Breaking Eggs And Making Omelettes

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• Museum of Multimedia Software, Part 2

  16 août 2010, par Multimedia Mike — Software Museum

  This installment includes a bunch of old, discontinued Adobe software as well as some Flash-related mutlimedia software.

  Screen Time for Flash Screen Saver Factory
  "Create High Impact Screen Savers Using Macromedia Flash."

  
  
  

  Requirements include Windows 3.1, 95 or NT 3.5.1. A 486 computer is required to play the resulting screensavers which are Flash projectors using Macromedia Flash 3.0.

  Monster Interactive Instant GUI 2
  Create eye-popping GUIs more easily for use in Flash. Usability experts would argue that this is not a good thing.

  
  
  

  Adobe Dimensions 3.0
  "The Easy Yet Powerful 3D Rendering Tool." This software was end-of-life'd in late 2004-early 2005 (depending on region).

  
  
  

  Adobe ImageStyler
  "Instantly add style to your Web site." Wikipedia claims that this product was sold from 1998 to 2000 when it was superseded by Adobe LiveMotion (see below).

  
  
  

  Google is able to excavate a link to the Latin American site for Adobe ImageStyler, a page that doesn't seem to be replicated in any other language.

  Adobe LiveMotion
  "Professional Web graphics and animation." This is version 1, where the last version was #2, released in 2002.

  
  
  

  Adobe Streamline 4.0
  "The most powerful way to convert images into line art." This was discontinued in mid-2005.

  
  
  

  Adobe SuperATM
  "The magic that maintains the look of your documents." This is the oldest item in my collection. A close examination of the back of the box reveals an old Adobe logo. The latest copyright date on the box is 1992.

  
  
  

• Museum of Multimedia Software, Part 1

  14 août 2010, par Multimedia Mike — Software Museum

  Many years ago, I found a boneyard of old software, much of it related to the creation and processing of multimedia. I was permitted to liberate anything of my choosing from this cache. This is the same pile where I found this Apple QuickTime format spec as well as this perfect form factor floppy disc box. So I have been sitting on the stuff for awhile.

  I thought I might get the chance to study it a bit more closely one day. But now I'm interested in getting rid of it. Before I do, it's more or less traditional for me to photograph it and post it on one blog or another. Also, if you know of any software collection groups who would be interested in taking this stuff off my hands, do let me know.

  As usual, click a picture for a much larger image.

  Paracomp FilmMaker
  This is easily the most distinctive piece in this collection and it's easy to see why-- the software is packaged in a film cannister. Still sealed, and I don't have a good reason to open it now.

  
  
  

  "The Professional Animation/Presentation Program for the Macintosh." No copyright date on the packaging, though the front does mention a 1990 award. System requirements: Mac OS 6.0.5, 5 MB RAM, 32-bit QuickDraw, math coprocessor.

  Strata VideoShop
  Version 4.5 (and not for resale), still shrink-wrapped. "The Digital Video Editor for Creative Professionals."

  
  
  

  System requirements: PowerMac with 5 MB RAM (8 MB recommended), Mac OS 7.5.

  BeatWare e-Picture
  "The Professional's Choice for Designing Animated Web Graphics." Claims a best of show award for 1999 MacWorld New York Expo.

  
  
  

  System requirements: PowerMac with Mac OS 8, 32MB RAM, 10 MB of HD space and a 256-color adapter.

  BeatWare eZ-Motion
  Another offering from BeatWare. "The fastest and easiest way to create animations and graphics for the Web."

  
  
  

  This one is for either Mac or Windows. 32 MB RAM and 25 MB HD space required. Works with Mac OS 8.5, 8.6, or 9.0, or Windows 98, NT, or 2000.

  Much more to come...

