Evaluating the appropriateness of current versus future interactive technologies for any given application would seem to involve at the very least looking at:

1) The information richness or bandwidth required in each direction of the interaction, which depends on the specific data types required (text, images, sound, color, motion video, etc.).
2) The importance of real-time versus stored elements.
3) The kinds of responses required at each end of the interaction. Is a phone key press sufficient? Will a recorded voice message do? Can a “canned” linear videotape presentation be used, or must what the viewer sees and hears be contingent on a previous response? Are ASCII characters or computer graphics sufficient to convey the information, or will only a live human do?

INEVITABLE, AND MAYBE A LITTLE ANNOYING

Until the telephone, television, personal computer, fax machine, cable tuner, slide projector, book, newspaper, magazine, satellite receiver, video recorder and audio recorder all merge into one digital consumer appliance, supported by appropriate digital networks providing random access to all media, it seems inevitable that combinations of existing technologies will be tried in an effort to enhance the value of services provided through any one medium.

Some of these “interactive” hybrids will be downright annoying to use and fail to provide enough added value to be profitable. Do people really want to deal with layers of audiotext menus in order to retrieve a weather forecast? Do consumers really want to record classified ads with their VCRs and display them on their TV screens? Do human resource managers really want to screen voice resumes? Do consumers really think infomercials for car wax are high art?

Others of these new interactive combinations may succeed on an interim basis, only to be replaced by technologies with more bandwidth or more responsiveness. Some of these strange inventions may endure. Would anyone like to bet against the persistence of the infomercial, or voice personal classified ads, or the 900 dial-a-psychic hotline into the 22nd century?

Bernard Banet

>NEWS

SPRING HAS SPRUNG
Everybody who’s anybody makes a deal in April and May

Sometime between mid-April and today, many of the most important and influential companies in the digital world started courting —almost promiscuously — everyone from AT&T to News Corp., Sony to IBM to Dow Jones got into the act. (See IBM-Time Warner story, p. 3, for the quintessential example.)

Talk is cheap, but even the talk these days is fascinating.

YOU WANTED INTERACTIVE? YOU GOT IT
Sony and United Video launch all-games channel

In anticipation of the hundreds of empty cable channels that will need filling as a result of all this spiffy digital compression technology oozing out of research labs, and ready to make use of interactive television technology, Sony Pictures Entertainment and the United Video Satellite Group have announced an all-game- show channel.

Not a lot is public about the venture, but the two firms are planning to launch the channel in 1993. Sony owns more game shows than any other studio or network and is obviously enamored of the idea of creating a new revenue stream from the 10,000 very old episodes of “Wheel of Fortune,” “Jeopardy” and others.

Using the 900 network. The Family Channel made a similar announcement (both came at the NCTA conference). The Game Channel would be launched in January 1993, and would use 900-number telephone service as the return mechanism, at least initially. Both proposed channels would be basic cable services, supported by advertisers. Both would also create new games specifically designed for home interactivity.

And while discussing channels, let us not forget that USA Network has just announced a 24-hour science-fiction cable channel. Sci-Fi (also known as SF) fanatics are completely devoted to their hobby. (Note the 50,000-strong membership of the Star Trek Fan Club.) As one executive said (sic), “There’s a 24-hour news channel. There’s a 24-hour music channel. We figured the time was right for 24 hours of sci-fi programming a day.” USA executives didn’t say so at the time, but the Sci-Fi Channel sure looks like a natural for interactive capability.

AT&T DEVELOPS PAY-PER-VIEW, VIDEO-ON-DEMAND TECHNOLOGIES
Telephone giant may have inside track as major supplier to cable industry

At this month’s National Cable Television Association (NCTA) conference held in Dallas, TX, AT&T announced it has developed a technology that will allow cable customers to order and receive movies on demand.

Along with partners in cable and satellite transmission, AT&T has taken some of the signal-compression work it has done on HDTV (with Zenith Electronics as its partner, it is one of the entrants in the competition for a national digital HD transmission standard) and has transferred it to the cable industry.

AT&T would provide more than compression technology, which it says can compress up to 13 digital video data streams into a single video channel. It would also build the transmission gear for cable and satellite operators, as well as TV set top boxes for the consumer.

Ducks in a row. In researching and testing this technology, AT&T says, it is working with U.S. West, one of the nation’s seven regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC); the country’s largest cable operator, TCI (aka Tele-Communications Inc.), satellite company Comstream, and News DataCom, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s vast News Corp.

The key phrase in news reports about this compression technology was that it could deliver a “near normal” picture after editing out more than 96 percent of the information. Let’s hope by the time AT&T delivers the technology, the picture will be better than “near normal.” As we all know, consumers will not spend more money to buy substandard image quality. Thirteen more crummy-looking channels aren’t exactly incentive for spending extra money.

Deploying fiber. AT&T will conduct two service trials this summer. With U.S. West, it will test a dial-up video service, and with TCI, a pay-per-view service. Both dial-up and pay-per-view are expected by many to be the impetus for widespread installation of fiber-optic broadband networks during the next decade.

As a result of AT&T’s announcements at NCTA, insiders say that AT&T has an inside track to be one of the major technology suppliers to the cable industry.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’
Bitter enemies team up to explore new possibilities 

If you read a not-too-distant issue of Digital Media, where Cathleen Black of the American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA) was railing against the Bell Operating Companies entering the information services business, the following news probably shocked you.

BellSouth, one of the seven Baby Bells, teamed up with publishing giant Dow Jones in one of the decade’s best “strange bedfellows” stories (almost as good as Apple and IBM) to explore and implement new information services opportunities.

Live updates for cellular. The first fruits of this partnership are now available in Los Angeles, as the Personal Info Clips service, which is available to subscribers of BellSouth’s subsidiary, LA Cellular. LA Cellular customers can choose to receive live updates about ten out of 130 categories of information, from news to sports to ski conditions. Updated information is automatically deposited in the subscriber’s voice mailbox.

Tim Klein, a BellSouth spokesman, said that the service is not limited to cellular service, but can operate over land lines as well. In addition, the service will eventually be able to offer text, fax and even multimedia information.

Vocal opposition. Dow Jones has long been a provider of news through electronic means, but it is also a newspaper publisher. The ANPA has been extremely vocal about its opposition to the telephone companies’ entry into information services (see Digital Media, Vol. 1, No. 7, p. 9, for Black’s statement).

BellSouth began testing this service in Los Angeles, instead of its native Georgia or the other southern states it serves. By staying out of its regulated service area, BellSouth may have calmed, at least temporarily, some of the ANPA’s fear of unfair competition for local advertising dollars.

THE PRIMORDIAL OOZE

It would appear that there are two distinct phenomena occurring in the transition to a digital world. First, the corporations considered unbeatable in their home industries, are realizing that they cannot compete alone in the broader arena. Even within many of these industries, things are so topsy-turvy that mergers and alliances continue to dominate the news.

