Quicktime Multimedia Authoring - Nearly Dead?

[David Bovill]

On 19/10/06, Dan Shafer <revolutionary.dan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> FWIW, I think QT is and has been for many years Apple's greatest single
> technology. I might now say it's tied with the iPod.


Which is why I'd look at what this "tie" up means in terms of the future of
QuickTime. First it means SMIL is dead. That is because  podcasts and iPod
are not built on SMIL - so use it for now but don't expect the standard to
evolve. Then look at iPod friendly podcast formats and tools - ie enhancing
audio podcasts with images and chapters.

I'm not sure about Google, but if I were to bet between QuickTime and Google
Video + Youtube - I'd put my money with Google long term. That is Apple
could loose a lot there. Of course QuickTime can easly be made to play any
format - if it isn't playing flash video, is that not a strategic decision
rather than a technical one? QuickTime is great - but it suffers from the
technolog- looking-for-a-use thing for many of its features. Its gratest use
IMO is to make it easy to create software like Final Cut Pro.

What does that mean for RunRev? Well my 2 cents is they should look to
QuickTime to allow Revolution to create Final Cut Prop type application, and
to hedge their bets and watch Google closely with regard to the current
basic video playback features of the Rev player.

You might say they need to choose - they are a small team and they can't
support both strategies? That is not true. It is not a matter any more of
coding everything in house - it is a matter of properly supporting a
development community. A lot more could be done to create the right
atmosphere around external development projects such as Trevors enhanced
quicktime external for instance. A similar "official project could be set up
- that is "encouraged" for cross-platform externals to interface with open
source VLC / MPlayer?

Rational? Not just to revitalise Revs cross-platform credentials (which was
a unique feature of the platform), but also because the future digital war
over video distribution is going to heavily feature open formats - and not
just from the community - Google will use "open" strategies to outcompete
players with well thought out DRM solutions but weak open source / open
content strategies.