Amiga QuickTime anyone?
49 messages in this thread
Does anyone know of anything for the Amiga similar to QuickTime on the Mac?
QuickTime appears to digitize in-motion video (about 1 in 20 frames or so),
syncs the sound, and plays it back on a standard Mac screen (and with
system 7.0 in any linked application). Seems to me that the Amiga ought to
do this sort of thing with its eyes closed. I can see some neat possible
applications for this, even though the storage thing is horrendous (about
20-25 seconds on a high density floppy). I'm doing a DTV presentation in
Vancouver in March and I'd really appreciate any info out there.
Marianne Phinney 70243,2063
(My husband and I share the code, so the names are different. So sue
me….)
Marianne–
Have you seen Quicktime? Its terrible! I downloaded the extension and
some sample files, and the quality is nasty.
I played it on a 16mhz MacIIci; all of the animations played in a tiny
window (perhaps 100×80) and in 8bit color. The frame rate is slow and
choppy. The biggest animation was 80 frames; it was around 500k
compressed.
I could see, incidentally, if you were using a Mac IIfx or Quadra with a
graphic accelerator…you would probably be able to do faster frame rates
in a larger window. However, pricewise, you'd be moving into workstation
pricing.
Try Showmaker…it'll do the same thing, I've been told.
Jonathan
– via Whap!
Well, the LIVE! series of framegrabbers will bring up to 15 frames per
second from a video source into your Amiga in 16-shade grey scale, and
contains switching effects (fades, wipes, etc.) in 640×400 resolution for
around 400 bucks (it'll do color at a slower frame rate). LIVE! has been
around since at least 1987. Another rig, Spectrum, grabs a 24-bit image in
1/30th of a second in full NTSC color for $700 list. The Video Digitizer
grabs 320×256 screens with 16 grey levels in 1/60th second and updates at 1
frame/second for $139. You can save images as IFFs and edit them. The $500
Framegrabber 2.0 handles 4096-color images in 1/30th second up to 640×400
resolution, and the Framegrabber 256 handles 256 shades of grey for $700 —
don't ask me why it's more expensive than the color version!). Rambrandt is
a $4,000 card that handles 32-bit framegrabbing (16 million colors at
1024×1024 resolution). The $2000 Impact Vision 24 card grabs 24-bit color
images in real-time; you can display the live input in full color in a
scaleable "picture in picture" window on your Workbench (NOTE: This is the
only Amiga product I know of that does scaleable-window video input).
Impact Vision also contains two genlcoks, a frame buffer, a flicker
eliminator, a composite output for color dumps to videotape and high-end
paint/sculpt/titling software. To sync sound, you would need a multitasking
real-time audio digitizing package, purchased separately. Of course, the
Amiga Video Toaster is the ultimate real-time video switcher/digital
effects rig, and it'll outrun some fully rigged professional broadcast
studios…but it won't do windows. There may be other packages. Get
yourself a copy of the Winter '92 AC Guide to the Commodore Amiga for a
complete rundown. >>>> Ron Legro / Milwaukee via WHAP!
"Wherever you go, there you are!"
Quicktime is a very weird setup. It keeps video in a delta format very
similar to our ANIM 5 format (in terms of concept, not actual file layout)
and ties sound to it. The basic difference is that while all (as far as I
know) Amiga ANIM players play each and every frame, with time
synchronization only if the ANIM is playing faster than the time sync
needs, the Quicktime player forces time synchronization no matter *what*
speed the frames are being drawn. If it falls behind, it skips frames.
The drawback of the Quicktime technique is that in order to skip frames,
it has to have a full frame to work with as a base, since all the delta
calculations are dependant on the previous frame. So if there are
sequences where a long period of time exists between frames which are
totally different (thus requiring storage of a full frame delta) and it
falls behind, the video appears to freeze until the time for the next full
frame is reached. Of course, you can always arrange at coding time to
insert full frames every so often to reduce this problem. (With digitized
movies, etc. it's not as bad, since variants in color and the like mean
that most frames end up being full frame deltas. Not great for speed, but
quite acceptable for Quicktime.)
It ought to be a rather trivial thing for someone to hack up an ANIM
player which would play at a fixed frame per second rate and if it fell
behind would wait until the next full frame delta and skip directly to it.
You'd need a couple of ANIMs with extra full frames inserted every half
second or so in order to make it look good, but that shouldn't be too
difficult.
