Flash or Quicktime?

[Richard Gaskin]

Colin Holgate wrote:

 > At 1:41 PM -0800 2/15/08, Richard Gaskin wrote:
 >>By my math we're looking at the difference between the number of
 >>people running Windows vs. the number of Mac users running OS X
 >>versions prior to 10.3.9.
 >
 > No, that would be too one sided. You're really interested in the
 > number of Windows users minus the ones that don't have QuickTime, and
 > of the remainder you subtract the ones that don't have Windows Media
 > installed. The ones left are the people that benefit from all your
 > work to make it easy for WMV user who don't like QuickTime.

How much effort is it to use any of the dozens of automated conversion 
tools for making WMVs?  If we used Flash or any other format we'd still 
need a converter for the output; seems like a wash to me.

The QT controller is handy for many things, but for most of my apps we 
need a custom controller anyway:  We either need something simpler with 
larger buttons, or something more complex with multiple selections as 
opposed to QT's single one.

So even if we used QT as the format (as we do in some of our apps), we'd 
still be making a custom controller.  And besides, it's Rev:  a simple 
controller takes about 5 minutes to make, and a complex one just a few 
hours.

If you want to talk about level of effort, try trapping keyboard 
messages while a QT controller is active:  The dividing line between the 
various event loops of the OS, Rev, and the QT subsystem is a bit murky. ;)

A custom controller filters the mud from those waters, making event 
handling crystal clear.


 > I don't disagree that the number may be higher than the number of
 > users who might buy you product to run on 10.1 - 10.3.8, but I'm
 > factoring in all the effort you would have to go to, assuming you
 > could control the WMV in the first place!

For controlling non-QT media we have start, stop, looping, and 
currentTime.  While currentTime is currently broken in the beta, 
assuming we get that fixed in v2.9 RC1 that'll cover everything we need 
to make a wide variety of custom controllers.

Don't get me wrong:  I like QT, and ship a few apps dependent on it. 
We've filed the papers with Apple, and dutifully send them copies of our 
app as requested, and we're generally happy with it.

But I don't believe there's a one-size-fits-all solution to video 
playback at this time.  In our shop we have a few dozen university and 
hospital site licenses pending the removal of QT dependency from our app 
-- well worth the modest effort to make that happen.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  ___________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com