The second is far more interesting: Much of the research and development that these companies have been doing for years is now becoming ready for market. This became clear when John Sculley showed Apple’s “Knowledge Navigator” video at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in January, announcing Apple’s entry into the “personal electronics” business.

Although everyone who’d seen “Knowledge Navigator” a million times groaned, it suddenly became clear that the technology, which seemed light years away when the video was first shown in 1987, was almost ready for prime time. Everything from voice and handwriting recognition to digital video and wireless communications is operational and edging to the starting gate.

Still testing. Though some are still a little too rickety to be built into products, all of the technologies demonstrated in the “Knowledge Navigator” are working prototypes being tested in Apple’s Advanced Technology labs. In the same way, IBM and AT&T are now ready to take compression technology that’s been buried in research labs and develop it into real products.

The rate of change isn’t likely to slow much, if any. Corporations that rule the land today are trying mightily to be solid players in markets that are still largely enigmatic to them. By the end of the decade, the picture may have shifted entirely to a completely new group of players.

But it’s crystal clear, based on the quality and level of collaboration announced in the past month between some of the U.S.’s largest corporations, that the stakes are high and they all hope to be evolutionary winners in what’s still the primordial ooze of digital ubiquity.

David Baron, Denise Caruso

MPEG-1 SAMPLES ARE SHIPPING
C-Cube says single-chip decoder is ‘100 percent bug-free’

Hopeful that it can put its reputation for quality problems to rest, and that the quality of MPEG-1 will be sufficient to start the acceptance curve of digital video in the consumer market, C-Cube Microsystems of San Jose, CA, says its MPEG-1 full-motion video decoder chip will be ready for volume shipments in July.

The decoder chip, called CL450, is based on C-Cube’s proprietary RISC (reduced instruction set computer) processor optimized for video, and samples are being shipped now for $250 each. Mauro Bonomi, director of marketing for C-Cube, says that once in production, companies ordering quantities of 100,000 or more units per year will pay $45 per chip.

IS VHS QUALITY GOOD ENOUGH?

It’s widely thought that MPEG-1, a digital compression standard, produced an image that’s approximately VHS quality. Some say that MPEG-2, already significantly better than its predecessor, will be powerful enough to yield much better than broadcast quality video—broadcast quality meaning that it is comparable to NTSC, the U.S. broadcast standard. (Some people define “broadcast quality” as what is the minimum acceptable level for broadcast over mostly substandard receivers, although NTSC is actually much better than most of our TV sets are capable of displaying.)

But Bonomi says part of C-Cube’s preparation for the market with the CL450 has been around the issue of image quality. He says Bell Atlantic solicited an independent test of digital video decoded by the CL450, shown side-by-side with VHS, to between 2,000 and 3,000 people.

Discerning consumers. Bonomi says 32 percent selected the VHS picture as better quality than MPEG, but slightly more than a third selected MPEG-1 as better and about the same number perceived no difference.

Let’s hope they’re right. C-Cube has much to lose by MPEG-1 being perceived as insufficient, and to date many professionals do perceive it is. They say consumers are much more discerning than they are usually given credit for. (Then again, consumers are the ones whose eyes trick them into believing that video is actually better quality if its got a high-quality sound track, so it is probably safe to give C-Cube the benefit of the doubt for the time being.)

IT’S ‘BUG FREE’

Samples have been shipped to Philips and a number of consumer electronics companies in Japan, says Bonomi. Four beta sites have been testing the chip since late April, less than a month. Even with such a short field-testing time, Bonomi is willing to say the CL450 is “100 percent bug-free.”

He’d better hope that claim stands the test of time, too; C-Cube lost a great deal of credibility in the industry by shipping buggy versions of its JPEG chip to NeXT Inc., credibility that it is laboring long and hard to regain today. One story most often connected with the company is about how Steve Jobs purportedly yanked the JPEG chip off the NeXT workstation’s motherboard because he couldn’t get a sufficiently stable version of the chip from C-Cube.

OPTIMIZED FOR CONSUMERS

The CL450 is the first single-chip MPEG-1 video decoder, and it’s been optimized for consumer applications. It provides either NTSC or PAL video output, can decompress MPEG-1 video at 1.2 megabits per second (near CD-ROM data rates), and will be capable of 3 megabits per second as CD-ROM data rates improve. Eventually, Bonomi believes, incremental improvements will yield digital video the quality of SuperVHS.

A custom version, the CL450i, will deliver video to Philips’ CD-I boxes as part of an add-on video module (see Digital Media, Vol. 1, No. 2, p. 3). Though it was not the CL450 that was used at Philips’ awesome digital video demonstration at the March CD-ROM conference in San Francisco, Bonomi says the decoder technologies are identical. He claims CD-I’s video module will produce video of exactly the same quality.

KARAOKE, THE BREAKTHROUGH PRODUCT?

Products incorporating digital video, especially interactive multimedia, are having a hard time winning market acceptance because they lack familiarity.

The traditional analogy is analog versus digital audio: the reason why CD technology rocketed to success was quite simply because music sounded better on CDs than it did on albums.

There hasn’t been a matching scenario so far for digital video, but Bonomi says he believes C-Cube is on the way to creating one via the explosive market for karaoke products in Japan. In fact, he says, karaoke sing-along systems will be “the major source of revenues for the immediate future” for the CL450 chip.

Karaoke is enormously popular in Japan, and less in the U.S. and other markets. Karaoke bars are stocked with equipment that provides both music and generic video that includes song lyrics, onscreen footage of, say, a couple walking on the beach, to lend more of a “music video” feel to the scene.

Right now, the clip video and lyrics are stored on laserdics in giant jukeboxes. All professional karaoke systems installed in bars use the laserdisc jukeboxes, which both take up an enormous amount of space —they store 2,000 to 3,000 songs each —and are very expensive in relation to CDs.

But C-Cube believes — and Bonomi says he has the support of Japanese consumer electronics companies to prove the point — that CD-ROM is much more advantageous technology for karaoke. Not only does it have a much smaller footprint, a major advantage in densely-populated Japan, but it allows true random access and uses a much lower-cost engine.

Bonomi sees a new analogy, and a great market opportunity, in creating systems that make it easy to see the benefits of transferring karaoke from laserdisc to CD technology. “It was easy to create CD titles for the audio market—you just copied them over from analog,” says Bonomi. “The karaoke market presents a similar phenomenon. There are already lots of songs and video on laserdisc. Now they can use our technology to put them on CD-ROM.”

Denise Caruso 

GIVING HDTV A LEG UP
The analogy is to AM/FM radio

A recent interview with U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Alfred Sikes clarified the grander scheme behind some of the FCC’s decisions and recommendations regarding high-definition television (HDTV).

The FCC’s decision in late 1991 to reserve the HDTV spectrum only for existing broadcasters seemed certain to stifle innovation in a budding industry — it seemed logical that entrepreneurs would be more willing and likely to invest in both brand-new HD broadcasting and production equipment as well as innovative new HD programming (see Digital Media, Vol 1., No. 6, p. 7).

