Web Movies with QuickTime 3.0
By Lynda Weinman
I remember the first time I ever saw a QuickTime movie. It was postage-stamp size, sputtering and skipping along at a snail's pace with terrible sound and even worse synchronization. Everyone around me was really excited about it, and I thought they were all nuts. I didn't realize that the movie format I was looking at would someday change the history of filmmaking, multimedia, and the Web.
QuickTime's long list of capabilities is no small accomplishment. It has influenced CD-ROM authoring, video editing, film recording, and Web sound and movie delivery. It spans technologies of data rates, codecs, animation sprites, MIDI, Web servers, modem speeds, and HTML. The challenges and scope of analog technologies like film and video almost pale in comparison to that of this remarkable digital movie format.
Today, QuickTime movies are contained within almost every CD-ROM in existence, because of pioneering advancements in digital movie and sound compression, sound synchronization, and impressive data-rate speeds. Once QuickTime conquered the CD-ROM market, it took the film and video market by storm. That postage-stamp-size movie capacity grew to support 4000×4000-pixel resolution, which matches the resolution of feature-film quality recorders. In the broadcast-video world, QuickTime applications were outperforming systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. With QuickTime, feature films, music videos, industrials, and television commercials could be produced on personal computers with the right equipment and software.
