From: robertk@taoami.lerctr.org (Robert Kesterson)
Newsgroups: comp.multimedia
Subject: Re: Buying a multimedia system
Distribution: world
X-NewsSoftware: GRn 1.16e (7/4/92) by Mike Schwartz & Michael B. Smith
Date: 7 Sep 92 17:10:26 CDT
Organization: Not an Organization

In article <1992Sep7.183146.10658@waikato.ac.nz> ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University) writes:
> In article <1992Sep6.145949.7467@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>, mdicker@nyx.cs.du.edu (Mike Dickerson) writes:
>
[ some stuff deleted ]
>
> >   * Several people told me the Macintosh dealer was wrong when he said
> > there was more multimedia programs for the Macintosh.
>
> I don't know about relative numbers, but I'd be a little surprised if any
> other platform had a bigger variety of multimedia-*compatible* software than
> the Mac. You can import QuickTime movies into both Microsoft Word 5.0 and
> WordPerfect 2.1. You can create them with Mathematica 2.1. You can create
> and import them with MacroMind Director 3.1 and Canvas 3.0.4. And then
> there are the applications for editing digital video, like Adobe Premiere
> and DiVA VideoShop. I even saw a demonstration of using Adobe PhotoShop to
> edit frames directly in a QuickTime movie! (It had to be uncompressed, though.)
> I think most of the 3D modelling and animation packages, even if they aren't
> directly QuickTime-savvy yet, can export their output as PICS files, which
> can be converted to QuickTime movies with several utilities.
>
> On the Mac, multimedia isn't a separate application; it's just part of the
> OS.

This is just as true or more so on the Amiga.  It would be hard to find an
application that won't let you import an animation or sound or whatever.
I do note, however, that you can't insert an animation into your average
word processor (probably because it wouldn't make much sense to print an
animation).  But most anything else, you can.

And as far as the format comptibility between applications, that is not
much of an issue on the Amiga. Nearly every program which deals with
images, sounds, etc., will work with the IFF file format.  Those that don't
normally get flamed out of existence very quickly.

> >   * Several people expressed doubts that the Mac System 7 can
> > multitask that well.  They claimed that the reason the Mac dealer
> > didn't do that demo (2 renders/download 9600/word processor) is
> > because he couldn't.  But I find this a little hard to believe because
> > everything I've ever heard says that Mac System 7 is a multitasking OS.
>
> There's multitasking, and there's multitasking. Preemptive systems like the
> Amiga do a better job of sharing out the CPU between multiple CPU-intensive
> activities. On the Mac, you have to rely on applications voluntarily giving
> up the CPU often enough to avoid starving other applications of processing time.
>
> But the Mac has a lot of nice interprocess communication facilities, to
> let you get information between applications easily. The most basic example
> is simple cut-and-paste; under System 7 you also have publish-and-subscribe
> ("hot links") and AppleEvents.

The Amiga also has cut and paste (via the system clipboard), "hot links", and
probably most important of all, ARexx.  ARexx is an interprocess communication
and control language.  With it, you can have programs communicating with and
controlling each other in ways that provide capabilities above what the normal
application does.

>
> > * Someone else emailed me that even though devices such as DCTV exist
> > for the Amiga, you can't run programs on them.  Is this true?  He said
> > that for the Macintosh, you can run a program designed for, say, 8 bit
> > color, on a 24 bit color card, and all the software will know what to
> > do and work right.  He said that almost no programs can be run on the
> > Amiga graphics cards, which sounds strange, because what good would
> > they be then?  Is this true?  Can I, say, take my word processor or
> > whatever and run it on DCTV or other such display devices?  (Ie, any
> > old program)?
>
> I, too, would like to know for sure. The Mac was built with a hardware-
> independent graphics model from the ground up, whereas the Amiga seems
> highly reliant on the peculiarities of a particular set of graphics chips.
> *Can* you indeed plug a 24-bit display into an Amiga, and immediately run
> all your existing applications on it in 24-bit mode, like you can on the Mac?

*As of the current release of the operating system*, that is correct.  However,
that is not as much a drawback as it may seem.  In most cases, the high-color
boards are supported by the applications you would want to run on them.
(For example, all decent image processors, ray tracers, etc., will output to
just about any graphics board you can plug in.)

> > * Somebody mentioned that "MPEG" will become very important soon to
> > multimedia.  I know there is MPEG for the Mac, but dunno about the
> > Amiga - is there MPEG available there, or will there be?
>
> MPEG for the Mac--that's news to me! An important part of QuickTime is its
> image-compression services. The standard set of compressors provided includes
> JPEG (which is meant for single frames, as opposed to MPEG which includes
> a pretty sophisticated scheme for optimizing out similarities between
> frames as well). It's an open architecture, and you can plug in alternative
> compression algorithms, or alternative implementations of existing algorithms
> (e g a hardware card that does JPEG). But I haven't heard that anyone has
> actually come out with an MPEG implementation yet.

There isn't yet, but it has been said that there will be.  JPEG is common,
but MPEG isn't there yet (does *any* platform have MPEG yet?)

> >   * Can Quicktime movies be played on a standard 68030 color Macintosh
> > in full screen mode at 24 fps??  I guess everything kinda hinges on
> > this.  If I have to stick to 2 inch windows that makes nice demos, but
> > doesn't do me much good :-).   If it does, I'll probably end up with a
> > Mac just because of the above concerns.  If not, then I'll hafta go
> > with the Amiga just to get full screen animations.  Info on this?
>
> I'd like to know what sort of images you saw on the DCTV. Were they
> computer-generated animations, or captured digital video?

While I can't say what the images were that were shown, I can say that given
a fast enough hard drive, you should be able to do full-screen DCTV animations
even if *every* pixel changes between frames.  (The DCTV was demoed at one
trade show by running several minutes of digitized video from the the movie
"Back to the Future".  In fact, it was pumping full-screen, full-motion
video out, along with stereo 16-bit sound.)

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro                       fone: +64-7-856-2889
> Computer Services Dept                     fax: +64-7-838-4066
> University of Waikato            electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz
> Hamilton, New Zealand    37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+12:00
> To someone with a hammer and a screwdriver, every problem looks
> like a nail with threads.

--

=====================================================================
 Robert Kesterson             "First learn computer science and all
 robertk@taoami.lerctr.org    the theory.  Next develop a programming
                              style.  Then forget all that and
                              just hack."        -- George Carrette