But Sikes believes that granting HD spectrum to already existing broadcasters is the only way to give HD a leg up.

His analogy for the present situation with HD is to the days of FM radio back in the 1960s. FM’s quality was obviously better than AM’S, but it was slow to catch on. It required new and expensive equipment, which created the familiar chicken-and-egg scenario for potential consumers.

NO STATIONS, NO RECEIVERS, NO LISTENERS

Since there were no FM stations to listen to, at least not to speak of, there was no reason for listeners to buy an FM receiver. If customers didn’t buy FM receivers, then there was no reason for new licensees to put programming on the FM band. If there was no programming on the FM band . . . around she goes.

But by granting existing AM broadcasters licenses for the FM band, the FCC provided AM operators with incentive not only to create programming for the new, superior technology, but also gave radio manufacturers the opportunity to build a new radio — which could receive both AM and FM signals.

As you’ll note by looking at any radio today, most of which still include both AM and FM tuners, this was quite a successful strategy for shoehorning a new technology into the market.

THE COROLLARY FOR HD

The way Sikes has engineered the corollary deal for NTSC television broadcasters is that after a certain grace period, during which time they have the opportunity to broadcast in both the NTSC and HD spectrums, they have to choose which they want to give up.

If they give up on HD, there’s a slot open for a new HD broadcaster. If they give up NTSC, there’s a new slot for an NTSC broadcaster. In other words, the licensing restrictions are only temporary.

Sikes believes this scenario gives everyone, including the royalty-sharing HD hardware makers, a good reason both to build double tuners—HD and NTSC—into TV sets, and to start producing HD programming at a price that’s encouraging to consumers. Though a standard has yet to be selected, he says, hardware manufacturers are already designing double-tuner TV sets.

Though under any circumstances the shift to HD will be slow, Sikes believes the only way to give the new technology a leg up is to let existing broadcasters keep their legs firmly on both sides of the fence for a limited time. It’s a kind of self-subsidy. Providing the security blanket of old, familiar NTSC to broadcasters via the licensing procedure is a more certain way to acceptance of HD into the living rooms of America.

However, it is vital that Sikes keep competition alive by assuring that existing broadcasters will indeed be forced to relinquish one or the other. Encouraging media monopolies is not a healthy way to run a technology-dependent democracy, and the FCC seems to have (unwarranted) faith that it can control abuses by these giant, powerful companies.

COMPETITORS AGREE TO SHARE ROYALTIES

The other half of the equation is finding a way to lessen the risk for equipment manufacturers. Of the four remaining contestants in the race for an HDTV transmission standard, two have decided that it would be in their best interests if they agreed before a decision was made to share in the other’s royalties on the technology. In addition, they would cooperate on fine-tuning, so to speak, the winning proposal (assuming it is one or the other of them) before releasing it to their customers.

The two groups, AT&T-Zenith and General Instruments-Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have thus significantly reduced their risk in participating in the selection process, overseen by the FCC, which will select the “winning” standard.

Healthy prelude to competition. Still in the works, the deal would likely be engineered to provide higher royalties to the winner. While insuring competition, the agreement would offer both alliances a share in what the FCC predicts will be a multibillion dollar business by the late 1990s. Sikes has been urging competitors to create unions amongst themselves since the competition began. It’s fascinating to see people begin to accept appropriate collaboration as a healthy prelude to competition.

Denise Caruso

ITERATED SYSTEMS ON A ROLL
Company gets NIST grant, shows fractal image enhancement, compression

Last month was a big one for Iterated Systems Inc. of Norcross, GA. The company, whose cofounder discovered the Fractal Transform technique for describing digital images in 1988, received a $2 million research and development grant from the Advanced Technology Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and also released its first still-image, software-only fractal compression package.

The $2 million is earmarked for development of a “very low-cost” fractal decompression chip that is fast enough to keep up with the frame rate of television. Iterated expects commercial versions of the resulting chip to be available in early 1995. In March 1993, Iterated plans to produce a low-cost fractal decompression chip that can be used to extract full-motion video from CD-ROM. Between now and the fall of 1993, Iterated also expects to market two new fractal compression chips, paired with decompression software.

Compression software ships. In early April, Iterated released its first software package for fractal compression, called Images Incorporated, and demonstrated it at Windows World in Chicago. While slower than Iterated’s hardware compression boards, the software incorporates Iterated’s most advanced compression and decompression algorithms and is priced to encourage wide experimentation by users. It runs under Windows, with a list price of $299.

The new Images Incorporated package can also convert images to and from a variety of image file formats and provides a number of image editing tools plus a clip art library of 250 fractally compressed images for desktop publishing use. A related developer’s kit for linking software-compressed and decompressed fractal images to DOS and Windows applications is expected to be available by the end of April 1993.

A SURPRISE: IT ENHANCES IMAGES TOO

The most important news, though, is that Images Incorporated claims a surprising and highly significant new capability for its fractal encoding technology: image enhancement. Former math professor Michael Barnsley, chairman of Iterated, showed fractal enhancement at work in Chicago, restoring to a scanned image detail and sharpness that was assumed lost when the picture was originally digitized.

Iterated has been claiming that its fractal encoding processes can compress still image and motion video data into fewer bytes than competing technologies such as JPEG and MPEG. Furthermore, Iterated has been stressing that fractally compressed images can be scaled to higher or lower resolutions and color depths, when decompressed, without showing obvious pixelation.

No “blockiness.” A picture that has been fractally encoded, Iterated says, can be enlarged without the annoying “blockiness” that betrays its digital origin, and it can be printed from the same data file at higher resolution than the image as originally captured or as displayed on a computer monitor.

Barnsley, a cofounder of Iterated, discovered the Fractal Transform in 1988. The Fractal Transform is a mathematical procedure for analyzing an image into collections of shapes that resemble each other, except for size and orientation. Once identified, each collection can be summarized and reproduced by a formula that starts with the largest shape and repeatedly displaces and shrinks it.

Because such formulas are concise recipes for reproducing areas of the picture, describing a picture in terms of these “fractal” collections is a way to compress the image data. Following or applying the formulas regenerates (decompresses) the picture. Fractal procedures have two major advantages as a technique for digitally encoding pictures: high compression ratios and resolution independence.

Gain, not loss, of quality. These are familiar claims. The startling new development is the discovery by Barnsley of the phenomenon of fractal image enhancement. Barnsley says that his research team has found that when the fractal transform is applied to an image bitmap (such as a TIFF or Targa file), the process can add detail that was absent in the original digital file, but was present in the original image itself.

Adding detail as such is not really surprising, since this is an instance of fractal’s property of resolution independence. The surprising new claim is that this predicted detail is accurate as well as plausible to the eye, a “good guess” or correct mathematical interpolation of information that was left out when an image was digitally broken into a mosaic of pixels.

The discovery, in other words, is that applying fractal compression and decompression to an image file can result in a gain rather than a loss of image quality and accuracy as a higher-resolution version of the image is created.

