jt34@prism.gatech.EDU (THOMPSON,JOHN C) (06/07/91)
Does CDTV support full motion video? I was wondering if anyone knows of any
hard data supporting the need for full motion video vs. still pictures. Has
full motion video been proven to substantially enhance learning in
education with multimedia systems?
--
THOMPSON,JOHN C
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!jt34
Internet: jt34@prism.gatech.eduottmar@ajberl.UUCP (Ottmar Roehrig) (06/07/91)
>In article <1991Jun7.025704.21505@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) writes: [Talking about full-motion video out of CDTV) >what I know. > >The C= rep said that right now decompression is done in software because >the standard for compressed video in hardware has not yet been finalized. >When it is, he said that C= will incorporate it. > >I was really impressed, anyway. Not bad for a $1100 piece of equipment. > >Travis Capener That's the same as I know. BTW: The "standard" mentioned is designed by a group called MPEG (motion picture expert group) and is something like JPEG for stills. (in short :-) Ottmar = AtelierRoehrig, Ottmar Roehrig, Hamburg, Germany UUCP: ...!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmger!ajberl!ottmar "I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing..." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) (06/07/91)
In article <30764@hydra.gatech.EDU>, jt34@prism.gatech.EDU (THOMPSON,JOHN C) writes: > Does CDTV support full motion video? I was wondering if anyone knows of any > hard data supporting the need for full motion video vs. still pictures. Has > full motion video been proven to substantially enhance learning in > education with multimedia systems? > -- > THOMPSON,JOHN C > Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 > uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!jt34 > Internet: jt34@prism.gatech.edu I saw a CDTV demo doing full-motion video. The CDTV can do full-motion video in a third-of-a-screen sized window. The video a series of HAM frames stored in compressed format on the CD. The C= rep said the CDTV could put 72 minutes of this video on one CD. I'm also an Apple multimedia developer and as of February, Apple was putting 24 minutes of video on a CD. The video, while full-motion, did not run at 30 frames per second. It was more like 15. It still looked really good. Actually, to be fair (fair? who said we had to be fair?) Apple's 24 minutes of video is full screen and at 30 frames per second. Still, Apple's video requires a multiple-thousands-of-dollars video board while Commodore's video works on a stock CDTV. I'm not making a value-judgement here, just telling what I know. The C= rep said that right now decompression is done in software because the standard for compressed video in hardware has not yet been finalized. When it is, he said that C= will incorporate it. I was really impressed, anyway. Not bad for a $1100 piece of equipment. Travis Capener
es1@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Ethan Solomita) (06/07/91)
In article <30764@hydra.gatech.EDU> jt34@prism.gatech.EDU (THOMPSON,JOHN C) writes: >Does CDTV support full motion video? I was wondering if anyone knows of any >hard data supporting the need for full motion video vs. still pictures. Has >full motion video been proven to substantially enhance learning in >education with multimedia systems? >-- The best I saw was quarter-screen HAM animation at 10-12fps. That is without any compression. Hopefully compression will be in the future. -- Ethan Now the world has gone to bed, Now I lay me down to sleep, Darkness won't engulf my head, Try to count electric sheep, I can see by infrared, Sweet dream wishes you can keep, How I hate the night. How I hate the night. -- Marvin
mikep@hpmwtd.HP.COM (Mike Powell) (06/08/91)
This brings up something that I think should be discussed a bit... What the hell is 'full motion video'??????!!!!!! Does that mean a FULL SCCREEN Does it mean VIDEO RESOLUTION/COLORS? Does a Dpaint III anim count? Does any format/resolution/palette count as long as it is digitized from a video source? What the heck is it? What is 'Partial motion video'? .... jus' wondering :-) -Mike-
lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) (06/08/91)
In article <1991Jun7.025704.21505@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) writes: > >Actually, to be fair (fair? who said we had to be fair?) Apple's 24 minutes >of video is full screen and at 30 frames per second. Still, Apple's video >requires a multiple-thousands-of-dollars video board while Commodore's video This sounds like a demo of Apple's 8*24GC graphics accelerator board, which is expensive but provides significant graphics performance. What's more interesting is the recently-announced QuickTime, which provides something more like what you described for the CDTV. (Small-size display, full-motion, 15 frames per second, more compression.) Any Mac II with just the QuickTime software can play back these movies with no extra hardware. My understanding is that the QuickTime architecture does support hardware accelerators, which are transparent to the application software. QuickTime also provides support for copy/paste of movies from one app to another, still image compression (ie JPEG), among other things. -- Larry Rosenstein, Apple Computer, Inc. lsr@apple.com (or AppleLink: Rosenstein1)
jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (J Eric Townsend) (06/08/91)
In article <ottmar.4130@ajberl.UUCP> ottmar@ajberl.UUCP (Ottmar Roehrig) writes: >>In article <1991Jun7.025704.21505@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) writes: >>The C= rep said that right now decompression is done in software because >>the standard for compressed video in hardware has not yet been finalized. >>When it is, he said that C= will incorporate it. >That's the same as I know. BTW: The "standard" mentioned is designed >by a group called MPEG (motion picture expert group) and is something >like JPEG for stills. (in short :-) You might want to look at the company UEC. Rumor has it they're doing the compression tech for CBM. -- J. Eric Townsend - jet@uh.edu - bitnet: jet@UHOU - vox: (713) 749-2126 Skate UNIX! (curb fault: skater dumped) -- If you're hacking PowerGloves and Amigas, drop me a line. --
kdarling@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) (06/08/91)
