Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Quicktime 7

This is topic Quicktime 7 - HD stuff in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-19-2005, 10:59 AM:

Anybody out there playing around with Apple's latest version of Quicktime (besides Joe, he should have it already since it's Apple stuff)? The Windows version of Quicktime 7 has been out for a couple of weeks or so now. Apple has just loaded up a lot more movie trailers in HD on their website.

My opinions about Quicktime 7 are a bit mixed.

The good side: Quicktime 7 can play content in 720p and 1080p HD formats. You can copy film frames to the clipboard and paste them into Photoshop (couldn't do that in the past). There's more playback options, surround sound support, convenient jog-shuttle controls just using the arrow keys on your keyboard (useful for frame grabs, etc.).

The down side: with Quicktime 7 you apparantly must spend the $30 to upgrade to the "pro" version to save any of the clips to your hard disc. Previously one could select the "save target" command and download the thing using the free version of the Quicktime player.

It takes some pretty decent computer hardware to play back movie trailers and such in HD formats, particularly 1080p. 720p footage plays fine on my 1.86GHz Pentium M notebook, but it also had a decent video card, 2MB of cache in the CPU and 1GB of DDR2 RAM. I've only tried the 1080p stuff on my new computer at work (my notebook is 1680 X 1050). I have two 19" CRTs at 1600 X 1200, so the 1920 X 1080 stuff will span into the 2nd monitor. Pretty cool stuff to view. It definitely strengthens my opinion to insist on only a "1080P" native resolution HDTV set when I finally buy one. 1300 X 800 pixels just isn't good enough. Apple's recommended hardware for 1080p playback on a Windows machine is a dual Xeon setup. They may not be lying there. My machine seemed like it was dropping maybe a frame or two (it's equipped with a Pentium D 840, 2GB of DDR2 memory and a 256MB GeForce 6800 video card). I think most people will be best off downloading trailers in 720p. The 1080 stuff will be great for making nice, geeky wallpapers for your computer desktop.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 10-19-2005, 02:35 PM:

I've been playing with it for a few weeks I guess. Up until a few days ago, I was stuck watching "Batman Begins" and the space shuttle thing over and over again, but now there's a bunch of stuff to watch!

I agree that the 1080p is probably too much for most users, including me at the moment. I have a bunch of the 720p trailers on my laptop now, and I use them for blowing people away.

I thought that the last couple of versions of Quicktime required the "Pro" upgrade to download and save the content though. While playing with this version, I accidentally "spliced" two trailers together without realizing it. Weird.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-19-2005, 03:43 PM:

I fail to understand why it takes such hefty hardware to simply play back video. This leads me to believe that the H.23648874576 codec is highly inefficient. I loaded Quicktime 7 on a backup drive and watched a few trailers and whatnot. But I have no need for Quicktime 7 on my main drive.

And Bobby, Quicktime has ALWAYS had the ability to jog back and forth with the arrow keys.

Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-19-2005, 04:35 PM:

WOW, I don’t think I have this newer version of “QuickTime 7” has of yet, then again I don’t use the pc for playing movies that often, so you can do cutting and pasting on it, if I read that correctly Bobby’ so if I where to download this newer grade of QuickTime it well replace the older version, right so it’s way better, ok I’ll buy that for a few Quid then.

So are you running “Apple” Joe’ anything like the (G-5)?

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-19-2005, 06:59 PM:

Andy, I heard that Joe just has crate of old Oranges.....

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-19-2005, 07:40 PM:

I don't know what kind of Mac Joe has, but he certainly has to be salivating over this new one:
G5 - The Power of Four

I'm probably just going to wait to see what Apple does once it converts the PowerMac line over to Intel CPUs. The Powerbook line will be first. Then the consumer MacMini, eMac and iMac lines will follow. The dual processor PowerMac towers will be last to go Intel. But my bet is when they do they'll probably feature some variant of the XeonDP or XeonMP CPU.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-19-2005, 08:22 PM:

Damn straight. I want to see if I can get one of the last PowerPC Macs, because a lot of the current shit won't run optimally on the Intel nonsense. Everything will have to be recoded to take advantage of the new processor. Sure, old stuff may run, but not efficiently through emulation.

Posted by Andy Summers (Member # 3207) on 10-20-2005, 12:10 PM:

Joe’

What’s wrong with the SUPER computers then, and they come in wild range of colours, there size and the fact that they need water cooling due to the fast speed they run at cool.

http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/MetaComp/Images/CM5_lg.jpg

Read this one, Joe’ fascinating…
http://www.wbglinks.net/pages/history/

http://www.wbglinks.net/pages/history/stuffwbglinks/computers/supercomputers.jpg

http://www.cray.com/

Cray supercomputers
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/~lsmarr/photos/supercomputers.html

Cray supercomputers
http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~wwieser/tmp/lausanne/cray.html

The Super Whopper Computer
http://www2.english.uiuc.edu/cybercinema/images/wargame_images/wopr.jpg