? It should be
possible, although the program would have to scale-down the image
to 320x200 resolution in 4-bit greyscale (or color, but I doubt it
would look very nice). Sound would be fine, unless the file uses
16-bit audio which again would have to be converted down. A hardrive
and a decent amount of RAM would be required of course. No QuickTime
players or convertors exist for the IIgs, but it would be alot more
doable than writing an MPEG player. ;) 

    The closest to ever seeing QuickTime on the IIgs was DreamWorld's
DreamVision program (there's a demo of Paula Abdul tap-dancing, with
video and audio, unfortunately that demo is the most that ever became
of the program). Another was Ronald Mercer's Mini-Movie format, which
would even eventually allow you to create your own "QuickTime" type
movies. Unfortunately it was never completed either.

    Speaking of which, I managed to get the four Mini-Movie demos from
Ronald Mercer recently, you can download them from:

ftp://ground.isca.uiowa.edu/apple2/upload/MMovie_*

(they're short combined audio and video clips from Doctor Who,
StarTrek: TNG, TopGun and Batman). I've also sent them up to
the Caltech FTP site, so they'll eventually appear in the new
uploads directory.

Mitchell Spector
spec@vax2.concordia.ca