> What the hell is 'full motion video'??????!!!!!! Many times it's a word like "multimedia". In other words, it means whatever the marketing guy is thinking about that day ;-). > Does that mean a FULL SCREEN? Yeah. Just no one wants to type out "full screen, full motion". > Does a Dpaint III anim count? Umm. _I_ wouldn't think so. It might, if you meant fullscreen animation. > Does it mean VIDEO RESOLUTION/COLORS? > Does any format/resolution/palette count as long as it is > digitized from a video source? Depends on whose machine it is, of course. A Mac user might be talking about B&W (or full color!), someone else might mean a limited set of colors and/or no overscan, some might include interlace and so on. But generically it means "as close to a normal TV picture as possible". This usually indicates realtime decompression of predigitized video frames. In the case of CDROM stuff, it all has to do with the fact that only about 150K/sec can come off the disc. Divide that up and you can see that serious (de)compression is needed to get a fullscreen at full speed. > What is 'Partial motion video'? Anything not full screen or at 30 frames/second. Eg: displaying back in a 1/4 screen area at 10fps. > .... jus' wondering :-) Don't worry... I'm sure you'll get several definitions (see first above :-). Just priming the pump, myself. cheers - kevin <kdarling@catt.ncsu.edu>
ACPS1072@RYERSON <ACPS1072@Ryerson.CA> (06/08/91)
>Actually, to be fair (fair? who said we had to be fair?) Apple's 24 minutes >of video is full screen and at 30 frames per second. Still, Apple's video >requires a multiple-thousands-of-dollars video board while Commodore's video >works on a stock CDTV. I'm not making a value-judgement here, just telling >what I know. Just out of pure wonderment... How does the MAC play these 24 minutes at thirty frames a second? With my past experience with MAC CD-ROMs I got the impression they were pretty slow. Is this a new MAC CD-ROM?? or Are these pictures loaded into memory or something first? or Are the pictures black and white (or small bit planes)? If not what?? Are the images compressed somehow (by just saving the changes) If so does the frame rate fluctuate as the differences in the pictures increase and decrease?? and finally, Do you get images tearing as they move across the screen? Enquiring minds want to know. :-> Derek Lang<<<<< | ACPS1072@Ryerson | "So much to do. So little time." Toronto, ON | - Mr. X Canada |
jt34@prism.gatech.EDU (THOMPSON,JOHN C) (06/10/91)
In article <19750006@hpmwmat.HP.COM> mikep@hpmwtd.HP.COM (Mike Powell) writes: > This brings up something that I think should be discussed a bit... > What the hell is 'full motion video'??????!!!!!! > Does that mean a FULL SCCREEN > Does it mean VIDEO RESOLUTION/COLORS? > Does a Dpaint III anim count? > Does any format/resolution/palette count as long as it is > digitized from a video source? > What the heck is it? What is 'Partial motion video'? > .... jus' wondering :-) > To me full motion video means 30 fps true life color. I've been wondering if anyone has ever documented the need for this capability in multimedia. Sure it looks great on the screen but does it enhance learning, retention, or provide some other significant benefit. What if it would cost a whole lot less to do only 256 colors at 15 fps, would this change the impact of the message. Do we need motion video at all? Still photos can display a lot of information at a significantly lower cost. Sometimes we seem to push technology for the sake of technology without really understanding if it brings anything new to the table. Has anyone seem the Iterated Systems fractal based compression stuff. At Comdex they were replaying full screen b&w video from a floppy. Amazing! -- THOMPSON,JOHN C Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332 uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!jt34 Internet: jt34@prism.gatech.edu
lindwall@beowulf.ucsd.edu (John Lindwall) (06/11/91)
In article <31024@hydra.gatech.EDU> jt34@prism.gatech.EDU (THOMPSON,JOHN C) writes: >What if it would cost a whole lot less to do >only 256 colors at 15 fps, would this change the impact of the message. Do we >need motion video at all? I have no quantitative results on reduction of video quality vs "impact", but for my Masters project at UCSD I helped implement a Video Filesystem server. Beleive it or not, the server ran on a PC-Clone equipped with an audio/video capture system made by a company called UVC. The hardware was capable of displaying ~ 640x480 pixels, with 8 bits per pixel. The hardware performs a simple run-length encoding to reduce each video frame to < 64K. The audio samples for each frame were tacked onto the end of the video frame (the audio bandwidth was trivial compared to video, even sampling a 8 KHz). The server listened on a socket for requests from any number of clients -- currently we have an "video editor" application running under OpenWindows on a Sparcstation. The video sequences played back at a rate of 15 fps (the best we could attain for this frame size -- basically full screen). The hardware is capable of 30 fps, but you'd have to reduce the quality of the video (blocky pixels) or reduce the viewable screen size (half screen). Even at 15 fps it looked pretty good. It was a fun project -- I wonder how much better it could have been if we had been Amiga based. Commodore had been in touch with our group about using A3000UX machines, but it fell through unfortunately. -- John Lindwall lindwall@cs.ucsd.edu "Oh look at me! I'm all flooby! I'll be a son of a gun!" -- Flaming Carrot
wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Art Warner) (06/11/91)
In article <13967@goofy.Apple.COM> lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) writes: >In article <1991Jun7.025704.21505@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) writes: >> >>Actually, to be fair (fair? who said we had to be fair?) Apple's 24 minutes >>of video is full screen and at 30 frames per second. Still, Apple's video >>requires a multiple-thousands-of-dollars video board while Commodore's video > >This sounds like a demo of Apple's 8*24GC graphics accelerator board, which >is expensive but provides significant graphics performance. > >What's more interesting is the recently-announced QuickTime, which provides >something more like what you described for the CDTV. (Small-size display, >full-motion, 15 frames per second, more compression.) Tell us about "Road Pizza"! > >Any Mac II with just the QuickTime software can play back these movies with >no extra hardware. My understanding is that the QuickTime architecture does >support hardware accelerators, which are transparent to the application >software. QuickTime also provides support for copy/paste of movies from one >app to another, still image compression (ie JPEG), among other things. > >-- >Larry Rosenstein, Apple Computer, Inc. > >lsr@apple.com >(or AppleLink: Rosenstein1) -- William "Art" Warner //\ CBM Amiga Student Rep. \X/--\miga makes it happen.......... wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu IBM, Apple, Sun, & Next make it expensive!
wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Art Warner) (06/11/91)
In article <31024@hydra.gatech.EDU> jt34@prism.gatech.EDU (THOMPSON,JOHN C) writes: >To me full motion video means 30 fps true life color. I've been wondering if >anyone has ever documented the need for this capability in multimedia. Sure it >looks great on the screen but does it enhance learning, retention, or provide >some other significant benefit. What if it would cost a whole lot less to do >only 256 colors at 15 fps, would this change the impact of the message. Do we >need motion video at all? Still photos can display a lot of information at a >significantly lower cost. Sometimes we seem to push technology for the sake of >technology without really understanding if it brings anything new to the table. Why don't you come over to my house and watch the NBA playoffs on a 12" b&w tv while I feed you "framegrabbed" stills of the game every 30 seconds, while I watch Jordon "stuff the basket" on my 25" COLOR TV at 30 frames/second TV/monitor? Does that answer you question? >they were replaying full screen b&w video from a floppy. Amazing! With DCTV, which C= says goes nicely into a CDTV, one can playback REALTIME anim files in NTSC quality. Full overscan! Try that Mac! I found single frames to be about 30-35k each. Not bad for 24bit color data! All of this is WITHOUT any compression other than the DCTV format itself. Some of you may remember my POSTS from a while back asking if anyone thought that it would be neat to add DCTV to a CDTV. Well......CBM must have already been thinking of this because my connections tell me that they have been seeing CBM using DCTV's in their CDTVs's video slot. (remember there is a video slot in the DCTV!) Apparently the CDrom transfer rate is good enough to transfer DCTV format pictures realtime! -- William "Art" Warner //\ CBM Amiga Student Rep. \X/--\miga makes it happen.......... wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu IBM, Apple, Sun, & Next make it expensive!
daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) (06/13/91)
In article <13967@goofy.Apple.COM> lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) writes: >In article <1991Jun7.025704.21505@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) writes: >>Actually, to be fair (fair? who said we had to be fair?) Apple's 24 minutes >>of video is full screen and at 30 frames per second. What's more important to the question is, from where does the image originate? >This sounds like a demo of Apple's 8*24GC graphics accelerator board, which >is expensive but provides significant graphics performance. Yeah, that puppy's driven by an AMD 29K at 40MHz or some-such. Not too shabby at all. You need something like that to get any kind of motion video on a large 24 bit display. >What's more interesting is the recently-announced QuickTime, which provides >something more like what you described for the CDTV. (Small-size display, >full-motion, 15 frames per second, more compression.) Normal Amigas can handle 30FPS no problem from memory. A3000s can do a pretty decent animation from hard disk. The CDTV problem is that CDs have a terrible bandwidth, like maybe 1/30th that of SCSI. So you figure, all things being equal, 30FPS from hard disk equates to 1FPS from CD. That's not moving. So good compression is absolutely necessary to get anything moving from CD, even in a window. -- Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy "This is my mistake. Let me make it good." -R.E.M.
yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp (Brian Yamanaka) (06/13/91)
In article <22384@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes: |>>Actually, to be fair (fair? who said we had to be fair?) Apple's 24 minutes |>>of video is full screen and at 30 frames per second. | |What's more important to the question is, from where does the image originate? I missed the orginal message, but from the above I would hazard that we are talking about Super Mac's Video compression board. This thing is rather expensive, but using JPEG decompression of movies from hard disks. A really nice product for digital movie editing, tho' fast tranistions still show slow refresh. |>What's more interesting is the recently-announced QuickTime, which provides |>something more like what you described for the CDTV. (Small-size display, |>full-motion, 15 frames per second, more compression.) | |Normal Amigas can handle 30FPS no problem from memory. A3000s can do a pretty |decent animation from hard disk. The CDTV problem is that CDs have a terrible |bandwidth, like maybe 1/30th that of SCSI. So you figure, all things being |equal, 30FPS from hard disk equates to 1FPS from CD. That's not moving. So |good compression is absolutely necessary to get anything moving from CD, even |in a window. The nice thing about QuickTime is that it incorperates real time scalable compression and decompression to disks. It even plays back little movies in real time from CD-ROM. The frame rate is something like 10fps (on a IIci). (I hope it was safe to mention this, since it was announced at Seybold Digital World. Don't want legal chasing my butt.) The thing to stress is that the scheme they use is scalable to hardware, both CPU and video display (256 or 16 million colors). That is something that Apple excels in, device independence. Being an avid Amiga user from a 1000->2000->2500/30->3000 and having been exposed to Macintoshs I believe that the Amiga needs 24 bit color with device independent graphics. Of course that is what everyone is saying. I hope that with the 3000 and its video slot/ZorroIII combination we can see this happen soon. The third part solutions are nice, but there has to be some sort of standard for any real software to get written. | | |-- |Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" | {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy | "This is my mistake. Let me make it good." -R.E.M. Of course the usual disclaimers apply. I speak for myself and in no way represent those of my employer. So there! -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Brian YAMANAKA (aka The VISCA dude) |"I knew I should have made that Sony Corporation, Personal Video Group | left turn at Albuquerque." Email: yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp | -Bugs Bunny Phone: +81-3-5488-6160 | FAX: +81-3-5488-6469 |Hawaii,Illinois,Japan...what's next?
tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) (06/14/91)
In article <22384@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes: >In article <13967@goofy.Apple.COM> lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) writes: >>In article <1991Jun7.025704.21505@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) writes: > >>>Actually, to be fair (fair? who said we had to be fair?) Apple's 24 minutes >>>of video is full screen and at 30 frames per second. > >What's more important to the question is, from where does the image originate? The presentation I saw at Apple did the video on a normal projection television. Somehow they were getting the video signal off of the CD-ROM, through the Mac (IIfx) and onto an NTSC device. The display was not on the Mac screen at all. However, I also saw similar video on the Mac screen in a HyperCard window. This time, though, they were using some sort of card that takes a video signal and patches it through onto a bit-plane of the Mac screen. Mind you, all of this hardware cost megabucks. The CDTV, on the other hand, costs around $1000 (in Canada) which I'm sure is about a quarter of the special video card for the Mac alone. On the surface, the stuff Apple is doing is much more impressive than Commodore. When you realize that Apple does its stuff on a $10k system and Commodore on a $1k system, the tables are turned. Of course, someday Apple hopes to have compressed video, too. I hope by then Commodore is either very well entrenched or has something new up its sleeve. Travis Capener
yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp (Brian Yamanaka) (06/14/91)
In article <1991Jun13.232219.10300@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) writes: |In article <22384@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes: |>In article <13967@goofy.Apple.COM> lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) writes: |>>In article <1991Jun7.025704.21505@watserv1.waterloo.edu> tcapener@watserv1.waterloo.edu (CAPENER TD - ENGLISH ) writes: |> |>>>Actually, to be fair (fair? who said we had to be fair?) Apple's 24 minutes |>>>of video is full screen and at 30 frames per second. |> |>What's more important to the question is, from where does the image originate? | |The presentation I saw at Apple did the video on a normal projection |television. Somehow they were getting the video signal off of the CD-ROM, |through the Mac (IIfx) and onto an NTSC device. The display was not on |the Mac screen at all. The stuff on the projection screens were straight off the Mac display 24 bit display. (There are such things as multiscan projection screens) |However, I also saw similar video on the Mac screen in a HyperCard window. |This time, though, they were using some sort of card that takes a video |signal and patches it through onto a bit-plane of the Mac screen. I don't think this is true. The QuickTime XCMD's for Hypercard allow you to playback compressed "movies" on any Mac II family computer (including the LC). I think this is the point most people are missing with QuickTime. QT is a new software architecture that integrates into the Mac OS. It provides for multi-media by combining compressed video and sound into a single data stream and format. Most importantly QuickTime provides the necessary timing support to make sure that the video image and sound are synched. It is even possible to synch together two movies that were captured at different frame rates. THe really neat thing is that the software "scales" the playback rates to deal with the kinds of hardware (CPU) in use. That means slower frame rates on slower Macs, but anyone can playback a file mad eon a different Mac. QuickTime is also an open architecture that allows for the addition of more software decompressors and hardware ones as well. Using these "components" video boards from other manufacturers are given a single interface that allows them to playback and capture video, making the job for the programmer a lot easier. |Mind you, all of this hardware cost megabucks. The CDTV, on the other hand, |costs around $1000 (in Canada) which I'm sure is about a quarter of the |special video card for the Mac alone. | |On the surface, the stuff Apple is doing is much more impressive than |Commodore. When you realize that Apple does its stuff on a $10k system |and Commodore on a $1k system, the tables are turned. Of course, someday |Apple hopes to have compressed video, too. I hope by then Commodore is |either very well entrenched or has something new up its sleeve. Apple has always excelled in software creation. Anyone who has used the Mac can see that in the elegance of its interface. Of course they can't seem to get pre-emptive "multi-tasking" to work. But they excel in human interfacing and application program interfaces. I think we can no longer say that Apple produces only expensive systems. QuickTime puts multi-media in the reach of many with the LC, and Super Mac has unveiled a $500 video capture and playback board for it. Of course the Amiga still has many hardware advantages that a Mac doesn't, so Commodore is not out of the game yet. As I said in another post, we just need better resolution and colors with greater OS support. That would really make the Amiga the best solution. | |Travis Capener The usual disclaimers apply. All comments are my own and in no way reflect in anyway those of my employer. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Brian YAMANAKA (aka The VISCA dude) |"I knew I should have made that Sony Corporation, Personal Video Group | left turn at Albuquerque." Email: yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp | -Bugs Bunny Phone: +81-3-5488-6160 | FAX: +81-3-5488-6469 |Hawaii,Illinois,Japan...what's next?
jt34@prism.gatech.EDU (THOMPSON,JOHN C) (06/14/91)
Does Quicktime only display motion video at frame rates which has been loaded
into memory entirely before playback or is it fast enough to decompress data
from a disk on the fly?