WHAT MIGHT IT MEAN?

Barnsley claimed the ramifications of using fractal technology for image enhancement may be quite significant:

• Fractal enhancement could add resolution independence to existing digital photo images, giving even pictures that had not been originally compressed as fractals the capability to be rescaled easily, displayed or printed with accuracy and without artifacts at differing resolutions and sizes.

The same digital photo could be enlarged to poster size without calling attention to its pixels, or it could be shrunk to a screen thumbnail, much as chemical film images can be enlarged or reduced (within limits) without making the grain obtrusive. For the first time, publishers working with digital images would have some of the flexibility they are accustomed to with film.

• Applying this fractal enhancement process to motion video could in theory give resolution independence to digital HDTV reception, says Barnsley, even if the broadcast was not fractally encoded, so that wall-size HDTV would appear to have the same fine detail as a tabletop set.

• Fractal enhancement, Barnsley says, could in theory enhance even analog NTSC video at the receiving end to HDTV resolution (if not its aspect ratio), without changing the broadcast standards or spectrum allocation at all. The fractal circuitry would have to digitize the incoming frames and then apply the fractal image enhancement procedures to them, all at thirty frames per second. This sounds unlikely, but fractal motion video at less than full-screen/full-motion rates is already a reality with software-only decompression on PCs. A new government grant, discussed below, will fund development of a full-screen, full-motion fractal video decompression chip.

For fractal technology to achieve motion video on CD-ROM, movies-on- demand over phone lines, video conferencing, and other multimedia goals that have important data rate and file size constraints, fractal advocates still propose the option of compressing the images initially as fractal image format (FIF) files. With the discovery of fractal enhancement, however, they may be able to offer to improve the flexibility and quality of anyone’s digital pictures, not just those that are originally encoded as fractals.

GAINING ACCEPTANCE

Following Iterated’s licensing of fractal compression to Microsoft’s Multimedia Publishing Group for use in multimedia titles (see Digital Media, Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 18) came an announcement that Amaze Inc. will utilize fractal compression in providing the Gary Larson cartoon “refills” for future years of The Far Side Computer Calendar for DOS, Windows and the Macintosh.

Simultaneous with the Amaze announcement, Iterated Systems disclosed that it would supply fractal decompression software for the Mac before July of this year.

For fractal motion video, Iterated explicitly plans to use MPEG inter-frame algorithms, replacing only the discrete cosine transform intra-frame compression with the fractal methodology. This will allow manufacturers of MPEG decoders to incorporate fractal firmware or software modules with relative ease. The benefits of high compression ratios and resolution independence will apply to fractal motion video compression, as they do to fractal still-image compression, according to Barnsley.

Bernard Banet

EVERYTHING BUT THE KITCHEN SINK
Acer’s new MPC-compatible merges computer functions with consumer devices

We’ve all been waiting to see who’d do it first, and now we know: Acer America — the company that Dataquest has ranked first in customer satisfaction — has packed into a PC footprint a gazillion computing and consumer functions, including MPC compatibility, for significantly less than $3,000.

Based on the Intel ‘386SX chip, the Acer Personal Activity Center (PAC) includes Microsoft Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions preloaded, a digital answering machine, built-in speaker phone with condenser microphone, facsimile, data modem, CD-ROM drive, AM/FM radio receiver, 8-channel stereo mixer and an alarm clock, as well as office applications. (Value-added resellers will no doubt offer kitchen plumbing as an option.) A monitor is not included.

Acer has put real volume control buttons on the front panel of the PAC. Interestingly, the company has tied these physical controls directly to the software control panel of the “music center,” so either the software or the buttons can regulate volume.

The computer’s front panel also includes stereo headphone and microphone jacks. In the back are an RJ-11 standard phone jack, a coax antenna jack, a joystick port, parallel port and two serial ports. (And a partridge in a pear tree.)

Bundled software includes MS-DOS 5.0, Microsoft Works for Windows (Multimedia edition), Bookshelf and Entertainment Package (game software), Prodigy Communications Service software and Delrina’s WinFax software for sending and receiving facsimiles.

Acer spokeswoman Rebecca Hurst says the computer was shipped on the same day it was announced (May 20), and the company will be showing the Personal Activity Center in a suite at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago.

There are many things interesting about the PAC, but most notable is that Acer has stepped nicely around the issue of MPC-ness. It is an MPC-compatible, thus runs all MPC-labeled software, but does not bear the official MPC stamp on its case.

In other words, Acer has not paid dime-one to the MPC Marketing Council, which collects megabucks in licensing fees from companies who want the privilege of gluing an MPC logo on their computers. Microsoft has declined to comment on the record about the ramifications of such career moves on the part of its hardware vendors. But it is obvious by the fact that it has made bundling deals with Acer that it does not particularly disapprove.

So what, then, will come of the MPC Marketing Council when hardware vendors realize they don’t have to pay to say they’re MPC compatible?

Denise Caruso
 
JAPAN PUSHES MULTIMEDIA INTO VIRTUAL REALITY
As much as $250 million to be invested in high-end systems for museums

Major Japanese corporations such as Fujitsu and NEC have become more visible with prototype networked multimedia stations, and even networked virtual reality (VR) systems. But more recently, various public agencies have begun to fund substantial programs to develop multimedia and virtual reality demonstrations in newly approved local museums throughout Japan.

A leading Japanese multimedia researcher, while dining in Tokyo, casually said, “We really see no difference between multimedia and virtual reality.” What presently passes for multimedia — encyclopedias on CD-ROM, presentations on personal computers — was clearly perceived as not sufficiently interactive, immersive or interesting to be considered “real” multimedia.

Already in place in Japan are 12 Hi-Vision museums that show high- definition reproductions of paintings and display educational materials in the Hi-Vision format. Funded by NHK and Japanese high-definition TV (HDTV) vendors, the museums are designed to show off the benefits of HDTV, long before its commercial introduction.

Videodiscs and karaoke. Every small local museum, including the museum in the fishing village of Onjaku, which highlighted the works of a poet whose most famous song was composed there, has its own videodisc presentation of the poet’s life and a karaoke set up where visitors can sing along.

Museums now being built focus more on local history, science education and environmental concerns. According to the principals at SAI Press, which develops the plans for these museums, the average budget for multimedia and, now, virtual reality demonstrations is between $750,000 and $2,000,000 each per museum.

These funds purchase a multiple-media exhibit developed and shown on Sun Microsystems’ Sparcstation or Silicon Graphics Inc.’s workstation equivalents, often using videodiscs and displayed on HD screens, with substantial interactivity. Several museums will be trying out VR demonstrations — especially in the science area — within the next year, although no contracts have as yet been awarded.

A much more expansive project is being tested in the Tama region, west of Tokyo, where a six-month celebration of the region will take place in 1993. With a budget of more than $250 million, the Tama coordinating committee plans to spend substantial amounts developing the most advanced multimedia and virtual reality exhibits in a number of Tama museums, especially those focusing on local history and environmental problems.

