Mark, you make very valid points. The demo I put up was made by using the "Large" option in the Cinemail producer. (you can download the producer yourself for a 15 day unrestricted free trial) This large setting gives a full CIF size to the screen. There is also a small option which give a quarter CIF size. If you make your mail at this size the file size is about half as big, but the sync is almost "right on". Obviously the person making the mail has to decide what is of most importance, a larger picture or a lip sync. The company's studies, at least for the consumer market is that granny would rather see a larger picture of Sally then whether her voice is in sync.
Cinemail is designed as almost an introductary piece of streaming media software for the consumer market. Anyone who can figure out how to plug their camera into their computer can make this file in hardly more then the time it takes to record. If you have ever tried using any other video production software, particularly Real Player Producer, or Ulead Studio, Adobe Premiere or Lumiere to make a Quicktime clip, you then must know that it would take half an hour to make this clip, even if you know what you are doing. And it damn near takes a special degree to figure out how to do it. I have done a considerable amount of non-linear editing using all the above and speak from experience.
Again it all boils down to the basics. The more compression, the more quality deteriation in either screen size or picture quality. But, you cannot show me an example of better size to compression to picture quality in any other product out there in the consumer market.
I don't blame you for not taking the time to download the 2mb Smith Micro clip. It is not even in the same league, let alone the ball park based on quality, screen size, and file size. But I made the clip to counter several earlier comments on this board by those who were trying to say that Smith Micro has the best video mail software in use today.
Do not make the same mistake that many on this board are doing by focusing on this one product to make this company a success. Certainly the MPEG4 codec that we have is going to be very important in the future of streaming media, but even if very successful, if Cinemail makes up more then just a few percentage points of this company's revenues a year or two from now, the company will be a failure.
The real technological future of this company is on the vector mapping capabilty of the SAS technology paired up with its MPEG4 compression. As I have said earlier, if they have what they claim they have, as per a prior press release, then this company will be huge. And from what I am seeing and hearing, there is some very big money who are starting to become believers that they just might have it. (And I don't mean money that is chasing the few publically traded shares)
Right now it is all speculation. Just like the market is pricing most internet stocks. High risk, high reward if sucessful. But not for the faint of heart, or those who can't suffer a loss. |
