QuickTime Beats Amiga..?
23 messages in this thread
Hi ALL,
I am currently on the path to buying a animation/video/music/3-D computer.
My main intrest is creating 3-D objects and animating them in a 3-D
inviroment. My secondary intrest is in Music/Video productions. I am fairly
sure I'm going to get a A4000 soon. Many people have helped so far and I
would like to thank you all for helping me get up to speed. It seems I'll
have to wait a few months to see what type of hardware/software becomes
available to take advantage of the new A4000/AGA. So I'll just sit tight
and wait. It seems like the VideoToaster is a cool peice of equipment but
is having support problems right now so I'm verry leary of it/NewTek. Now
on to the question… What is the deal with QuickTime on the Macintosh? How
does the Macintosh stack up to the Amiga in the above mentioned areas?
Thanks again! –Steven Walters 70524,634
QuickTime beats the Amiga if you're not intending on doing anything more
than looking at little tiny/grainy movies in a window on your desktop.
QuickTime is not a viable format for use in broadcast TV (at this point).
As a Toaster owner, I cannot see any reason to buy the A4000, as the
Toaster will be a kludge if it works at all on that system. You would be
better off buying an A2000 and throwing in a 3rd paty 040 board.
Your Toaster (if you get one) would be MUCH happier in there (trust me, I
have a Toaster in the 3000, and had to hack the case to get it to fit).
I just had to send in my board to NewTek because my A3000/040 accelerator
cooked the board. They fixed it in 2 days at no charge and were very
helpful. I personally, have never had any problems with them, but others
seem to be having worse luck.
LightWave is the best package I have used on the Amiga, tho' other
packages have different strengths not shared by LightWave. 3-D packages on
the Mac may have nicer interfaces, but I think LW still beats them all for
pure rendering speed.
The biggest question is: What platform are you using now?
If you have a Mac already, you'll be able to get started cheaper by buying
some Mac software. Though ALL hardware/software for the Mac will cost you
more than similar software on the Amiga.
If you don't own a system already, you could get setup for less money on
the Amiga, but you'll have to get used to the many inconsistencies between
different applications on the Amiga. Aimga developer's will rarely follow
any standard conventions of Graphical User Interface design, and this can
be really frustrating to the uninitiated.
As for the Music side of the equation, the Mac is still probably the
leader, but others here may have a different opinion. (I do 3-D, not
music.)
Anyway, hope this gets you started.
Merry Christmas! ,<|:^)
Erik Flom
Thanks Eric!
I currently have a 386/25 VGA PC clone. Not the fastest thing on the
market for what I want to do. I do hear a lot of talk about Windows NT
being a leader sometime down the road… I jsut cant see buying old
technology. I'll wait for NewTek or someone eles to come out some hardware
supporting the new Amiga Hardware.
Thanks Again!
–Steven Walters 70524,634
Another perspective here — Mac 3D guy, in close contact with
Imagine/Lightwave users — got respect for all users & platforms on this
bleeding edge.
Regarding the "tiny/grainy postage stamp" line on QuickTime — Eric, take a
closer look. The comments may have been understandable with QT 1.0, but can
no longer be justified with the Compact Video Compressor. Catch a demo of
Adobe Premiere 2.0. Examine particularly the software-based A/B roll, the
offline EDL generation, custom transitions and image processing. Check out
the first generation boards (Radius VideoVision, SuperMac DigitalFilm),
which are still pricy but put out digitally-edited video to NTSC. The
second generation of boards is due about March when CCube ships their new
JPEG chip. I think we may see the third generation by the end of '93.
Keeping data digital as long as possible is key. The implications are
awesome, and should not be ignored.
But from where I sit, Steven, I tend to think your best bet is to stay in
the PC environment. That's where the real action is. Both Amiga and Mac
developers are spending mucho resources on PC packages. QuickTime for
Windows and Video for Windows will give PCs solid digital audio/info/video
playback by summer. Autodesk 3D Studio seems to be in the top tier for
rendering speed among all non-workstation platforms (although I'm not sure
what the inevitable tradeoffs are) — and there's a large number of cheaper
3D packages available on PCs, as well.
Get the specs for Brown-Wagh's StudioMagic, due to ship in March at $500.
Sounds like it will give much of the Toaster's functionality — one scary
board!
As with Eric, I have less knowledge of electronic music than of 3D. It
seems again, though, that the massive installed base of PC users would work
to your favor here. And although a 386/25 is nothing to sneeze at, you can
upgrade to a buffed 486 for far less than on any other platform.
