From: Dave Poindexter
Subject: For Oivind Idso (-: oivindi@sofus.dhhalden.no :-)
Reply-To: poindexter@scri.fsu.edu
Organization: SCRI @ Florida State U.
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 92 23:07:29 GMT

Sorry about posting a reply to a private e-mail, but this was bounced twice on
my mail server and I DO want to be courteous and reply to a request for info.
As it relates to a previous thread, maybe others can get some use out of this
as well. - Dave 

Subject: Re: QuickTime... (Q)
  
>Hi!
>I'm trying real hard these days to decide whether to buy an Amiga or
>Macintosh for multimedia/videoediting/animation (etc.), and would
>appreciate it very much if you could please help me with the
>following questions:
    
Greetings!
    
I hope I can help, I'm familiar with the Amiga and I consider myself a Mac
graphics power user, but I'm far from an expert with QuickTime yet. A note
of warning, I've read alot about QT, but my hands-on with it has been
limited--please do not take everything I say as gospel.
    
>>
>>recorder, I've been able to get 28-29 fps on the Q700 in the 160X120
>
>How large are these 29 fps files if you digitize for about 30 seconds
>if you were to digitize in 24 bit color?
>
>How high is the *playback* rate? Can you manage 29-30 fps with an
>"ordinary" harddrive, or do you need some sort of 16 valves turbo
>injection speed wizard?
    
Ok, the Mac I use at work is a Quadra 700 with 68 Mb of RAM and the
standard Mac 160 Mb internal HD, I also have an older external 150 Mb HD.
The framegrabber is a SuperMac VideoSpigot. My display is a SuperMac Color
Two-page monitor driven by a Thunder24 card.
    
I was able to get the 28-29 fps (without sound) rate recording to the
internal drive and directly to the RAM--which is an option with the Spigot
software, ScreenPlay. I did notice the frame rate decrease slightly from
the middle to the end of recordings which used all available memory. I
think a raw recording of 30 seconds before compresion uses ~20-25 Mb of memory
for a 24-bit 160X120 window. 
    
I think my playback is ~20-24 fps on my machine (None of the players I use
have a frame rate indicator, but I do notice some skipping of frames on
playback). I believe I've read that Quadras are capable of 30 fps playback,
but that may require SCSI-II hard drives.
  
>>
>>This is true with the current version of QuickTime. The updated
>>
>When you say this month, are you perhaps talking about the magic date
>of 19/10-92???
    
Yes, QuickTime 1.5 is supposed to be released next week along with Apple's
fall product announcements.
    
>
>Do you have the specs of the new co-dec from SuperMac? Has it
>increased frame rates and movie-/colorquality a "lot"? Is it
>shipping???
    
I think the new codec is suppoed to improve the image quality over the
Apple-supplied video codec. A disadvantage is that it takes longer to
compress files. I believe that Apple is trying to get it for general
release. I think that it is to be released by the end of the year.
    
>
>Oivind Idso (-: oivindi@sofus.dhhalden.no :-)
    
I hope this helps in your decision. Amigas still have the price advantage,
and are still good for many video applications. The Mac/QuickTime solution
right now is good for some multimedia jobs and the technology promises to
be the way to go for most multimedia/videoediting/animation applications in
the future. Real-time 640X480, 25-30 fps video (and video editing) on the
Mac still requires extra hardware.
    
  
Dave Poindexter                           poindexter@scri.fsu.edu
Graphic Artist (for the rent) & Computer Artist (for the soul)       
Supercomputer Computations Research Inst. @ Florida State U. 
Tallahassee, FL  32306-4052                      
phone: (904) 644-7021; fax: 644-0098             CIS: 73670,265
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