Impressive third-party support expected at Macworld Expo

At next week’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Apple and more than 90 hardware and software developers will be showing an impressive range of QuickTime wares for the first time.

QuickTime is Apple’s system-level software extension for dealing with dynamic media (that is, data files that have a time element to them) as well as managing different types of compression algorithms for both static and dynamic media. The QuickTime extension also introduces the first new Macintosh data type since PICT, which Apple has dubbed the “movie.” (You may encounter long-time QuickTime developers spelling it “moov.” It seems that the original design team had a thing for cows.)

Although QuickTime provides much more than merely the tools to display video windows on a Macintosh, video will certainly be the “hot” application on the show floor. Apple will be hosting a QuickTime showroom at the expo, with emphasis on movie creation, integration and editing, CD mastering, and an applications area with video production, graphic arts, science and engineering and educational applications.

THE ELEGANCE OF MODULARITY

One of the truly elegant aspects of QuickTime is that it is modular; it will play 12-frame-per-second video in a window “out of the box,” but can be easily and seamlessly assisted with hardware or additional software support.

A number of boards are now supporting QuickTime for video input. Some of these boards, like the VideoSpigot from SuperMac Technology, were designed specifically with QuickTime in mind. Others, like the RasterOps 364 and RadiusTV, are adding new functionality to previously existing products.

Movie creation tools. On top of the hardware, a number of movie creation tools are being announced. Adobe will be releasing Premiere, its slightly revamped version of the ReelTime software developed by SuperMac for the VideoSpigot (see Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 16).

Premiere allows the user to arrange video clips in a sequence, add transition effects (wipes, dissolves, etc.), overlay graphics and text (it is Adobe, after all) and most significantly, create visual effects with Adobe Photoshop image manipulation filters.

Many of the movie creation software tools allow the user to drag clips into a sequencer, rearrange and edit the clips, and keep a database of information about the movie. But each of these tools offers certain added features that may make it particularly attractive to certain applications.

Support for Vbox control. VideoAuthor 2.0 (by HyperPro, a division of Mass Microsystems in Sunnyvale, CA), for example, supports not only video movies, but also allows the user to save PICS animations in QuickTime formats. (PICS is the MacroMind Director animation file format.) VideoAuthor supports the Sony VBox technology, which enables the user to control almost any Sony consumer video player from the computer.

THE USEFUL ‘MICON’

The most significant QuickTime development tool that we’ve seen is VideoShop from a new company called DiVA, based in Cambridge, MA. Using technology developed by company co-founder Hans Peter Brondmo while a student at the MIT Media Lab, DiVA employs “micons” or movie icons. With a micon, the user sees a thumbnail of the video clip which cycles through a second or two of the clip. If you double-click on the micon, the full-sized video appears and runs on your screen. In addition, VideoShop extends the folder metaphor of the Macintosh by creating micon-based folders for the storage of video clips, allowing you to see what is inside without opening all of the files.

VideoShop also allows you to create QuickTime movies from screen shots. Any session at your computer could therefore be saved as a movie, regardless of whether or not the application you are running is QuickTime savvy. Animations, training applications, corporate presentations, etc. could all be made into movies without any video input. VideoShop provides an optimized driver for real-time recording of video to the hard drive.

Other QuickTime authoring tools will be available from Light Source and KnowledgeVision.

Animations to go. In addition, QuickTime now makes it easier to create portable animations. With MacroMind Director, for example, an animation would require Director’s Player to be resident on the computer. Since QuickTime is an extension to system software, any QuickTime animation will play on any Macintosh without the purchase of run-time players.

Version 2.0 of Animation Stand, a high-end, multi-layer animation creation application from Linker Systems (Irvine, CA), will support QuickTime by allowing the animator to preview animations with synchronized audio before the time-consuming task of recording frame-by-frame to video. The timing mechanism of QuickTime assures that the synch between any of the dynamic elements in a movie remain coordinated through a single time code.

New Video Corp. (Venice, CA) brought Digital Video Interactive (DVI) to the Macintosh with its NuBus cards based upon the Intel technology. Video compressed with the DVI algorithms are compatible across hardware platforms, including Windows and DOS. In addition, the EyeQ board will save videos in standard QuickTime formats.

The DVI algorithms are controlled invisibly through the compression manager, which allows any algorithms to be added to the system and chosen at will.

In addition to the DVI algorithms, Kodak will be releasing a PhotoCD developers kit to parties interested in creating hooks to PhotoCD through the QuickTime managers.

“Clip movies.” As could be expected, a number of companies including Form and Function (F&F, San Francisco, CA) and Alpha Technologies Group (Marriottsville, MD) will both announce collections of video clips. F&F’s WraptureReels also includes looping animations.

Existing productivity applications Word Perfect and Persuasion are actively supporting the new format, which would allow active windows within a larger document or presentation. Others will certainly follow.

Doug Camplejohn, Apple’s QuickTime product manager, predicts that QuickTime will spur the use of dynamic data as the rule rather than the exception, because it makes easy the task of incorporating dynamic data into standard applications. “We know of people doing work in Persuasion that Director was having trouble with — and you didn’t have to learn Lingo [Director's internal scripting language], which is a good thing.”

This is only a small sampling of the many applications expected to be announced at Macworld Expo. All of the companies announcing products as a part of the Apple rollout in San Francisco have promised to ship their products within 60 days.

David Baron