Multimedia networks. These museums will be networked to ensure that as many people as possible can see the various exhibits. It is expected that advanced telecommunications bandwidth will be made available to facilitate the experimental networking.

In addition, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) is spending millions of dollars a year on the InterCommunications or OPERA project. OPERA will present the most advanced performance art in Japan as a precursor to the opening of NTT’s performance center in 1996, designed to include high-bandwidth connections (more than 600 megabits/second) to other centers throughout Japan.

In addition, the Institute for Future Technology is studying the future of the museum under contract for NTT. As might be expected, networking, interactivity and massive file transfers are among the main subjects of concern.

IMMERSIVE, INTERACTIVE, VISUAL

In general, the emphasis for future museums and other public spaces (schools, squares, even shopping areas) was on immersive, interactive and visual experiences. Spaces without those elements seemed likely to be less utilized.

How important is all this multimedia museum effort? It seems that more than a quarter-billion dollars will be spent in the next five years creating multimedia museums. But then, the Japanese are noted for jumping on fads and throwing money at them. The great museum push of today might simply be another way to get the Japanese accustomed to new technologies and may have no other major implications at all.

As Lee McKnight of MIT wryly notes in his discussion of such programs already in progress, such as Hi-Vision Cities, Japanese Intelligent Cities, Teleopia and the Visual, Intelligent and Personal (VIP) project, “Some of the projects, one must admit, are little more than promotional vehicles for ministries seeking turf in the information society.” But these local and well-supported museum projects seem to be taken seriously throughout Japan.

Tom Hargadon

IS SHOPPING BETTER THAN SEX?
U.S. customers may prove the point with online catalog

Ziff Desktop Information, a subsidiary of Ziff Communications Co. (the publisher of PC Week, PC Magazine, Computer Shopper, MacWeek, MacUser, etc., and the parent company of Seybold Publications), has just launched an online information service, Ziff Buyers’ Market, which will carry advertising for PCs. It is a part of ZiffNet, hosted by CompuServe. Ziff expects it to be wildly successful.

Conventional wisdom has held that advertising doesn’t work for online information services. Since the first videotex and teletext experiments in the mid-eighties, nearly all of the ad-supported ventures have fallen flat. Apparently people are just not interested in having their flow of information interrupted by ads — or, in the case of the Prodigy Information Service, they simply may not pay any attention to them.

Ads and nothing but ads. Ziff staffers are gambling that won’t be a problem for a service that is nothing but ads. Think of it as an electronic catalog, they say, one that does more than printed catalogs can. (And despite the presence of articles and news stories and letters to the editor, catalogs is what PC Week, PC Magazine, Computer Shopper and their ilk really are.)

Look at it this way: you could look for your next PC in Computer Shopper, where just about every computer maker advertises. You will be sifting through about 700 pages of ads, trying to compare features and prices. Or you could do an electronic search through the Buyer’s Market on CompuServe for the features you want and the price range you can afford. You will rapidly zero in on the few models that meet your criteria; then you will be able to request spec sheets from the vendors, or if you are the decisive type, to place the order right on the spot.

Ziff knows that the more comprehensive the listings, the more valuable the service. So it has kept the price of a basic listing — the equivalent of a classified ad — down to $50 per month.

But Ziff is a past master at extracting revenue from advertisers. Vendors will be able to buy featured positions (their name will come up at the top of a category), product storyboards (multiple screens of copy) and extended listings for premium prices. Unlike other CompuServe services, there is no connect-time cost for Buyers’ Market.

The French national dial-up information service, Minitel, languished until the users discovered that its online chat bulletin boards were a great way to arrange romantic trysts. It will be interesting to see how Buyers’ Market fares. Perhaps shopping is to the American soul what sex is to the French.

Peter Dyson

COMPUTERS AND HUMAN INTERACTION IN MONTEREY

In early May, the 10th annual CHI conference was held in Monterey, CA. Sponsored by the Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction, it is the fastest growing SIG in the ACM’s membership.

CHI ‘92 attendees were a diverse group, embracing researchers in human factors and ergonomics, graphic user interface designers and groupware implementation specialists.

Analytic academics. The conference itself is analytical and weighted toward academic topics — papers on spatial relations in simulation environments, or posters on new interface tools for handheld devices. Exhibits were sparse.

Although many who attended CHI ‘92 were from BellCore, Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), AT&T and (a big contingent) Japan’s NTT and Advanced Telecommunications Research Center, most interesting was the apparent lack of a notion by presenters about telecommunications or networking. No one seemed cognizant of the possibility that computer interaction to multiple sites and organizations might require different interfaces or skills, as might the integration of multiple data types.

What many presenters focused upon was the use of kinetic or gestural signals or movements, and how to capture their meaning as a mode of interaction — eye movement in virtual reality, and relationships between head and body movements while walking were among the subjects discussed. The “Interactive Experience,” a performance given each evening, focused on dance and interaction — again, a kinetic theme.

Interest in standards. The standards sub-group, which usually only gets 30 or 40 participants, had an overflow crowd of more than 200 with no microphone. European Community (EC) requirements for usability and ergonomic suitability were hot buttons, as were the continuing discussions about U.S. support for X Window as an interface standard.

Since the crowd was large and relatively unacquainted with the standards group, not much was accomplished. However, it was clear that standards have become a global concern, much larger than the spitting matches involving IBM, Microsoft and Apple, and certainly larger than the U.S. influence can affect.

CHI ‘93 will be held in Amsterdam, thus these international issues will be brought into much clearer focus. In addition, conference attendees were certain that human interface with network systems would be given a much higher priority as well.

Tom Hargadon 

GOLDHABER THE LIKELY KALEIDA PICK

Though the rumor has been widely assumed to be true for much more than a week now, at press time (Monday, May 18) Berkeley-based venture capitalist Nat Goldhaber still had not been officially named CEO of Kaleida, the joint multimedia venture between Apple and IBM.

At this point, Goldhaber is still the president of Cole Gilburne Goldhaber & Ariyoshi Management Inc., which manages the Cole Gilburne investment fund. But he’s got a far more interesting background, strangely suited to the requirements of a chief executive for Kaleida.

From the mid-1960s to 1975, Goldhaber worked with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. In 1971, he established the Maharishi International University in Fairfield, IA. Meditation has been proven an effective antidote for stress.

During his time in Pennsylvania state politics (first as special assistant to Lt. Gov. Bill Scranton, also as interim director of the State Energy Agency), his biography states Goldhaber worked “to successfully end political cronyism in hiring and grant making.” During this time he also coordinated civil defense evacuation efforts during the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in March 1979. Both of these administrative skills are likely to be required at some time during a tenure at Kaleida.

In 1984, after starting one networking company (for CP/M computers) in Pennsylvania, Goldhaber returned to Berkeley, CA and founded Centram Systems West — by 1986, the first and only local area network to interconnect Macintosh and IBM computers. Such impartiality makes him instantly attractive to both parties.

