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.