--
THOMPSON,JOHN C
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!jt34
Internet: jt34@prism.gatech.eduwwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Art Warner) (06/15/91)
In article <22384@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes: > >Yeah, that puppy's driven by an AMD 29K at 40MHz or some-such. Not too shabby >at all. You need something like that to get any kind of motion video on a >large 24 bit display. > >Normal Amigas can handle 30FPS no problem from memory. A3000s can do a pretty >decent animation from hard disk. The CDTV problem is that CDs have a terrible >bandwidth, like maybe 1/30th that of SCSI. So you figure, all things being >equal, 30FPS from hard disk equates to 1FPS from CD. That's not moving. So >good compression is absolutely necessary to get anything moving from CD, even >in a window. > > >-- >Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests" > {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh PLINK: hazy BIX: hazy > "This is my mistake. Let me make it good." -R.E.M. What about a CD containing DCTV format files in a "compressed" anim format? I did an animation in this format where full overscan NTSC quality video ran at 30 fps and each frame was less than 30k each, BEFORE any compression like MPEG, JPEG, or filtering. -- William "Art" Warner //\ CBM Amiga Student Rep. \X/--\miga makes it happen.......... wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu IBM, Apple, Sun, & Next make it expensive!
James_Hastings-Trew@tptbbs.UUCP (James Hastings-Trew) (06/15/91)
In a message dated Sat 15 Jun 91 01:46, Yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp (brian Yaman wrote: YY> Apple has always excelled in software creation. Anyone who has used YY> the Mac can see that in the elegance of its interface. Of course YY> they can't seem to get pre-emptive "multi-tasking" to work. But they YY> excel in human interfacing and application program interfaces. I disagree. While a GUI is great for beginner and casual users, the Mac's total lack of scripting abilities and lack of multitasking really prevents the machine from being a machine for serious work. Given the same task and relatively equal harware capabilities, a multi-media creator working with Amiga systems will always be able to produce a given project faster and cheaper than a creator with a Macintosh. AmigaDOS scripts and Arexx give us the edge to massage large amounts of data without a lot of time consuming operator intervention. This gives the Amiga an undisputed competitive edge. Quick Time sounds neat, but the hardware itself is lacking - no Mac I have ever worked with can play sounds and access the hard-drive at the same time without serious system performance degradation. Pray-tell how Quick Time allows the simultaneous decompression of video frames, updates the display, and plays back digitized sound at the same time on a machine that cannot move the mouse and read the directory of a floppy at the same time? The assertion that "any Mac can display compressed video" with Quick Time is bogus - only the fastest, most pumped up, most accelerated machines have the ability to do this with any credibility. YY> I think we can no longer say that Apple produces only expensive YY> systems. QuickTime puts multi-media in the reach of many with the YY> LC, and Super Mac has unveiled a $500 video capture and playback board YY> for it. *Ahem*. Who said the LC was inexpensive? Oh yeah... Apple did. Must be true! YY> Of course the Amiga still has many hardware advantages that a Mac YY> doesn't, so Commodore is not out of the game yet. As I said in YY> another post, we just need better resolution and colors with greater YY> OS support. That would really make the Amiga the best solution. We already have good colour/resolution options on the Amiga - at great prices too. The OS support is a red-herring issue. All application developers at some time or other whine that "XYZ support should be built into the OS." This seems to be the approach that Apple takes with their system software. Examples: TOPS provides for a distributed networking solution. Apple adds this to the OS MicroSloth Mail provides for network EMail. Apple adds EMail to the OS Adobe Type Manager provides for superior type on screen. Apple adds this to OS Quick Keys provides for Mouse/Keyboard macros. Apple adds this to OS Virtual provides virtual memory. Apple adds this to OS Quark provides for Hot-Links with other apps. Apple adds this to OS The list goes on and on. Apple seems to be intent on not allowing any creative force in the Mac development community to keep any kind of advantage. I wonder why developers are leaving the Mac in droves for Windows and DOS? Maybe because IBM does not seem intent on stealing all their best ideas. What would Digital Creations think if Commodore suddenly created a similar technology and incorporated that into the hardware/OS of the Amiga? Why am I disgressing to this discussion of Apple's software policies regarding their OS? Because I see things like video/audio formats and solutions to be more of an APPLICATIONS problem, not a OS problem. Commodore is there to sanction file formats (IFF, SMUS, etc.) so that we do not turn into a wilderness of file format incompatibilities (how much development time is wasted in each Mac appliation to make it compatible with TIFF, PICT, PAINT, EPS, WORD, WRITE, etc. etc.) Let the free market decide which video/audio/authoring solutions are the best.
yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp (Brian Yamanaka) (06/17/91)
Quicktime decompresses from the CD-ROM or HD on the fly. That is the
beauty of it. Currently they use a proprietary compression scheme to
accomplish this, but the design of QuickTime allows for other methods
to be substituted as they becom available using modules.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian YAMANAKA (aka The VISCA dude) |"I knew I should have made that
Sony Corporation, Personal Video Group | left turn at Albuquerque."