Of course, if you limit the animation to a smaller size on the screen,
you ought to be able to run it displaying all frames without skipping, and
still synchronize with sound. (a la CD-XL)
–>Steve Bennett
I know I'm coming into this conversation late, but I think all the
responses to the original question have missed a very crucial point. To
wit: QT on the mac is now *UNIVERSAL*. Simply pop in the QT extension into
your Mac and you can play any qt movie practically anywhere. Whether or
not it does this exceptionally well, the fact is that it is a function
accessible to all color mac users (the play back that is). We might have
similar frame grabber type hardware, but there is no built-in playing
function that is as easy to implement and as transparent.
This is analogous to the Mac clipboard, which is used so often in the Mac
world and practically non-existent in the Amiga world, though we do have
SOME sort of clipboard implementation – no one seems interested in taking
advantage of it save a few products.
Looking at it in a real-world situation, Apple has taken a big slice out of
our desktop-video advantage. Even a poor "live-video" contraption like QT
has made their edge in multimedia all the stronger.
I only wish CBM could do the same kind of thing. At least they seem to be
heading towards a standard re graphics. Video should be next.
Theoretically, we could implement a QuickTime player as the standard for
the Amiga. I'm sure it would upset Apple to some extent, because the same
Quicktime animation would play much faster on an Amiga. Or would it? We
don't have a very large color space on our desktop screens. We'd spend a
lot of time dithering.
I've actually considered a Quicktime *conversion* program for the Amiga.
(Apple has already indicated they *want* to see Quicktime support on other
platforms, BTW…) I don't think a direct Quicktime player would be
feasible on anything less than an A3000 level machine, because the format
conversion of the images would take too much time, IMHO. But one could
easily convert Quicktime files to a varient HAM mode ANIM 5 (modified to
play back synced to real time and sound, which would be fairly trivial) and
*that* would almost certainly play back faster than most Macs.
–>Steve Bennett
Why convert? You could do both. Where has Apple documented the QuickTime
format? (I haven't waded through the latest CD-ROM disc that has the
QuickTime examples… is it documented there?) Make a converter and a
direct player. You have nothing else to do, right? 🙂
The QuickTime developer's CD ROM has the programming manual for Quicktime,
and an appendix to that contains the basic description of the file layout,
while one of the programming interface header modules also on the CDROM has
the actual layout of each part of the file. I haven't yet found the docs
for the compression formats but they're supposedly somewhere there as
well…
It's kind of interesting how much the structure of Quicktime is similar
to that of IFF, BTW. They parallel each other in many ways, which isn't
all that surprising when you think about it…
–>Steve Bennett
Oh yes, and why I think it might be too much to play direct is that
Quicktime images end up in a Chunky style 8 bit or 24 bit format once
decompressed and deltas are applied. The overhead of converting from a
Chunky 8 or 24 bit image to, say, HAM, in real time, would *really* slow
down the display, even on an accelerated machine. Even on a HAM-E unit
where you could get a 256 color mode one would have to run through the
Chunky to planar conversion for every frame which would really eat up the
time…
However, if I do a converter, I'd probably allow for direct play in any
case (of the video, at least) because I'd need to get a bitmap image for
each frame as I go anyway. So I may as well display it as I go. Nowhere
near full speed, I suspect…
–>Steve Bennett
Good idea! … that's what I used to do when converting bitplane Amiga
ANIMs to my 8-bit chunky-pixel machine: display while converting. Pretty
durned slow, too 🙂 But of course, once converted, they were very fast.
But there's a more fundamental difference than the bitplane/chunky format.
Amiga ANIMs depend on using double-buffering, in order to prevent update
glitches (speed, bitplane rainbow effects, tearing, etc) from being
visible.
Quicktime Movies, on the other hand, don't have to take up the entire
visible screen. They might have to share with text, and even with other
Movies. (And of course, QT can scale and dither them to any size/type
display.) This means QT (or lookalikes) can't take advantage of
double-buffering.
You can, of course, if just doing a full-screen Movie converter/player.
best – kev
John–
I think that Quicktime would be a great idea for the Amiga – having this
standard might attract more developers to the platform. Of course, with
all the rumours that have been flying regarding an upcoming graphics
enhancement, it makes all the more sense. Perhaps a Quicktime player for
HAM-E/DCTV? This makes a lot of sense, actually – especially if there is
an ANIM <—–> Quicktime converter thrown in with the
package…<hint>….:)
Jonathan
– via Whap!
