Questions about Rev/Transcript vs. other toolkits

[Trevor DeVore]

On Aug 11, 2004, at 5:53 PM, Chipp Walters wrote:

> Certainly there are some imaging tasks which can be done better in 
> Flash or Director, and some done better in RR. I seriously doubt 
> ButtonGadget could be built in either Flash or Director. Among other 
> things, ButtonGadget has a transcript-coded compositing engine and 
> convolution filter.
>
> In fact, I wouldn't know if you can directly edit the binary data of 
> images (bits and bytes, not pixels) in either Flash or Director w/out 
> some sort of external.
>
> OTH, Flash has anti-aliased graphics and Director built-in 3D 
> capabilities.
>
> From a multimedia perspective, Flash and Director pretty much have it 
> all over RR. If one is planning on creating a complex multimedia 
> product, then I would of course suggest Director. That is not to say 
> you can't create multimedia within RR, just that more options are 
> available to developers in either Flash or Director.

The word multimedia is a broad term and while Director seems to be 
designed primarily as a multimedia playback environment (Flash really 
doesn't support much when it comes to media, it just does vector really 
well with bitmaps and video thrown in) I find that is seriously lacking 
when it comes to building multimedia applications.

What I mean by a multimedia application is a program that looks and 
acts like most software that runs on your computer (multiple windows, 
menus, native interface elements, etc.) but uses media as a central 
piece of the application.  In my experience when you write a program in 
Director it looks like you created in in Director if you know what I 
mean.  Rev apps look like they belong on the system.  I chose 
Revolution a few years back for this very reason.  The majority of the 
apps I work on are primarily media based and Revolution has performed 
excellently.  Now I haven't used the latest version of Director but if 
I remember correctly you had to use some silly thing called MIAW in 
Director anytime you wanted to create any windows besides the main 
presentation window.  That always gave me headaches.  Rev makes it easy 
and that makes me happy.

Now my projects don't have flashy vector graphics that spin all around 
the screen and nauseate people but they use media just the same.  I use 
large bitmaps that have interactive portions, screens of media elements 
that are generated from database data, navigational elements that are 
generated from the db and animated onto the screen, and QT to integrate 
most of the other things I want to do (the interactive 3D stuff, 
instructive Flash animations, etc.).  I have been very pleased with 
Rev's performance in all of these areas.


-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Multimedia
trevor at mangomultimedia.com