• Sorenson Video 3 For Posterity

  12 août 2010, par Multimedia Mike — Software Museum

  On a recent dumpster dive, I procured a complete, never-been-opened copy of Sorenson Video 3 Professional Edition Compressor for Windows. And because I'm me, I thought it would be interesting to document it here:

  
  

  
  

  Not opened until now, anyway:

  
  
  

  I chuckled at the thought that I might open the user manual and find the complete data stream format listed therein. As expected, the guide offers a broad overview of video compression concepts (lossy vs. lossless, inter/intraframes, that kind of thing) and goes on to describe general guidelines for compressing different types of data. Then there is the feature reference. There are standard features and professional features (the latter includes things like bidirectional prediction, masking, and watermarking).

  I was hoping to figure out how to encode some video with this software. But I think I need full Quicktime Pro in order to do that. If you're interested, here's the user manual in PDF format: Sorenson Video 3 User Guide (626 Kbytes). Here's an interesting claim from the chapter on audio compression:

  Most movies are made up of two parts, video and audio. Historically, the video portion of a digital movie was so large that the audio was only a minor piece of the puzzle. However, with Sorenson Video's excellent compression capabilities it is possible to create a file where audio is the largest portion.

  I know it's possible to do that, but is it really recommended? I'm sure I have some samples in my vast repository where this is the case but it still doesn't strike me as optimal for network delivery.

• New FATE Test Coverage System

  10 août 2010, par Multimedia Mike — FATE Server

  I've been feeling a bit scattered for the last week since I was fired from my volunteer position as the FFmpeg QA manager, wondering if there is anything I should attempt to do with the project. It can't be denied that the new system is working well. But one area I've wondered about is test coverage.

  Under my old regime I tracked test coverage as a wiki page which was a highly flawed method-- tedious and error-prone. There are those 2 adjectives again-- tedious and error-prone; whenever I see those, I search for automation methods. I think that might be more plausible thanks to the new FATE's tighter integration with the FFmpeg build system.

  I don't think anyone is working on this problem so I wanted to toss out a brainstorm:

  1. First, run 'ffmpeg -formats', 'ffmpeg -codecs', etc. and parse the output to collect a list of all the features (full list: -formats, -codecs, -bsfs, -protocols, -filters, -pix_fmts). Transform these lists into a standardized list of features, e.g., "DEVSD ffvhuff Huffyuv FFmpeg variant" represents features 'decode-video-ffvhuff', 'encode-video-ffvhuff', 'ffvhuff-horizband', and 'ffvhuff-dr1'.
  2. Next, tag each individual test spec with the features that it exercises. E.g., test 'fate-vqa-cc' exercises features 'demux-wsvqa', 'decode-video-vqavideo', and 'decode-audio-adpcm_ima_ws'.
  3. Finally, compare the data from parts 1 and 2. Print a list of all the features that are not exercised in FATE.

  I think a lot of this could be implemented at the GNU make level. Then again, I'm no expert on GNU make syntax so I may be overestimating its capabilities. Or there might be simpler ways to automatically track test coverage stats based on the improved testing infrastructure.

• Wave Goodbye ; What About VP8/WebM ?

  7 août 2010, par Multimedia Mike — Multimedia PressWatch

  Some big news in the geek community this past week came in the form of Google's announcement that it would no longer be caring about its vaunted Wave technology. I was mildly heartbroken by this since I had honestly wanted to try Google Wave. Then I remembered why I never got a chance to try it: they made it an exclusive club at the beginning. I really did try to glean some utility out of the concept by reading documentation and watching videos and I had some ideas about how I might apply it. Then again, I try to think of a use for nearly any technology that crosses my path.

  It still struck me as odd: Why would Google claim that no one was interested in their platform when they wouldn't give anyone a chance to try it out? A little digging reveals that Google did open it for general use back around May 18. That date sounds familiar... oh yeah, VP8 was open sourced right around the same time. Maybe that's why I don't remember hearing anything about Wave at the time.

  But now I'm wondering about VP8 and WebM. How long do you think it might be before Google loses interest in these initiatives as well and reassigns their engineering resources? Fortunately, if they did do that, the technology would live on thanks to the efforts of FFmpeg developers. A multimedia format has a far more clear-cut use case than Google Wave.