I have seen it and it is good. Very nice stuff done by a professional team with megabucks behind them. But just the same, it is good.
It is very good, but what about a one man show in a few hours or days? Show me what one person does with Flash in a few hours of getting it. Teams and companies have budgets, professional experience and time.
LiveStage puts power into the hands of the average joe. We all know that Flash isn't that easy to figure out, so how many people can use it. One cool site doesn't make Macromedia a ton on sales, but the easier to use and pwerful tool will sell more. That is the strength of Totally Hip. They create easy to use tools and the masses are not Television broadcast creative professionals like those people that created the eye4u site.
I will make sure that Totally Hip sends them a copy of LiveStage and gets them on a beta for LiveStage Professional which will be available in beta over the next few months.
QuickTime has the most flexible, powerful music and midi architecture around and LiveStage will do many new things beyond what it can do now. LiveStage 1.0 is light on the animation, however Totally Hip chose to go after interactivity first, until the QuickTime streaming was available. That's why LiveStage Professional will come out just after Apple releases QuickTime 4 and its powerful streaming video capabilities.
Keep in mind how long the LiveStage users have had it. Less than 20 days. I know that I have only started tapping the power of LiveStage and Michael Schaff is a one man shop and doesn't have the budget or the people that the eye4u people obviously have. As soons as Totally Hip finishes VectorMan and make it available to all LiveStage users, what you see on the eye4u site will be trival and won't require a huge professional team. One person can do it in LiveStage Pro. LS 1.0 is powerful just the same.
Totally Hip LiveStage users will be showing off the full power before too long, so don't be surpised that you'll see and hear more about what it can do. The LS DR 1.0 leans more on interactivity than on animation, but the LS Pro will address everything that web designers have dreamed of such as 3D, QuickTime VR, Virtual reality, streaming Sprites and video within a video, within a video etc. THW spent all of 3 and one half months developing LiveStage 1.0 DR. Macromedia and Futurewave have had since 1995, which gives it 4 years and mega millions in development.
I was told that Totally Hip has done LiveStage 1.0 on less than $250,000 in development.
Given the fact that LiveStage 1.0 and LS Pro will support QuickTime 4 and QT 4 is supposed to play Flash files, that means that LiveStage users will benefit from both.
I see all serious developers using Flash and LiveStage 1.0 Dr, LiveStage Pro when they release it.
QuickTime streaming playback is the key here and LiveStage is the only scripting tool for QuickTime at this point.
Good stuff. It will challenge LiveStage developers and Totally Hip. Don't under-estimate Totally Hip and their team. |
