Apple betters its QuickTime, too

After many delays, Microsoft finally announced its technology for dealing with time-dependent media and digital video for the Windows system. Video for Windows (formerly known as AVI, or audio video interface) provides a scalable video capture and playback architecture for PCs running Microsoft’s Windows 3.1 operating system, which includes the multimedia system tools.

Not waiting for Microsoft to steal its thunder, Apple announced a QuickTime upgrade two weeks before Microsoft could take the stage.

In its basic configuration, Video for Windows will allow users to play back digital video sequences in small (320×240 pixels) windows at up to 15 frames per second. The software requires at least a ‘386 processor running at 16 MHz, with a color VGA monitor and a Multimedia PC audio board for those who want their video with sound. These are the same basic requirements for the MPC standard, so people equipped with at least the lowest-end MPC will be able to play video sequences on their machines.

For capturing video, Microsoft is recommending at least a 33-MHz ‘386, 4 MB of memory and a third-party video capture or digitizing board such as the Video Blaster, Targa or Intel i750-based boards.

The software package, which will sell for $199, includes a number of complimentary applications and system tools, as well as a clip library of 250 files for unlimited use without requiring licenses. One is Media Player 2.0, an upgrade of software originally included in the Multimedia Windows system.

The new Media Player is now an “OLE server,” OLE being Microsoft’s object linking and embedding architecture that allows applications to import software objects of any type without further modification to the program. As a result, any OLE application can be embedded with video. A Media Control Interface video driver is also included, which is an implementation of the DV-MCI command set that Intel, Microsoft and other companies hammered out last spring.

There are also two applications for capture and editing: VidCap and VidEdit. Within VidCap, the user digitizes a video segment, choosing the parameters under which he or she wishes to encode the data, such as the frame size, bit depth and audio sampling rate. The clip is stored uncompressed in a predefined “capture file,” which resides on the hard disk.

Most of the processing takes place under VidEdit. It is here that the final start and end points of the clip are selected. In addition, other media elements can be added to the sequence, segments can be added or removed, and audio can be resynchronized to the video (in case it has lost synch during the editing process). Once the user is happy with all of the elements of the sequence, it can be compressed and saved in the Microsoft AVI format.

OPEN TO OTHER CODECS

Like QuickTime, Video for Windows can incorporate any third-party’s video compression algorithms. It comes with three software compression encoder/decoder algorithms, or codecs, built-in. Microsoft RLE (run-length encoding) was designed specifically for animations or other synthetic images. Microsoft Video 1 works better for video images, and is better able to handle deep color or fast motion. Both can be set for target playback platforms; i.e., you can set the maximum data transfer rate for playback at 150K per second if the clip will eventually play off of a CD-ROM.

RTV, now Indeo. The third algorithm comes from Intel. Called Indeo, this is a high-end codec designed to work in conjunction with the IBM/Intel ActionMedia II boards. Indeo was known as Real-Time Video, in its past Digital Video Interactive (DVI) incarnation.

Using the i750 chip on IBM’s ActionMedia board, Indeo provides the highest quality playback available. Using the transparent scaling capabilities of Video for Windows, Indeo clips can play back on any capable system — but without the i750, only in a 160×120 window, and depending on what hardware is present in the system, at 15 frames per second. However, if hardware assistance is available, these clips can be played back at full screen and 30 frames per second. (Intel accomplishes full-frame video by interpolating the pixels from half-frame video.)

When equipped with a ‘486 PC and the ActionMedia board, it is also possible to encode and compress in one step, as opposed to the two-step process mentioned above.

Plenty of rebirthing. The partnership with Intel serves both companies well. Microsoft is able to offer a tightly coupled hardware-assist option for less than $500, and Intel may finally have found a niche for its DVI technology that has undergone more rebirths than birthdays during the past four years.

Digital video sequences produced under Video for Windows can be included in any Windows application supporting OLE. For example, a Media Player file could be inserted as a graphic object within any word processing document.

THE BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY

Video for Windows and QuickTime 1.0 are functionally equivalent. Both are able to process digital video in small windows at reduced frame rates; both are scalable solutions that can determine the best way to play back a clip in relation to the platform it is playing on. And both are modular, allowing third parties to supply both compression codecs and hardware assistance for a variety of different application solutions.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, Apple announced QuickTime 1.5 about two weeks before the Video for Windows announcement. The new QuickTime raises the stakes in the area of software-only video playback. Additional compression algorithms included in QuickTime 1.5 enable video playback at half-screen (320×240 pixels) at 15 frames per second, or quarter-screen at 30 fps. In addition, Apple has included the Photo CD access software and decoders and the new version of its CD-ROM software, which will be shipped with its new double speed CD-ROM drives (see separate story, p. 24).

Apple’s new software expands beyond audio and video by enabling developers to create or incorporate additional data types with a generic media handler. This could take the form of an additional track that accompanies a video, for example. SuperMac, New Video and RasterOps are all providing hardware-assisted solutions that provide full-motion digital video, at much higher prices, however, than the Microsoft-Intel solution (see story, p. 13).

Most importantly, Apple and its developers have a 16-month lead in the digital video market. QuickTime is still ahead of Microsoft’s offering, and the tools that have been developed around QuickTime are more sophisticated than anything that is yet available for Windows, but that will probably not be the case for long.

Rumors of cooperation and cross compatibility have been slightly exaggerated, but all is not lost. Apple developed a Windows player for QuickTime videos, and Microsoft has included a QuickTime movie converter for Video for Windows. This is still a platform war, in which the subjective opinion of the user will make the final determination. One technology or platform will not force the other out of the market — at least not at this point.

David Baron