Best wishes, and happy modelin'!
John D.
Thanks for the input.
QucikTime showos alot of promise, but as far as I know, there is still no
viable full-screen 30fps player for QuickTime (within a limited price
range). As such, it can't really be considered for use in output to
broadcast video. (Though I would admit that within the next year, we'll
probably see a solution to this problem).
Thanks again,
Erik Flom
I think the only safe thing to say about QuickTime is that "it sure looks
bad now on a regular color Mac, or under Windows." But look inside the
architecture, there's wonderful hooks for extensibility that solve the
frame rate and image size problems. You said it yourself – it just costs a
lot right now to "solve" these problems. As the price comes down, more
companies and more solutions will present themselves, Apple might stick
somebody's compression/decompression chips onboard, and presto – suddenly
Quicktime is a reality, a good solution. Mac users who didn't pay attention
the first time will find an affordable solution; everyone else (like
Amigaphiles) will be relegated to saying "yeah, but QuickTime used to look
really bad."
I wonder why they did Quicktime instead of incorporating MPEG? Not
invented here syndrome? Or can MPEG be used in Quicktime?
Steve
QuickTime is actually sort of a database format for time-based data:
images, sounds, 4 and 5 dimensional data, etc. I suppose MPEG could be
folded into it.
One way of looking at QuickTime is as a container for various image
compression schemes. The JPEG standard gives good fidelity, but at high
compression/decompression time costs — good for still images, but too slow
for animation or video. The "Graphics" codec offers fast playback, but at
low color depth. The Compact Video codec gives good fidelity at 16-bit
color and fast decompression, but takes a long time to initially compress.
My understanding is that MPEG is fairly well defined, but not standardized
yet. Some vendors have already put out implementations — the risk is that
they may not match the final MPEG specification. I don't know of any MPEG
codecs for QuickTime yet, but when they're marketed, they should be able to
be dropped into the QuickTime "container" and are then accessible to all
QT-aware applications.
Steve, could you fill me in on the MPEG Player I've heard mentioned? File
formats supported, playback rates, screen sizes, subjective impressions?
Thanks, and Happy New Year to y'all!
John D.
Thought I'd throw in a 'subjective impression' of the PD MPEG player for
the Amiga:
I DL'd the Amiga MPEG player, and it's a good first example of the great
stuff that will be coming in the future.
I've gotten best playback by choosing the '-dither gray' option &
displaying it on a 160×160 LoRes non-interlaced screen. I've gotten up to
4.9 frames per second playing back some of the movies, and they look
pretty good.(A3000/040/25MHz) I would really like to see it in a 256 color
AGA mode, on my A3000 the color resolution is just not high enough to look
at anything except grey-scale. :^(
Since this is the first offering, results are choppy, and there's no sound
synching capability, etc., but it will just continue to improve. (Rumors
of HAM & HAM8 modes even!)
Just my 2 cents,
Erik Flom
Erik,
We tried the PD MPEG player on my 4000 last night. Playing in a window
on a 256 color hirez WB we got from about 5.5 to 6.5 fps. We then tryed to
run 4 Mpeg movies in four windows on the WB. It worked but would you
believe .5 fps! BTW changing screen modes on the 4000 has no effect on the
frame rate. I guess the AGA chips have NO problem keeping up!
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
The MPEG player plays MPEG I compliant files. The version that's out for
the Amiga (and PC and Mac, as far as I know) was ported from some X Window
based code. The versions I've seen for all the platforms are pretty slow,
except for X. The X player is pretty quick, and it looks pretty good.
The players for the microcomputer platforms are still pretty weak, but I
think that will change once people spend a little more time with the code
and optimize it.
Personally, I think the MPEG stuff is great. It's pretty impressive to
watch on an X terminal.
Steve
Hi Eric —
<< as far as I know, there is still no viable full-screen 30fps player for
QuickTime >>
I agree with you. SuperMac's DigitalFilm ads imply that they achieve it,
but it seems to work with 30 *fields* per second — half the throughput. It
should double this spring, but price will still be up there.
Also agreed: if you need to output to video today, the Amiga is the
lowest-cost solution.
One thing's for sure: 3 years from now, we'll probably shake our heads and
laugh at how we managed on today's equipment, ya?
jd
Thanks for the input. It's been a few months since I've seen any hot Mac
stuff – tho' I'm trying to scare up a pass into MacWorld this week. :^)
(I'm expecting to see some real nice stuff, but won't even bother checking
the price tags. <G>)
As for looking back in 3 years: If the last 3 was any example, "we're in
for a bumpy ride!"