Email: yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp | -Bugs Bunny
Phone: +81-3-5488-6160 |
FAX: +81-3-5488-6469 |Hawaii,Illinois,Japan...what's next?yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp (Brian Yamanaka) (06/17/91)
In article <James_Hastings-Trew.3300@tptbbs.UUCP> James_Hastings-Trew@tptbbs.UUCP (James Hastings-Trew) writes: >In a message dated Sat 15 Jun 91 01:46, Yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp (brian Yaman >wrote: > > YY> Apple has always excelled in software creation. Anyone who has used > YY> the Mac can see that in the elegance of its interface. Of course > YY> they can't seem to get pre-emptive "multi-tasking" to work. But they > YY> excel in human interfacing and application program interfaces. > >I disagree. While a GUI is great for beginner and casual users, the Mac's >total lack of scripting abilities and lack of multitasking really prevents >the machine from being a machine for serious work. Given the same task and >relatively equal harware capabilities, a multi-media creator working with >Amiga systems will always be able to produce a given project faster and >cheaper than a creator with a Macintosh. AmigaDOS scripts and Arexx give us >the edge to massage large amounts of data without a lot of time consuming >operator intervention. This gives the Amiga an undisputed competitive edge. The idea with the Mac is that the multi-media creator doesn't want to worry about the scripting and learning AREXX to do serious work. They just want to do the creating. I've used the Mac to meet a lot of deadlines because it was easier on the Mac. I'm not talking programming here, because the average user doens't wnat to program. They want a polished finished product. I'd agree that I can process a lot more data on the Amiga with scripts and AREXX (that's why I like UNIX), but I wouldn't say I could get the data into presentable form for a business meeting. And I wouldn't say that AREXX and Amiga DOS scripts don't require user intervnetion. There hasn't been a single DOS script I've used that had to be modified in some way to deal with a different hardware configuration or to deal with some conflict in ASSIGN's. >Quick Time sounds neat, but the hardware itself is lacking - no Mac I have >ever worked with can play sounds and access the hard-drive at the same time >without serious system performance degradation. Pray-tell how Quick Time >allows the simultaneous decompression of video frames, updates the display, >and plays back digitized sound at the same time on a machine that cannot move >the mouse and read the directory of a floppy at the same time? The assertion >that "any Mac can display compressed video" with Quick Time is bogus - only >the fastest, most pumped up, most accelerated machines have the ability to do >this with any credibility. I didn't imply in any way that the Mac is superior in any way to an Amiga in terms of processing power. Geez, I work with one everyday and am still wanting to be able to format a floppy while doing something else. But QuickTime did amaze me, more so because of my experiences of how slow a Mac is. > YY> I think we can no longer say that Apple produces only expensive > YY> systems. QuickTime puts multi-media in the reach of many with the > YY> LC, and Super Mac has unveiled a $500 video capture and playback board > YY> for it. > >*Ahem*. Who said the LC was inexpensive? Oh yeah... Apple did. Must be true! An LC may not be as cheap as a comparable Amiga 500, yet they sold a lot of them. Look at the Classic, I would never consider buying one over an Amiga, yet Apple couldn't keep up with the demand for this unit. > > YY> Of course the Amiga still has many hardware advantages that a Mac > YY> doesn't, so Commodore is not out of the game yet. As I said in > YY> another post, we just need better resolution and colors with greater > YY> OS support. That would really make the Amiga the best solution. > >We already have good colour/resolution options on the Amiga - at great prices >too. The OS support is a red-herring issue. All application developers at >some time or other whine that "XYZ support should be built into the OS." This >seems to be the approach that Apple takes with their system software. stuff deleted... > >The list goes on and on. Apple seems to be intent on not allowing any >creative force in the Mac development community to keep any kind of >advantage. I wonder why developers are leaving the Mac in droves for Windows >and DOS? Maybe because IBM does not seem intent on stealing all their best >ideas. Could it be because there are only 6 million Macs compared to 30+ million PC compoatibles. Most programmers I've talked to dislike the MS Windows programming environment. Of course it's a matter of taste. >What would Digital Creations think if Commodore suddenly created a similar >technology and incorporated that into the hardware/OS of the Amiga? I think that stealing technology from another software writer would be wrong, but should not inhibit the enhancement of the computer. How can other writers take advantage of something like outline fonts if he can't depend on it always being supportted by the system software? By incorporating it into the OS the software writer can worry more about what he does with the fonts than how to create them. I don't want to start a flame war here. I think that happens all too much here. It just seems to me that we can't all live in an Amiga only world. Everyone has to be aware of developments on the other platforms and see how these ideas can help the Amiga. >Why am I disgressing to this discussion of Apple's software policies >regarding their OS? Because I see things like video/audio formats and >solutions to be more of an APPLICATIONS problem, not a OS problem. Commodore >is there to sanction file formats (IFF, SMUS, etc.) so that we do not turn >into a wilderness of file format incompatibilities (how much development time >is wasted in each Mac appliation to make it compatible with TIFF, PICT, >PAINT, EPS, WORD, WRITE, etc. etc.) Let the free market decide which >video/audio/authoring solutions are the best. I'm not sure how the Mac handles data (still learning) but it provides a service that appears similar to IFF through the scrapbook. Even if I have two word processors and one can't understand the others files, if I cut and paste directly between the two, at least the text will appear. The formatting will have been lost, but the data is still there. I think this has to do with resources as text and formatting are probably stored in different resource areas. The app can just deal witht he information it can handle. Of course there is the difference between PICT and PAINT, but that's because one deals with structured drawings and the other with bitmaps. Again I don't advocate that what Apple does is the only way or even a better way. Just that we need to be aware of what goes on in other systems. I have the oppurtunity to work on both platforms and can honsetly say I prefer programming on the Amiga. Multi-tasking, message passing, etc. are things I think are indispensible, but these features matter little to the general consumer. Remember we are not living in a programmers only world. If we want the Amiga to continue growing we have to sell more Amigas and to do that we need more software. To get more software we need more tools and support for the application writer. I think that Commodore is heading towards that, especially with the inclusion of AREXX in 2.0. But we have to keep an open mind and keep out eyes open. Any further discussion should be moved to another area and I always welcome e-mail. Remember I don't want this to digress into another Mac vs. Amiga flame war. I've had enough of that stuff. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Brian YAMANAKA (aka The VISCA dude) |"I knew I should have made that Sony Corporation, Personal Video Group | left turn at Albuquerque." Email: yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp | -Bugs Bunny Phone: +81-3-5488-6160 | FAX: +81-3-5488-6469 |Hawaii,Illinois,Japan...what's next?