A year after Sun Microsystems bought Centram, Goldhaber joined the Cole Gilburne venture fund, which had helped launch Centram West. Two successful companies on whose boards he serves are Mitch Kapor’s ON Technology and the networking company Shiva Corp. Someone who knows how to make money, not just dream up nifty products and technology, might prove useful at a company such as Kaleida.

So after all this time searching for, and, it seems, finding, the perfect person — what’s the hangup? A couple of sources say the powers that be don’t want to give Goldhaber a percentage of the startup.

If true, it would be interesting to meditate on the logic behind asking a venture capitalist to start a company and not offer him an equity stake.

OPENING THE RANDOM HOUSE ARCHIVES

As part of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of Random House’s Modern Library, the New York publishing giant announced a program that will allow The Voyager Company of Santa Monica, CA, to publish electronic editions —Expanded Books, in Voyager terms — of America’s most famous classic book series.

At a luncheon held in Random House’s Manhattan offices, some Random House executives — including Harold Evans, president and publisher and Condé Nast Publications (owner of Random House) chairman S.I. Newhouse — joined Apple Computer chairman John Sculley and Voyager’s co-founder Bob Stein for the announcement.

Evans said the first book to be “expanded” will be Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, also the first book to be published on paper under the imprint of the Modern Library. And to cap the announcement, he also announced the appointment of Christopher Cerf as chairman of the Modern Library.

Cerf is the son of Bennett Cerf, beloved American author and founder of Random House. But choosing the young Cerf is far from a sentimental gesture. He spent eight years at Random House as a senior editor before becoming editor-in-chief at Children’s Television Workshop Products Group, and is an Emmy and Grammy award-winning contributor to Sesame Street.

He’s also won several awards for software he’s co-developed with Apple Computer and Jim Henson, and his new position bodes well for those who would like to see more books published in electronic form. In fact, 10 Modern Library titles will be available from Voyager by year’s end. They’ll include classics by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Eudora Welty and Ralph Ellison.

As computers like Apple’s PowerBook — for which Voyager specifically designed its Expanded Books series — get smaller and more useful as readers, expect to see many more traditional publishing houses overcome their jitters about the digital format and start releasing “ebooks.”

CABLELABS TALKS DIGITAL DATA DELIVERY

Not one to let grass grow as the Baby Bells gear up to compete in information services, CableLabs has launched a program to set recommended guidelines for digital delivery of data and other services on cable TV systems.

CableLabs is an R&D consortium of cable TV system operators, representing more than 85 percent of the cable subscribers in the U.S. and almost half of those in Canada. The guidelines for data services will cover a wide range of capabilities, from one-way, narrow-bandwidth channels to two-way, interactive high-speed services.

In addition to the announcements of upcoming guidelines, CableLabs also announced that it’s teaming up with Xpress Information Services, based in Denver, CO, to work on recommended practices and procedures for cable delivery of news and information services. Xpress claims more than 800 cable systems in the U.S. receive its news feeds.

Even more interesting is CableLabs’ partnership with Vidéoway, the Quebec-based subsidiary of Le Groupe Vidéotron Itée, the largest cable company in Canada. Vidéoway is an interactive multimedia delivery system that’s available in almost a quarter of a million homes in Montreal and Quebec City.

The consortium’s move toward standards for data delivery isn’t much of a surprise. Nearly a year ago at the Seybold Digital World Conference, a Digital Equipment executive outlined a plan to telecommute via Ethernet over cable coax. As recently as last week, cable was being touted on business broadcasts as a way to telecommute efficiently from home offices.

USING CELLULAR VOICE NET FOR DATA

Competition is heating up in the cellular data network world. As you’ll recall from last month’s Digital Media, Motorola announced that it would open the protocols used in its ARDIS nationwide radio data network to spur the adoption of wireless communication by mobile workers, as well as to encourage vendors to manufacture compatible terminals and/or modem devices.

The benefit for users is the ability to transmit both voice and data from inexpensive cellular voice-type equipment.

ARDIS is a joint venture between IBM and Motorola, which manages the largest wireless data network in the country, covering 80 percent of the population and 90 percent of the business activity in the U.S.

And just after we went to press last month, a sweeping cooperative effort between a group of cellular carriers — and, surprise! IBM — was announced to support development of an open industry standard for wireless data communications.

Under the deal, nine major carriers — Ameritech Mobile Communications, Bell Atlantic Mobile Systems, Contel Cellular, GTE Mobilnet, McCaw Cellular Communications, Nynex Mobile Communications, PacTel Cellular, Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems and US West Cellular —will work to develop IBM’s CelluPlan technology.

CelluPlan allows data to be transmitted across existing cellular networks without disrupting or degrading voice traffic, without requiring additional system capability and without requiring more bandwidth on the spectrum.

The benefit for users is the ability to transmit both voice and data from inexpensive cellular voice-type equipment without having to buy more expensive equipment. Field trials will start in midsummer in San Jose, CA.

SPIGOT A GUSHING SUCCESS FOR ADOBE AND SUPERMAC

Word on the street is that SuperMac Technology’s VideoSpigot digital video capture cards are a runaway success for the Sunnyvale, CA-based company, accounting for about 25 percent of the firm’s revenue as it launches into its first public stock offering.

The bundling deal with Adobe Systems, which bought the Premiere software (formerly known as ReelTime) from SuperMac last fall, has been so successful that the two companies plan to continue it “on a long-term basis.” VideoSpigot alone sells for $599, Premiere for $495. But the software is now included free with all Macintosh NuBus and IIsi versions of the video capture board.

SuperMac claims that it sold more than 18,000 VideoSpigot units in the first 100 days of shipment, which it says by sheer volume makes it the “worldwide standard” for digitizing video.

This, however, is a dubious distinction, since as yet there is no facility for output.

JAPANESE MOVE ON VIDEO PHONES

Communications Tokyo ‘92, a moderate-size exhibition about a half-hour out of downtown Tokyo, recently highlighted how far Japanese companies have come in developing video phones.

Using the international video codec (H.261) standard, most major companies exhibited small video phones using 56-kbs (kilobit per second) ISDN protocols to provide not quite full-motion color video on a small screen.

Hitachi’s version, which has been shown in the United States, was priced at $6,000 to $8,000, typical of the offerings from both NEC and OKI. More advanced versions that utilize the full 2B+D ISDN capacity (two voice-grade 56-kbs lines, plus a 9,600-baud data channel) provide higher resolution and full-motion video on a 13-inch monitor, and include the capability to simultaneously send Group 3 fax and data from computers.

Such systems continue to cost more than $20,000, but expectations are that 56-kbs phone systems would drop to less than $2,500 in two years, and full-motion systems with 13-inch monitors would come down to less than $10,000.

PACBELL PLANS DIGITAL MOVIE DELIVERY

Every once in a while, a story captures the imagination of the business press and it spreads across the country like a firestorm. That’s what happened at the end of April when regional Bell Operating Company Pacific Bell cut loose with the news that it was planning to develop a system, and accompanying service, to transmit digital video over fiber-optic phone lines to movie theaters.

