Technical Comparison Macromedia Flash 3 vs Apple's QT3.x and Totally Hip's LiveStage 1.0
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This was copied out of a whitepaper document written by A.C, THW engineer extraordinaire and Product Engineering Manager for LiveStage at THW. We got it from Totally Hip a few weeks ago. The document is quite extensive, so I just put in the stuff that compares Macromedia Flash 3 vs QuickTime 3 and THW's LiveStage. I asked THW if it was okay to post parts of it, and they said that it was okay because they planned on putting it on their Web site soon.
Cross-Platform Interactive Rich Media Animation authoring tool
LiveStage's competition: Macromedia Flash (Mac and Windows)
LiveStage (Macintosh and Windows)
The capabilities of Flash 3 are a near-proper subset of the capabilities of QuickTime 3, and the .swf file format is available publicly with no licensing fee for its use, or player code may be licensed. As such, it makes sense for Totally Hip to think of Flash less as a direct competitor to QuickTime 3 and more as an alternative output format for a QuickTime authoring tool.
In other words, to market a product as a better Flash file creator than Flash is one of our goals. This is likely to happen to any Totally Hip product in this space in any case, in the same way as WebPainter 3 is assumed to be a direct competitor to Adobe ImageReady and Macromedia Fireworks. The trick then is to develop a better Flash 3 than Macromedia in minimal time and with infinitesimal resources. This seems like a rather impractical task, but Totally Hip has done it before and will do it again. Look out Macromedia. A better Flash file creator than Flash 3 and a tool that does Interactive QT movies ought to sell very nicely.
Totally Hips' development goals.
Launch LiveStage v 1.0 at MacWorld in January 1999. Launch LiveStage v2.0 at MacWorld, August 1999 in Boston.
Web page interactivity tool (competition: variety of technologies but none as robust as Apple's cross platform multimedia enabling technology)
QuickTime 3 Wired Sprite movies encapsulate Web page interactivity in a way which is definitively superior to any existing technology, and for which no compelling standards or authoring tools exist. As the following design proposal delineates, this appears to be the most compelling product niche presenting itself.
Flash 3 is a mature editing tool which takes full advantage of a limited enabling technology that was proprietary and is now been proposed as a standard. LiveStage 1.0 will be an immature editing tool but still very powerful when compared to Flash 3 and since it is being built around QuickTime 3 and it has:
a) more capability in its toolbox than we could integrate in the next five years and;
b) QT3. and 3.x is the most widely distributed playback technology in existence and;
c) LiveStage v 1.0 is easier to use than Flash and more powerful. LiveStage 2.0 will be far more robust and feature rich than LiveStage v1.0 and LS v2.0 will be miles beyond what Flash 3 or 4 can do, all because of QuickTime 3.x is the superior underlying enabling technology technology that THW relies on.
Comparing Flash 3 and LiveStage 1.0 based on Apple's QT3.x
(Macintosh and Windows platforms)
You will see the Benefits that QT3 provides to THW.
Flash 3:
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Fills Even-odd
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Fills - Even-odd, inverse even-odd, open frame, closed frame, winding, inverse winding, none
Flash 3:
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Gradients - Linear (left-right only) or radial (centered only), 8 color limit
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Linear or radial, any angle, any offset, any radius, 32,767 colors
Flash 3:
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Line Styles - Width, dash, pattern, antialias
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Width, dash, pattern, antialias, center-frame, inside-frame, outside-frame, auto-inset, source grid, device grid, starting and ending caps, sharp or curved joins with miter control
Flash 3:
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Color Styles - RGB color
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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28 different color spaces in the luminance, RGB, CMYK, and universal color families; source/device/result color transformation matrices; up to four transfer components; different mode for each component
Flash 3:
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Transfer Modes - Copy, blend (“transparency”)
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Transfer Modes - Copy, add, blend, migrate, minimum, maximum, highlight, AND, OR, XOR, ramp AND, ramp OR, ramp XOR, over, atop, exclude, fade, none. Note again these are per component.
Flash 3:
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File Formats - Bitmaps JPEG, zlib, vectors
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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File formats - Bitmap and Vectors, Photo JPEG, Motion JPEG A or B, Animation, BMP, Cinepak, Component Video, DV-NTSC, DV-PAL, Graphics, H.263, Indeo 3.2, Intel Raw, Planar RGB, Video, Sorenson Video, and new codec all the time. Numerous popular file format supported. New ones added with new version of QT
Flash 3:
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Sampled Sound - soundWAV(Windows) AIFF (Mac)
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Sampled Sound - Sampled 24/32 bit integer, 32/64 floating point, Alaw, µlaw, IMA, MACE 3:1/6:1, Qdesign Music, Qualcomm PureVoice,
Flash 3:
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Music Midi? When, there is none. Huh?
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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General MIDI superset, with embeddable instruments
Flash 3:
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Text - Stored as outline objects
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Text - Full font, style, color, and justification control; autoscaling; autofitting; clipping; scroll in or out, horizontal or vertical, manual or continuous; karaoke text; drop shadows; antialiasing; keyed text; inverse highlight; color highlight
Flash 3:
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Video None. Where is it? When? Huh?
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Video - This shouldn't need explaining. QT is the defacto industry video standard.
Flash 3:
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3D Huh? Where is it? When?
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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3D - QuickDraw 3D
Flash 3:
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Virtual Reality - Huh? Where is it? When?
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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QuickTime VR is cool and simple.
Flash 3:
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Object Tweening - Basic Shape morphing
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Tween tracks can control pretty much anything; shape, position, color, mode, image, VR viewpoint, etc.
Flash 3:
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References Huh?
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Any track to any other track, or to a sprite
Flash 3:
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Runtime Special Effects - None. When? Huh?
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Over 135 SMPTE industry standard video effects, with extensive customizability
Flash 3:
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Interactivity Very limited. In vesrion 3 you'd expect more but not much here. Basic navigation; basic shape property manipulation; go to URL; mouse reaction
QuickTime 3 and LiveStage:
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Complete Control that is virtually identical to C API of all movie elements; full programming language with variables, control structures, expressions, operators and stack; go to URL; mouse, key, idle, random event reaction; operands for any conceivable property of any track or sprite. To enable the average person THW has implemented a end user friendly scripting system similar to HyperTalk or Visual Basic or Lingo. Filters will be created in LS v2.0 to make the syntax appear like a favorite scripting language.
THW has very bright engineers and they are relying on a superior technology which gives them a much bigger research and engineering group without all the overhead and costs of development that Macromedia has creating a proprietary technology like Flash and ShockWave.
The next 3 to 6 months will sure be interesting for Macromedia, Apple and Totally Hip.
I'm excited after reading this again.
Jerry
VCAP
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