Actually, Quicktime provides for the Mac pretty much what IFF has provided
for the Amiga. We've had an ANIM format for years now which just about
everyone supports. What we haven't had is IFF library support which any
application can access, but that's been added in 2.0. Quicktime's only
real advantage is their synchronizing of the playback to real time, and
*that* is trivial to add to ANIM if we desire it. (Of course, as with
Quicktime itself, it means the animation files themselves will be
significantly larger since they require full sized Sync frames to be
liberally sprinkled amongst the delta frames comprising the rest of the
animation…)
As for clipboard support, theres no excuse in my mind for Amiga
developers NOT to support the clipboard, especially now that 2.0 has the
IFF support library in it (all clips in the clipboard are supposed to be in
IFF format…). ANIM, being an IFF format, can be clipped just like any
other IFF thing…
Oh yes, and if you think Quicktime is *easy* to implement, even on the
Mac, you haven't read the several hundred page developers manual
documenting the over 100 functions it adds to the OS… <grin>
–>Steve Bennett
Of course I understand that QT has added '100s functions to the MAC
OS'. That's NOT my point. My point is simply this: On a mac, open ANY
file within ANY program (okay, make that 90% of the programs out there) and
you can PASTE a QT movie into the file. That's it. Nothing else needed!
I have several QT movies integrated into MSWord 5.0 documents.
You're right, if IFF clipping is now implemented, then I should be able to
CLIP one anim from lets say DPIV and PASTE it into Scribble! or somesuch
program. But such a thing does not exist yet, and without it, we have now
lost something in this DTP/DTV/MULTIMEDIA race with the other companies, a
race which I think is very crucial to the Amiga's longevity. You and I may
quibble over whether it is a big loss or a little loss, but I consider it
rather important.
That particular battle was lost a *long* time ago, my friend. The Mac has
benefited from having a file-based representation of all the graphics and
text they place on a screen. It's called "PICT". Microsoft Windows has
this, too, called the Windows "metafile". With this, it's easy to define a
way for programs to place graphics (as PICT or WMF) in a document. Once a
program does that in a standard, controlled way, it becomes possible to
extend the metafile to do things it didn't do before – like playing movies.
The Amiga has never had this. Until it does, every single application is
forced to duplicate the functionality that comes for free in the Windows or
Mac environment.
As far as I know, PICT has *not* been expanded to include Quicktime movies.
Every program I'm aware of which supports Quicktime moov's has had to be
specifically coded to support them. (Of course, in the process, they get
support for Quicktime's still image support as well…) Remember, MS Word
5.0 is a very recent upgrade, and thus they could add Quicktime support to
it. But just *try* and paste a moov into an MS Word 4.0 document. I rather
doubt you'd get anything at all. (I'll try it tomorrow at work though,
just out of curiosity…)
–>Steve Bennett
Oh – I haven't read the docs on it, and that's how I'd assumed it worked.
Regardless, Apple has a lot of forwards- and backwardscompatibility built
into PICT. The situation with ANIMs on the Amiga has always displeased me.
With the lack of some standard code, everyone has a much greater chance of
being incompatible.
Some apple guys giving a demo said QT compatibility for PICT importers was
handled through a PD (French) utility called "Wild Magic" they said like
90% of PICT importers worked with wild magic and thus, QT
It can be done…
Put simply: There is an extension called Wild Magic developed by the
people over at Apple France that will plug into the Clipboard functions of
a Color mac and allow it (The clipboard) to support and hold a QT movie
clip. I've pasted several movies into a 4.0 version of Word. No problems
to report.
Interestingly, HyperCard has no direct built-in support for QT since it
will only hold graphics in 1 bit PICT (black & white) form (in the
clipboard). There is an update available though, for $15 that gives it
QT-support. This is not a QT issue though, as it has always been unable to
clip anything above 1 bit PICT (Still graphics included).
Wild Magic is NOT supported by Apple and they take no responsibility if it
causes you problems. It's a quick and very dirty hack which may or may not
work in many cases. (I've had it crash more often than not, so I don't use
it anymore…) I'm surprised that it got out to non-developers? (Or did
you get a developers version of Quicktime?)
.–>Steve Bennett
I searched the Mac FF with keyword 'wild' and it led me to one disk image
.SIT distributed from Apple. No explicit upload of anything called "Wild
Magic" though, except that particular keyword did find a handful of
cheesecake uploads. 🙂
Just pop over to the Apple Developers forum here at CIS and you can
d/l it no problem. Regardless of the name, the forum seems to be
open to one and all. Wild Magic has yet to crash on a program that
will accept QT movies.
Whoops. Not so. MS Word 5.0 has Quicktime support included already. Many
Mac programs DO NOT. Quicktime is not gained without some effort. In order
to paste a Quicktime movie into a document both the application and the
document format have to specifically support Quicktime (and make Quicktime
calls, etc.) It is NOT a painless proceedure by any means.