The system “could,” of course, eliminate the cost of duplicating film — with digital, it’s stored on a server and the movie house of the hour dials up and downloads it into the theater, allegedly saving movie studios some $500 million per year, according to PacBell.

But the system, demonstrated at the Texpo trade show in Anaheim, CA, earlier this month by PacBell and Sony Pictures Entertainment, still has one slight hurdle to overcome: there’s no way to project digital movies onto a screen. Many companies, PacBell says, are working on the light-valve problem. But industry observers say the technology is not much past the demonstration stage. Image quality is said to still be “horrible” compared to film.

However, to be fair, it really is only a matter of time before this type of distribution is feasible from a quality standpoint. Then, of course, comes the next set of problems: how movie studios protect these massive data streams from pirates, for example, or from the digital graffiti artists who might want to divert a data stream and insert a scene or two of their own.

WHEN DIGITAL MEDIA COLLIDES WITH LAW

It is actually possible to lose sleep over certain questions if you’re someone who has been a pioneer in conducting commerce across the data networks. For example, is an electronic signature legally binding? Can you admit a computer message into courtroom evidence? Why does electronic data interchange raise evidence and recordkeeping issues?

Though he has not yet started to deal with the ramifications of data types other than text and numbers, Dallas attorney Benjamin Wright has done many year’s worth of research into the issues surrounding what’s called EDI, or electronic data interchange.

He’s written a book on the subject called, The Law of Electronic Commerce: EDI, Fax and E-mail: Technology, Proof and Liability. Since many of the legal questions around new technologies have yet to be proven in the nation’s courtrooms, Wright’s book — which is concerned with technologies decidedly less sexy than digital video and interactive multimedia — may be one way for companies to do a little advance preparation for what’s to come as far as doing real business online.

20,000 ONLINE CONSUMERS RESPOND

The Interactive Services Association of Silver Spring, MD, has just released results of the first “cross-system” national consumer online survey — for sale to members only, sorry — that shows a 20 percent increase in consumer online users.

More than 60 percent of the survey’s respondents said they use online services several times a week, and said they’d only begun using online services in the past three years.

Nearly a third of the 20,000 respondents said they’ve been using an online service for less than a year —an impressive showing of new users, which shows that the growth of online services certainly is not confined to technical types on the Internet (see Digital Media, Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 19).

The survey allowed users to identify ten different categories of services that they regularly access, including software downloading, computer services, E-mail, discussion, general news, financial information, education, games, travel reservations and shopping.

Interesting note: In all categories except games, says ISA, there was an increase in interest and use after users began logging on regularly.

The ISA is a nonprofit trade association for interactive service vendors in the cable, consumer electronics, computer, online, newspaper, broadcasting, direct marketing and telephony industries.

MORE ABOUT THE INTERNET

For those still hungry for information on the Internet, even after last month’s piece on the subject (see Digital Media, Vol. 1, No. 11, p. 19), SRI International has released the first two volumes of the Internet Information Series.

The first volume, Internet: Getting Started, is a comprehensive overview and describes what the Internet is and how to join it, various types of access and procedures for obtaining a network number and domain name.

The second volume, Internet: Mailing Lists, helps users contact others with similar interests. Complete information on how to subscribe to each of the 700-plus electronic discussion forums is included.

For more information, contact SRI’s Network Information Systems Center, 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025; phone (415) 859-6387, fax (415) 859-6028 or E-mail to nisc@nisc.sri.com.

>EVENTS

GroupWare ‘92
Aug. 3–5, San Jose, CA
The Conference Group
(800) 247–0262, fax (602) 661–0449

GroupWare ‘92 is the first conference and exposition on the commercial applications of groupware — a new category of software that allows the users of networked computers to increase their productivity through computer-mediated interactions.

It is considered by many industry watchers to be the new paradigm for information technologies in the 1990s, combining powerful networking capabilities with software for collaborative work.

GroupWare ‘92 will include more than 60 seminars, workshops and tutorials.

Kicking off the event will be keynote speaker Jim Manzi of Lotus Development Corp. Analyst and editor of Release 1.0 Esther Dyson will provide a framework for classifying groupware applications. Ray Noorda of Novell will talk about the past, present and future of network computing. Philippe Kahn of Borland will discuss the changing dynamics of workgroup computing.

In addition to presentations, panelists will discuss management and cultural issues, technology and groupware, groupware in the commercial marketplace and user experiences.

Analysts, vendors, researchers, journalists, publishers as well as other panelists will debate subjects including groupware human interface “glueware,” groupware services, Lotus Notes, telecommuting, workflow management, groupware architectures, application interoperability, messaging and mail-enabled applications and document management.

Exhibiting companies such as Apple Computer, DEC, Futurus, ON Technology and Ventana will demonstrate groupware applications that they believe improve communications, scheduling, editing, information access, project management and other types of collaborative work.

GroupWare ‘92 is designed to be of particular interest to MIS personnel, departmental managers and users who are looking for ways to increase group productivity.

GroupWare ‘92 is co-sponsored by Lotus Development Corp. and SRI International.

>I/O
>READERS RESPOND

DIGITAL VIDEO IS STILL AL DENTE
It’s better than it was, but it’s not done yet

John North is vice president of strategic products at ICTV/Inteletext Systems Inc., an interactive television company in Santa Clara, CA.

To hear the workstation marketeers, their software vendors, and especially the trade press talk, digital video and multimedia are a fait accompli, right on schedule to overrun the tools and techniques of a 100-year-old film industry and a 60-year-old television industry.

The truth is not completely divorced from this vision. From a certain perspective, there’s no question: The Mac “does” video. The PC “does” video. Silicon Graphics machines “do” video. Next “does” video.

But the vision is incomplete in some significant ways. What I hope to do here is simply identify what’s been omitted from a real “workstation-does-video,” with the hope that such a system can emerge as more whole, complete and useful to the business of film and video. The purpose is to match creative and economic forces with the existing technical standards for a deliverable product.

CART BEFORE HORSE

Technical interface standards and methods of operation for telefilm and televideo are long established, particularly with regard to machine control, signal envelopes, reference timing, chromaticity values, media indices and edit decision lists.

But unfortunately, the counselors of computerdom have chosen to address the multimedia technology issues not by using a computer as controller, but rather by using the computer for image storage and processing. I submit that this is putting the cart before the horse.

Their decision to import/massage/export video frames could be considered bad data management: a single video frame can consume on the order of 4 megabytes, which is not bad until the user is compelled to push 30 frames through the machine every second. A more sensible solution is to use the computer as a controller and take advantage of the considerably smaller files that are generated as a product of connecting the computer to the outside world — i.e., to the mature systems already in place for producing film and television.