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
Which Mac 3D packages do you work with? And which "cheap" 3D packages for
the PC are you referring to?
JF> Which Mac 3D packages do you work with? And which "cheap" 3D packages
JF>for the PC are you referring to?
Seems like there is more talk in here lately about Big Mac's and Big
Blue's than Amy.
Didn't this used to be an Amiga Forum? *8)
Vance
Well, since you asked…(and I *do* feel funny talking Mac here, but we're
all in this 3D world together, right?)
My main 3D suite is MacroModel for modeling, MacroMind 3D for animation and
rendering, RenderMan for high-end rendering. Also use Infini-D as a second
environment. Have done work with other packages, but this gives me the best
payback.
"Cheap" for PC: Can't give you useful info here…I usually note the
features and prices in press releases, but have no way of evaluating
them…over-glowing descriptions are the norm! The action level does seem
high, though. Maybe someone else can help?
I'm particularly curious about the "Hash Animation Journeyman/Will Vinton
Playmation" package. A friend of mine did some great work with it on the
Amiga…I've heard people rave about it on the PC…I'm hoping to snag a
copy at MacWorld next week. And the press releases for the "Crystal" (sp?)
modules sound great, but at a higher price.
What amazes me, though, is that no matter what the platform, the issues for
3D work stay constant: creating models effectively, making believable
surfaces, lighting & camera control, composition, timing, and the holy
grail of persuasive character animation.
Windows NT, when it shows up, reportedly will require a much faster PC
than you have, plus 10 megs of RAM and 100 megs of hard disk space. You'll
need to double that to do anything credible in terms of multimedia/desktop
video, is my guess. The AGA Amigas ARE new technology; that's the point.
They're so new, most of the developers haven't yet caught up. But they
will.
Well I've seen some QuickTime animations Steven and I'm not the least bit
impressed. Slow, 1/4 screen anims even on a Quadra that the standard Amiga
anim format can beat hands down.
The absolutely niftiest, cost-effective solution for your needs may be
an A1200 or A4000 (depending on your budget) plus a DCTV with RGB
converter. You might wonder why you'd need the latter given the
former's frame-output and color rendering capabilities. Space! A DCTV
composite image takes up a fraction of the space of a normal graphic
and can be animated at high frame rates. Render a 3-D anim using
Aladdin 4D or whatever, then auto-convert over to DCTV format (most
3-D programs have DCTV support, now) and dump directly to videotape.
You'll benefit from the AGA's inherent high-quality imagery and
DCTV's ability to store images efficiently and play them back fast.
Plus, with a genlock, you can mix RGB, composite and live video.
Plus-plus, you'll have DCTV's video digitizing capability, titling
capability, a fine paint program, image enhancement features, and
more.
An A1200 with sufficient RAM, a hard drive and a DCTV unit could do
extremely nice 3-D anim/video work for a street price of perhaps two
grand, not including monitor.
For high-end video, opt for the DMI Digital Editmaster board, which would
fit in an A4000 and set you back about two grand. It'll do real-time video
framegrabbing, storing images in compressed form on hard drive and
retrieving them in real time. It'll render 100,000 shaded polygons a
second from your 3-D software, and walk your dog. Nothing on any other
platform can touch it at the price, based on the descriptions I've read.
Check out AVID magazine (the Amiga Video magazine) for interesting
comments in this regard. Get one of the new higher end sound boards and
you'll really be in business. The Bars 'N' Pipes people are coming out
with a high-end audio board early in '93 for around 500 bucks and
Commodore's music-capable DSP module ought to be arriving too.
The Mac and PC worlds are making progress in video, and after all
have huge resources. But there's still a huge shakeout going on.
Wither Quicktime or DVI? Only one of those standards is likely to
prevail in the computer mainstream. Meanwhile, Apple and IBM are
plotting the "Power PC" line that will change standards once again.
In the short run you're going to pay for the privilege of using
either platform. Heck, just to get composite output from a PC (so you
can dump to video) will cost you about $400, minimum, and chew up a
slot. Things start adding up pretty fast. Bottom line is that, for
video, the Amiga in comparison appears a very steady and
cost-effective platform.
P.S. Don't assume the Amiga world will be standing still in the next year
or two as MPEG standardizes. There are hints of new Amiga operating system
features along multimedia lines, as well.