[ANN] Quicktime Issues Wiki

[Trevor DeVore]

On Nov 1, 2006, at 7:16 PM, Sivakatirswami wrote:

> Your post would indicate "all is well with QT, just don't expect to
> make chapatis with it."

Well, I don't know if I would say all is well with QT but it is  
moving forward.  I imagine the QT team has to make decisions and  
allocate resources like everyone else and overhauling audio/video  
architecture  appears to be the primary focus right now.

> But I think Stephan's original point
> though is still good, answer to Greg's issues:
>  identify some subset of functions we would
> like to have in QT that are now only available in Flash and tell
> Apple about it.

It is definitely a good idea to let them know what you want.  Just  
some history on this though - Interactive QT developers (LiveStage  
Pro users mainly) have been lobbying Apple for interactive updates  
for a long time.  I think the millions of iTunes users hold more sway  
when deciding where development dollars go though :-)  Maybe once  
this audio/visual stuff gets sorted out that will change.  Who knows.

> e.g.  I didn't see any reference to SMIL (my chapati) in the
> "Directions and Shifts of Emphasis in Quicktime 7" (yes -- very  
> interesting
> and encouraging to read that...)
>
> Goal would be: to use XML to "talk" to the video region in a  
> streamed context
>  in ways that can be scripted vs sitting in Final Cut Pro and  
> building it all into a
> single .mov file. If QT SMIL support is not advancing, is there
> an alternative that accomplishes the same thing?
>
> I guess that is a question for Apple.

SMIL falls into the interactive realm I believe and so it would  
appears it isn't receiving any love right now.  Very unfortunate as  
it is a great way to combine media.  Whether there is an alternative  
depends on what you are trying to do with SMIL.  If you just want to  
combine multiple clips into a single movie without editing in Final  
Cut Pro then you could may be able to automate that in QuickTime Pro  
or Revolution with the EnhancedQT external.

> Re the streaming problem on some of our windows users machines.
> I've isolated it to  differences in connectivity that QT player can
> handle, but which the Rev Player object cannot.  I'm going to
> get a bit more info from our users and will post a BugZilla
> on it when we have the data...
>
> I'm not privy to the depth of relationship between Rev Engineers
> and Apples QT team, but would hope that it got really "tight."
> to help solve such issues.

I don't know the answer to this either but I do know that there are  
QuickTime engineers who have a soft spot for Revolution.  There are  
still engineers (at least one) who have been with QT since being  
moved there from the HyperCard team.  I ran into a friend of his (who  
also worked on the HyperCard team) while demoing software at a  
University.  The software was made in Revolution and he was really  
excited to see that HyperCard was still alive in a sense and how  
people were creating things with it.

> You main point is good:
>
> QT looks very healthy on both platforms for the future, no need to  
> "fret."

That is how it appears to me.

> Especially if one is going to create desktop apps then the  
> Revolution Framework
> with QT embedded will let us do just about anything we want that we  
> might
> try in Flash...

Of course it depends on what you want to do with Flash but for what I  
do the answer is yes.  QuickTime is definitely making strides in the  
QT Framework (lots of Windows integration improvements in QT 7 so it  
appears to be a focus) so apps that depend on that QuickTime seem to  
be in good hands.

-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Learning Systems - www.bluemangolearning.com
trevor at bluemangolearning.com