barber@jazz.concert.net (Scott Barber) (06/17/91)
(apologies for the slight digression from the focus of the newsgroup, but John Thompson raises a question worth pondering a bit...) In article <1991Jun10.221045.28162@en.ecn.purdue.edu> wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Art Warner) writes: >In article <31024@hydra.gatech.EDU> jt34@prism.gatech.EDU (THOMPSON,JOHN C) writes: >>To me full motion video means 30 fps true life color. I've been wondering if >>anyone has ever documented the need for this capability in multimedia. Sure it >>looks great on the screen but does it enhance learning, retention, or provide >>some other significant benefit. What if it would cost a whole lot less to do >>only 256 colors at 15 fps, would this change the impact of the message. Do we >>need motion video at all? Still photos can display a lot of information at a >>significantly lower cost. Sometimes we seem to push technology for the sake of >>technology without really understanding if it brings anything new to the table. > >Why don't you come over to my house and watch the NBA playoffs on a 12" b&w >tv while I feed you "framegrabbed" stills of the game every 30 seconds, while >I watch Jordon "stuff the basket" on my 25" COLOR TV at 30 frames/second >TV/monitor? > >Does that answer you question? > Well, no, I don't think it did. It is clear to me and, I'm sure, to Mr. Thompson that watching Michael Jordan play in 30fps full color video is more fun than watching a lower quality image. I think his question, though, has more to do with the effectiveness of getting a substantive message across, which for many people is the main justification for using this technology in the first place. So, does someone learn something better when the image is sparkling clean than they would if the picture was limited? If someone pulls some video off a CD-ROM during an interactive course, do they understand the content of the video event better if the picture is 30fps than if it was 20fps? or 2/3 of the screen instead of full screen? The answer may indeed be yes, but there does exist the possibility (heaven forbid!!) in many cases in which it may be no. In any case, it is rarely as straightforward and clear as many graphicphiles have come to believe. If nothing else, the question is certainly worth asking, and an adequate response to that question should address the overall issue of the utility of the technology and it's effectiveness for getting substantive content of a presentation across, as well as its ability to keep the viewer's eye trained on an image. Ultimately, it always boils down to the purchaser's decision as to how important various features and abilities are to him/her. The wise purchase may involve a decision to spend more time on researching the topic and creating content quality rather than on making sure you keep on top of the latest technology for image quality. Actually, this is one of the reasons why the Amiga has become so influential in video these days. While it does NOT do as good a job as more expensive systems, it provides a way to do a decent enough job (for those of us who can't afford high-end graphics workstations and megabuck video effects devices) to get a message across! Scott Barber
wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Art Warner) (06/18/91)
In article <YAMANAKA.91Jun17091455@probe.cv.sony.co.jp> yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp (Brian Yamanaka) writes: >Quicktime decompresses from the CD-ROM or HD on the fly. That is the >beauty of it. Currently they use a proprietary compression scheme to >accomplish this, but the design of QuickTime allows for other methods >to be substituted as they becom available using modules. I am SORRY, but I don't consider a 160x120 pixel window running at one fps to be "true" realtime decompression of "VIDEO MOTION". I don't care how many bits of color is in that tiny window. SORRY MacFans. (not real sorry though!) >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Brian YAMANAKA (aka The VISCA dude) |"I knew I should have made that > Sony Corporation, Personal Video Group | left turn at Albuquerque." > Email: yamanaka@cv.sony.co.jp | -Bugs Bunny > Phone: +81-3-5488-6160 | > FAX: +81-3-5488-6469 |Hawaii,Illinois,Japan...what's next? -- William "Art" Warner //\ CBM Amiga Student Rep. \X/--\miga makes it happen.......... wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu IBM, Apple, Sun, & Next make it expensive!