It is a 100% certainty that any program which has not had a revision
since May of last year absolutely will NOT be able to include Quicktime
movies in their documents. That's when Apple released the Quicktime
programming spec to developers. It is a good probability that most of the
programs which HAVE had such an upgrade, unless it was a major one (as in
the case of MS Word 5.0), will not have added Quicktime support as it is
NOT a simple task by any means.
The reason you cannot paste an ANIM into Scribble! is that Scribble!
simply has not implemented the code required to handle an ANIM in it's
documents. There is NOTHING preventing them from doing so. The task of
doing so is exactly comparable to adding Quicktime support in a Mac word
processor.
The fact that Quicktime is NOT a full screen format gives it a minor
advantage in that it can therefore easily be displayed within another
window on the Mac. That doesn't stop anyone from implementing a similar
thing (say, for AnimBrushes) in their word processor on the Amiga. Me, I'd
be happy to see just that.
(Sorry to all about the long message, but I felt it necessary to clear
this up… 🙂
–>Steve Bennett
Whoops! again! MS Word 4.0 can also import QT movies! By using a kludge
called Wild Magic practically any application that supports the clipboard
can also hold a QT movie. Wild Magic is what has made QT accessible to all
Mac users.
I think what you've gotten confused is that certain new applications are
including better support for QT. Being able to crudely paste a QT movie
anywhere in a document is not always the easiest way to get the movie
exactly where you want it. The applications are then built to recognize
when a QT movie is being manipulated and assist in making the most of it.
Steve – have you used QT yet? The Wild Magic init does allow playable
movies to be pasted into every Mac application I've tried including many
very old ones that could not have anticipated QT. Bill Dwyer
I've used Quicktime since the original Alpha release. I've also used Wild
Magic, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. It crashes more things than
otherwise. I am truly surprised that anyone other than developers has it,
in fact…
.–>Steve Bennett
Miguel, out of curiosity, why would you PASTE a animation file into your
MSWord document? So you could print the 'title' screen? Or can you paste
it in and print *any* frame of the anim at any place in the doc? Just
curious…. thanks.
–jp–seattle–
The most familiar demo is one where you would send a letter to your folks
on your recent trip to Africa. You would talk about how much fun you had
and would include a little video clip showing some of the sights and
sounds.
Printing of frames is not supported. You would a get a bitmapped graphic
that would look quite awful. QT is meant as a real-time player.
Ah. It's intended for computer video only, not for printing. So you'd
send your MSWord doc to someone else, and when they 'edited' (?) it, and
turned the page you pasted the QT anim on, it would just show the anim on
the 'page'? Sounds like MSWord is more of an interactive 'text/image/anim'
viewer than I would have expected. Thanks for the info.
–jp–seattle–
But wonderful C= already has CDXL wich syncs sound to video, just that it's
CDTV only (on the new "Heroic age of Spaceflight" CD, neat stuff). So when
C= stops shooting thier foot maybe it'll be implemented on all Amy
platforms.
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
I'm aware of CDXL. I believe the way that syncs sound to video is by
limiting the size of the image so that it can be played back at full speed
all the time. (It's very easy to sync a full speed ANIM to sound. Just
specify the frame time to be the correct fps for the ANIM and you're set.)
This is somewhat different in that you'd end up synced no matter how fast
your incoming media transfers data, although you'd see pauses in the video
each time it needed to resync. In theory, you could play such an ANIM back
off of a floppy and still have it sync properly… (I shudder at the
thought… 🙂
–>Steve Bennett
yep that's CDXL, but quicktime also limits the size of the image (160 X
102, pixels the actual display area can be bigger though, it'll stretch to
fit(quicktime)). and based upon what I played with on the "Heroic Age of
Space Flight" CD it's quite nice.
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
Actually, Quicktime's image size has no limitations whatsoever. But
anything bigger than about 200 x 200 runs so slowly that it's not
much good except with the tiny images.
–>Steve Bennett
Well the same aplies to CDXL too but the same sad result, the bigger it is
the less frames per sec (hmmm 12 frames/sec for 1/4 screen= 3 frames/sec
full screen= yuck)
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
Exactly my point. CBM seems too slow in implementing what is necessary to
keep the machine going. Granted their fiscal situation is nowhere near
Apple's, but it still is frustrating to see this QT happen and us
Amigazoids not have anything to best (since it can be done SO easily!).
