QuickTime 3.0


QuickTime first appeared over five years ago and has steadily been changing the way data is handled. The concept was developed by Apple Computer Company but works on all platforms. The newest version 3.0 takes a giant leap in transforming web browsers and what can be viewed over the net.

QuickTime 3.0 replaces between nine and thirteen commonly used Netscape plug-ins and the performance of both Netscape and Microsoft Explorer improves dramatically once it is installed. the main and most obvious improvement is in videos (movies) and in QuickTime VRs. In the past clicking on a movie to view or download was a bad idea because you would be faced with several minutes of downloading before you saw anything. With QuickTime 3.0 this has all changed, if you are using a 28.8 modem or faster the image appears immediately and the movie begins to play without downloading, instead the download process begins and the playback will just keep ahead of the download process. This is called streaming and with it one need never worry about clicking on a movie again. If it looks like something you have no interest in, you can stop it and go on with something else without having wasted a lot of time waiting for the 2MB or more of information to arrive.

With QuickTime VR, (virtual reality) the image also streams so you will immediately get the first part of the image and as you pan around the scene the areas will be painted in as the download occurs. The articles on the giant confirmation service on Sunday May 24 have two of these navigational images. You can not see these without QuickTime 3.0.

Now here is how you can get QuickTime 3.0, the simplest way is simply to download it from apple.com. But if you are worried about being successful with this process give us a call and you can borrow our CD with QuickTime 3.0 on it. It is easy to install on Windows 95 and even easier on a Mac.

But QuickTime 3.0 is not restricted to movies and QuickTime VR projects. What it does for sound is simply amazing. It replaces the "Wav" and other sound formats and is vastly superior to "Real Audio". The sound that comes over the internet streams and sounds close enough for CD quality sound that I can't tell the difference. Using QuickTime 3.0 to move sound is dramatic, applications already exist for the Macintosh that use it for telephone communications (ClearPhone) and we will soon see similar ones for Windows that involve, like ClearPhone, both sound and teleconferencing.