amuser@cutmcvax.cs.curtin.edu.au (Bill Sharp-Smith AUG) (06/21/91)
wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Art Warner) writes: >I am SORRY, but I don't consider a 160x120 pixel window running at one fps to be >"true" realtime decompression of "VIDEO MOTION". I don't care how many bits of >color is in that tiny window. >SORRY MacFans. (not real sorry though!) I've seen a video demonstrating QuickTime, and the frame rate didn't seem any less than television, and I think it was in 24 bits. I've also seen a real live IIfx with a 24-bit video card playing live video from a video disk in 24-bit colour. The frame rate was again, close to TV in a window about half the screen size. I know it was not (necessarily) being compressed/decompressed as it was coming from the video disk, but how else do you get live video on a Mac screen ? It must have been at least digitized, then re-displayed. You can't just do a video-overlay like the Amiga. It was interesting though, that the frame rate slowed down considerably when any kind of mirroring or colour adjustments were made (on the fly). Also I was told that the fram rate would increase if a JPEG (MPEG) chip was inserted. Also, regarding QuickTime, I think one of its major concepts is that video and pictures are just another data-type. So you can 'copy' a section of compressed video from one program, paste it into your word-processor, find the frame you want (using VCR-style controls) and then print that frame as a picture in your document. Regards, Amiga Users Group of Western Australia
gblock@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Gregory R Block) (06/22/91)
From article <amuser.677479151@cutmcvax>, by amuser@cutmcvax.cs.curtin.edu.au (Bill Sharp-Smith AUG): > I've also seen a real live IIfx with a 24-bit video card playing live video > from a video disk in 24-bit colour. The frame rate was again, close to TV > in a window about half the screen size. I know it was not (necessarily) being > compressed/decompressed as it was coming from the video disk, but how else do > you get live video on a Mac screen ? It must have been at least digitized, > then re-displayed. You can't just do a video-overlay like > the Amiga. Don't be so sure. (I can't stand my mac, but I need it for 24bit work) > It was interesting though, that the frame rate slowed down > considerably when any kind of mirroring or colour adjustments were made > (on the fly). Also I was told that the fram rate would increase if a JPEG > (MPEG) chip was inserted. I'm sure it would. Then again, so would CDTV. :) -- Socrates: "I drank WHAT????" LMFAP: "Next time you see me, it won't be me." Wubba: "A dream is nothing more than a wish dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with a little imagination." (From my poem, "A Dream") -Wubba
wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Art Warner) (06/29/91)
In article <amuser.677479151@cutmcvax> amuser@cutmcvax.cs.curtin.edu.au (Bill Sharp-Smith AUG) writes: >I've seen a video demonstrating QuickTime, and the frame rate didn't seem any ^^^^ >less than television, and I think it was in 24 bits. ^^^^^ In other words, you weren't real sure of what you were seeing. >I've also seen a real live IIfx with a 24-bit video card playing live video ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >from a video disk in 24-bit colour. The frame rate was again, close to TV ^^^^^^^^^^ >in a window about half the screen size. I know it was not (necessarily) being >compressed/decompressed as it was coming from the video disk, but how else do >you get live video on a Mac screen ? It must have been at least digitized, >then re-displayed. You can't just do a video-overlay like >the Amiga. The graphics chips on the dedicated 24bit video cards are usually MUCH more powerful than a M68030 (TI 34020?) and is clocked much faster as well. >It was interesting though, that the frame rate slowed down >considerably when any kind of mirroring or colour adjustments were made >(on the fly). -stuff deleted- That "real live FX" that you spoke of was being 'helped' by some pretty expensive video cards and laserdisk players. QuickTime is a part of Mac OS 7.1. It is SOFTWARE/STANDARDS that will be able to run on every MAC that has that software in it. Nowhere did Apple say hardware (laserdisk,24bit boards, etc.). I have seen/worked with QuickTime and can tell you that as soon as you get larger than that small 180 pixel screen, "IT SLOWS DOWN CONSIDERABLY!". There is nothing "close to TV" about it. Even on an FX! -- William "Art" Warner //\ CBM Amiga Student Rep. \X/--\miga makes it happen.......... wwarner@en.ecn.purdue.edu IBM, Apple, Sun, & Next make it expensive!
mspolin@dewey.lbl.gov (Mathew Spolin [summer intern]) (06/29/91)
Amigas are cool! (Right, `Art'?) Bill Warner has made some great, important points about how just generally BAD Quicktime for the mac is. I've read your postings about how its not "close to TV," how it needs "special hardware," and how, in YOUR glorious opinion, it doesn't count as full motion video at all: "I'm SORRY," as you said. You're doing some great evangelizing for your computer, religion, etc... but you may have missed the forest for the trees. Computers are, after all, only tools. Do you believe that making a common data type for multimedia that incorperates video, audio, and animation, insulating developers from the hardware and software compression schemes, and making this a part of the system software and thereby all programs that run on that platform is a BAD idea? Computers are going to get faster, and more capable to deal with on-the-fly compression and decompression. The way Quicktime was designed, hardware and software advances such as this will not require a new file and data structure to handle the improved media source. Though Quicktime is a software standard, it offers important hooks to hardware devices that lets developers support many different devices (including some that haven't been created yet) without writing an extra line of code. Media formats that require specialized propreitary hardware such as Intel's Digital Video Interactive are less capable in this respect. Of course, the Intel board does FANTASIC presentaion-level video at CD-ROM data transfer rates, on a full 512 x 480 pixel full-color screen. But remember: Amigas are cool! What video compression/decompression options are there for the Amiga? Im sure there are a number of them, I would just like to what what they are and what capabilities they provide. --Matt Spolin