THE MONEY LINE

The creation of sustained revenues —the money line — that connects the “system” on one end to anybody who has to produce, edit or syndicate/broadcast film or television products for a living, on the other, is uniform compliance. The still-unrealized power of the video workstation for the average Joe will come with simplification of the user interface and automation of critical technical standards. Once completed, a full-featured video workstation will give a single unified means of accessing (ergo controlling) a larger field of equipment and materials.

The console for a high-end video editing facility can easily stretch 12 to 15 feet. On this console are remote control panels for production switchers, edit controllers, one or more special-effects devices, an audio console, a character generator and utility geegaws like waveform monitors and vectorscopes, title cameras . . . whatever.

In a large facility, it’s a bunch of stuff hanging from remote umbilicals to a central machine room that houses the incredibly expensive, real-time, multi-layer compositing equipment, aka “heavy iron.” Is it so hard to imagine a single, icon-based computer workstation controlling all these devices?

Here are the incomplete or otherwise missing factors to making such a system a reality.

CONTROL AND SYNCHRONIZATION

There are two key barriers to realizing the improved computer video workstation. Repeatable event synchronization between NuBus, SCSI, serial, main memory and co-processor operations in the Macintosh is now virtually impossible. And there are not enough pieces of video equipment that have open, nonproprietary serial communications.

The problems are not solely on the workstation side of the equation. Save for video tape machines, video manufacturers usually only include full RS-422 serial-port connections for external control on the most expensive of the production switchers and effects-generating equipment. Time base correctors, utility routers, smaller mix/effects switchers . . . every piece of equipment shipped from a video vendor needs a serial port, and vendors are afraid to open up their equipment to serial connections.

Why? For one thing, they fear the centralized control that serial connections enable — they require extra engineering and their margins are already thin. They also (wrongly) believe that by keeping their systems closed to central control, they will be able to protect high-end systems from competition.

THE SIGNAL ENVELOPE

A signal envelope is the set of analog waveform characteristics that define a specific video format (NTSC, PAL, SECAM). This envelope is an amalgam of edge shapes, rise times and horizontal/vertical blanking intervals. Digital video is an occasional, increasingly common and principally high-end production format. But that which is digital will not become analog for distribution and broadcast until some unknown date when HDTV broadcasts begin.

The signal envelope is only as good as the equipment you pass it through. In an online edit session, signal quality is diligently reviewed on a scene-by-scene basis. Workstation control of the video system must include remotely accessing the adjustments for these external signal conditioners.

Reference timing. Signal envelopes are referenced against time. Without going into great detail, values such as genlock, sub-carrier burst-lock and SC/H phase coherency are important time values that affect the conversion of a high-resolution, noninterlaced computer picture into NTSC or any of its derivates. Workstations to date have virtually no recognition of these signal states, much less the capability to alter them.

Chromaticity values. There are many more colors in the visible spectrum than can be reproduced in video. In fact, the range of colors varies considerably on the finished media: light, print film, movie film or television. Even within the range of film stocks are wide variations on chroma potential.

These limits are defined both by the physical capabilities of the system and in law by the Federal Communications Commission, giving rise to the term “legal video.” Legal video encompasses the factors described both here in the chromaticity values and those in reference timing, above.

Software filters included with Adobe Photoshop and the Video F/X product save the day with look-up tables for legal NTSC colors. Kodak’s PhotoCD technology, though not well integrated into any video systems so far, is a great standard-bearer for outputting a single file or file series into multiple media. The advantage of PhotoCD is that color palettes can be prebuilt specifically to the chosen recording or presentation media.

What’s needed to solve the “workstation-does-video” paradox is the capability to reference legal chroma values against an external, systemic, color burst reference inside the computer.

MEDIA INDICES

SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) time code for video and frame edge numbers for film are the means by which individual, physical frames may be logged electronically against scene, take and edit decision list (EDL) data. After many years, SMPTE code fields are now increasingly present in media sequencing software.

One notable omission is Adobe’s Premiere (though SMPTE time code has been promised in a future release), but the grand omission of the era is most certainly from Macromedia né Macromind, which has told me flat-out on several occasions that Director will never itself be SMPTE-aware — though it is possible to juxtapose SMPTE data accessed and decoded independently of Director through various external commands.

Details, details. Film edge numbers are converted to and from SMPTE, as are MIDI time stamps (which contain both content and control data). There are four information blocks in each SMPTE byte equivalent that vertical blanking synchronize, hours, minutes, seconds and frame bits, space for user notations, and cyclical color field IDs. (Color fields must be cut in sequence in order to avoid a chroma glitch in the finished product.)

Edit decision lists. EDLs, simply the line- and tab-delimited ASCII representation of SMPTE head and tail frame data, are tightly tied to SMPTE in significance. The EDL allows the preservation of a user’s editorial decisions across platforms; i.e., between workstations and suitably qualified professional video edit systems that often interface with the aforementioned “heavy iron.”

To some, SMPTE and EDLs are simply details. But since all these things are referenced against each other and are totally interdependent, the bottom line is “do it all, or why bother?”

INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING COMETH

Multimedia workstations will be fundamental to the creation of the juxtaposed real-time, broadcast-quality video materials with interactive data. Completed interactive systems will enable home viewers to access, directly through their televisions or other devices, a directory of multiple choices for response.

An ideal interactive system will incorporate more distribution input and output, video sources, image libraries and networked data in endless permutations than has ever been handled to date.

Adding to the suite. In order that such broadband interactivity is possible, there is a critical need for a broad systemic overview and control from workstations located in interactive operating facilities (what will become the interactive equivalent of a cable head end), servicing multiple personal clients simultaneously.

To bring the computer to a level of video signal and machine control literacy, machine control, event synchronization, signal envelope integrity, SMPTE time code and EDL look-up tables are all absolutely necessary components of video workstation operating system and applications software.

It is only when workstation video products are able to recognize and address (internally or peripherally) these long-established functions that the consumer digital video market can explode. The vision, the promise for personal digital television is access; access through the network — including long distance carriers, local phone companies, cable TV and the Internet — to retrieve and operate upon the oceans of sound, picture and textual information that are and will be available.

Mass-scale markets cannot or will not happen until all the factors of remote system control happen from a single graphical user interface in the professional community. Once the control paradigms are established, it is a relatively easy task to simplify the user interface by further abstraction.

MISDIRECTING COMPUTER POWER

Since specialized video equipment is externally controllable and of extremely high quality, I believe that the power of the computer has been disproportionately directed away from an eminently desirable task: simplifying the control of a very complex system.

The full integration of system control and image processing feels inevitable. The fact that it hasn’t occurred to date is much more the matter of short-term market forces and eager technologists making “cool tools,” postponing the hard work that will allow their customers’ workstations to interconnect with video equipment long installed around the planet.

The film and video industries, with only nominal contributions from desktop computers, generate many billions of dollars in revenue each year. The expansion of this revenue base is dependent on simplified control that puts system literacy into the electronic domain, and allows the creative mind the means to produce finished, distributable products. The workstation video technology being touted today simply isn’t good enough to complete in the job it starts.

John North 

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