That's my point too, especially when pointing out CDXL, it's only on CDTV
not on the main machines! That's really annoying! C= should release or
license the extra 256K of code in the CDTV to all Hard drive interface
people so that all users can benifit.
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
From what I remember, CDXL is not just software – it's some kind od
hardware, a clean link between the CD-ROM drive and chip memory. I don't
think it would be possible on an ordinary Amiga without a special interface
card.
I've opened the CDTV both versions (yeah they did have two versions) and
the only "special" things were the 2091's custom IC, nonvolitile ram (on
the second version), and the control ic's for the LED panel.
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
(oops I just voided our demo unit's warrenty)
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
Ben:
Do you mean that there are 2 versions of DCTV out there? If so, how can I
tell what version I have? I have a fairly early one, as it was one of the
first 3 my dealer got in stock when they were first released. 2091's IC?
does that mean that the CD-ROM in the CDTV is SCSI?
-Mike Schiller
In sunny Fort Lauderdale
2 versions of CDTV (at least)not DCTV, the only way to tell is to open it.
The later version has a flash (non volitile) ram tower, the 2091 IC
controls DMA drives, its missing the western digital chip to make it full
SCSI, the CD-Rom in CDTV is DMA not SCSI (the drive seems to be the same as
the one needed for the SoundBlaster Pro card for the PC).
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
CDXL would be possible on an ordinary Amiga given two things: A fast HD
controller, and a fast Hard Drive. Having a CD ROM run CDXL on the other
hand, would require a seriously fast CD ROM drive, from what I can tell, to
get around the delays caused by having to transfer the data across the SCSI
bus into Chip RAM.
Most of the CDXL spec is less how it plays back than how it's stored on
the CD ROM. Ignore that part and you have a fairly easy thing to
implement.
–>Steve Bennett
CDXL is *not* necessary on a normal Amiga. It's more a way of
storing the data on a CD ROM to get the best throughput for reading
the animation as they go. You can get a virtually identical picture
by taking a standard ANIM op 5 with a digitized sound attached. At
least one ANIM viewer (VIEW, and probably others) has no trouble
displaying such things. The synchronization of sound to animation is
fairly trivial as long as your animation is guarenteed to run full
speed. By limiting the size of the animation, this is no problem.
(In fact, I recently read an article on synchronizing sound with
animation using Amigavision…)
. What you *really* want is something that will synchronize an ANIM
with sound even if the ANIM is NOT capable of playing at full speed.
CDXL won't do that.
. On the other shoe… Ask yourself what exactly you'll use this for?
And what you'll use to make these movies? There's been an awful lot of
hype about Quicktime but I have yet to see much practical use for
the average user. They may get programs which use it for specific
purposes (training, etc.) but all of that can be done *without*
Quicktime on an Amiga with little difficulty if desired by developers.
Quicktime is kindof necessary on the Mac, though, because otherwise
ANY sort of animation is a royal pain in the you-know-what. It's a
nice novelty, and finally gives Mac users some animation capability,
but nothing to really worry about.
.–>Steve Bennett
Your right, but why not have it anyway? Who knows, there may be a use for
it found yet. BTW CDXL doesn't have to worry about adjustments becuase even
at it's worst it works on the least common denominator (Amiga 7.16 Mhz
(worst being off of a CDROM picture the results from Harddisk)).
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
I suppose people could find *some* use for CDXL on a stock Amiga. You'd
need a harddisk to handle it at least, or a *fast* CD ROM drive, but that
isn't any particular problem. It's really only a matter of writing a
player program for it.
–>Steve Bennett
What do you mean by "fast" CD-Rom? CDTV's is only 500Ms not as fast as the
current 340Ms drives floating around, and it's maximum transfer rate is
only 190K (not counting the burst mode since that work off of buffer stored
info), so the majority of Hardrives out there are more than fast enough.
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
Yes C= should do something, like making CDXL available to all Amigas not
just CDTV. It's amazing that CDXL is the same pixel res as Quicktime and
runs at the same speed off of the 7.16 mhz cdtv with the slooow CD drive,
as it would off of a Mac FX with quick hard drive! Amazing what C= can sit
on rather than do something constructive with.
BEN:Leigh's Computer's
I swear on the Bible that if I had the resources (a good 4 million dollars)
I would hire Steve Bennett, Leo Schwab, Jay Miner, and all the others to
come on and build, build, build!! Go nuts! Create the absolute best! I
could only dream of the results of such an enterprise.
Ditto but I think one would need more that 4 Mil though.
BEN:Leigh's Computer's