QT 4.0 Pro lets video/audio creators play it their way
by Dennis Sellers, dsellers@maccentral.com
April 20, 1999, 8:00 am ET
Live from NAB in Las Vegas, Nevada
For some people, QuickTime 4.0 just isn't enough. Some folks need a tool to easily create, view, and store professional-quality video and audio content for the Internet, CD-ROMs, and DVD-ROMs. For such folks, Apple will offer QuickTime 4.0 Pro. QT Pro 4 includes the QuickTime Player, PictureViewer, and a new QuickTime Plug-in with features needed for authoring, saving, and deploying content.
Upgrading to QT 4.0 Pro from the "regular" version will cost US $29.95. However, if you've already registered for QuickTime Pro 3.0, your current registration code will work on the new version.
The QT Plug-in works with the leading Web browsers (and you know who they are) to open any media type supported by QuickTime. The plug-in replaces numerous applications and plug-ins, letting you save movies and QT movie favorites to media servers around the world by just using the plug-in "Save" control.
The QuickTime Plug-in can detect processor speed differences, and can allow media authors to send highly compressed materials to more robust systems for decoding and higher-quality playback.
The QT Plug-in can also automatically detect the best version of a QuickTime movie for the viewer's connection speed. The author simply creates multiple versions of the finished movie, specifies which file should be selected for each rate of downloading, and puts a single link on the Web page.
QuickTime 4.0 Pro includes a complete set of built-in software-based effects, including cross-fade, chroma keying, SMPTE wipes, and color adjustments.
Developer-defined effects and transitions are supported through a plug-in architecture. The filters provided in QuickTime 4.0 include blur, edge detection, lens flare, zoom, emboss, film noise, HSL balance, RGB balance, and sharpen.
There are also 11 basic video transitions (cross-fade, explode, implode, slide, wipe, and more), each of which can have many variations. Apple says the transition architecture is fully open and extensible, allowing third-party developers to add more transitions.
With QuickTime 4.0, you have access to over 35 media formats for Web content production. You can import video, audio, text, graphics, and other elements into a wide variety of authoring programs, including ones from Apple, Abode, Avid, Digital Origin, Eidos, Electrifier, Macromedia, Media 100, Scitex, Terran Interactive, Totally Hip, and more.
After you've created the content you want to publish, you can compress it using a QT compressor, such as Sorenson Video 2, QDesign Music 2, Qualcomm PureVoice, Intel Indeo, or Apple Cinepak. Sorenson Video gives extensive control over the video data stream, as well as scene and frame data, and the resulting video content can be displayed faster than ever before, says Apple. The Qdesign Music 2 compressor represents a breakthrough in audio encoding and decoding technology that enables unprecedented audio quality, creating file sizes small enough to play over a 28.8-Kbps modem.
You can simply save your media file to disk or to a system containing QuickTime Streaming Server software. You can stream using your favorite compressors, scale the playback capabilities for different types of computers, disable "Save" to protect copyrighted works, add Macromedia Flash content directly to a QT file, and create favorites for movie files. All this is possible using accepted standards for Web distribution, including RTP, RTSP, SDP, HTTP, and FTP.
Apple says there's "10 great reasons to upgrade to QuickTime 4.0 Pro." With apologies to David Letterman, they are:
1.Create and edit your own streaming movies from existing Internet content.
2.Convert pictures and still images between standard publishing formats.
3.Add special effects to your movies.
4.Provide full-screen movie playback.
5.Make presentations and slide shows that can be played back with any application that supports QuickTime 4.0.
6.Compress video using the state-of-the-art Sorenson Video 2 compressor.
7.Export video, audio, and pictures to more than a dozen standard file formats.
8.Enable, disable, or extract specific tracks of a movie.
9.Compress audio using QDesign Music 2 up to 100:1 for Internet streaming.
10.Save movies from Web sites. |
