ZnU wrote:
> In article <Ggkkh.29588$Rj.4317@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> Lawson English <LawsonE@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>> ZnU wrote:
>>> In article <7Rhkh.21157$RR4.18001@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>> Lawson English <LawsonE@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Lawson English wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>>> Here's a summary of features of MPEG-4 that might be doable with iTV
.
>>>>> iTunes + iLife + iTV could be THE killer combo for MPEG-4. If iTV
caught
>>>>> on in a big way, cable-providers might start selling MPEG-4-based
>>>>> advertising for playback through iTV. Scary.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/presentations/pdffiles/mpeg4gat.pdf
>>>> So MPEG-4 is dead, except as a better codec?
>>> Interactive features in video formats -- which QuickTime has sup****ted
>>> practically forever -- have never caught on for any but the most
trivial
>>> purposes.
>> There's a difference between sup****ting it in libraries and providing
>> tools to create it. Where's the iMovie tool to create interactive
>> buttons in QuickTime movies, for instance? You gotta pay relatively big
>> bucks to do that for Flash. I don't think any cheap product exists to
do
>> it in QT.
>
> So, application developers aren't any more interested than users, then.
>
>> VRML was a big flop.
>>
>> Its a standards thing. There's bunches of conflicting content-creation
>> software that don't quite sup****t even the same bits of VRML 1.0
>> letalone w3d or whatever the new standard is called.
>
> I don't think that was the problem. What's the use case for VRML on a
> web page or a set-top box? I mean, I can think of a couple of things. It
> would be neat to throw in 3D models of locations in movies as DVD extra
> type content... but frankly this is the kind of gimmick that might get a
> few more fans to buy the content, but would provide a grand total of
> about five minutes worth of actual entertainment.
Artists can only work with the tools that are available unless they are
techno-geeks and create the tools themselves. And people ARE starting to
use 3D in content. Look at the creative 3D stuff that people are
creating using Quartz Composer, even though the tool is almost
completely 2D in orientation. If you make the tools easy enough for
non-technical artiste types to use, they start using it.
>
> Back in the mid-90s, when VRML was supposed to the hot new thing, the
> lack of standardization you describe above was true of the web in
> general. Yet, the 2D web got fixed, and is now used by hundreds of
> millions of people... while the "3D web" got talked up in press releases
> for a couple of years and then went away.
Not really, it's still being standardized though. And there's fewer
implementations of 3D content packages out there, partly because the
demand isn't as high, but partly (I believe) because they're harder to
implement well.
>
> Second Life is sort of interesting as an example of how you can actually
> make networked 3D environments interesting, but it works on a
> fundamentally different model from things like VRML, in that it presents
> a unified multiuser world, not just isolated single-user 3D
> environments.
I only heard of Second Life today (yesterday). How is it different from
MMORPGs? And I agree that implementing the typical EQ/WoW MMORPG would
be virtually impossible using MPEG-4, but that doesn't mean that someone
couldn't figure out a way to do interesting multi-personal interactive
stuff with it.
And I still don't see an amazing use case for integrating
> it with other media at anything but the most superficial level (e.g.
> allow it to be launched as a helper app from browsers via hyperlink and
> vice versa).
3D tools are still extremely ***bersome. As the ease-of-use of the tools
improves, you will see more interesting stuff appear. Right now, you
have Gollum and King Kong level stuff because companies can afford to
pay the bucks for the techno-geek artists that can use the packages like
Maya, and you have the 3D equivalent of ASCII Snoopy Calenders and
nothing in between.
>
>>> And some of the other stuff, like the face coding, might be useful
>>> if bandwidth was severely restricted, but it's not these days.
>>> Moreover, just because all of this stuff is lumped into one huge
>>> standard doesn't necessarily make it any more likely to get
>>> implemented.
>> No-one expected it to ALL be implemented in one product, but I
>> suspect that people are surprised at how little is being used. You
>> still don't get multiple-language sup****t from iTunes as far as I can
>> tell. Of course, I don't know that iTunes exposes controls for video
>> to display subtitles, and iPod video has been MPEG-4 based from the
>> start, and that kind of thing is an MPEG-2 standard.
>
> I suspect Apple will use the multi-track features to do subtitles and
> multiple languages when the iTunes movie store goes international. This
> is, again, fairly trivial usage; it's a packaging convenience, not the
> interactive media revolution we've been hearing about for probably 20
> years now.
I agree that it is likely fairly trivial given its part of the MPEG-2
standard that has been around for quite some time. BTW, I don't know
that it is a very GOOD international store right now, but iTunes allows
one to select the region for the store in the current version, though
the menu isn't always visible without scrolling. Unless Apple censors
the US version, iTunes doesn't sup****t TV and movies in other countires
right now.
>
> We occasionally hear some implausible idea, like having hyperlinks in
> movies that people can click to buy placed products, but... who's really
> going to pause a movie to click on a character's shoes? This is going to
> be another one of those things that gets hyped for a couple of years and
> then goes away.
Eh. There's reasons for having 2D buttons in movies. There would be even
more reasons to have buttons associated with 3D objects in 3D movies.
>
>>> Maybe you'll see MPEG-4 movies distributed with chapter stops and
menus,
>>> like DVDs. I don't imagine these features will be used for much else.
>>>
>> Those are MPEG-2 level. There should massive sup****t from Apple for 3rd
>> party plug-ins for iTunes and iLife and yet there isn't ANY, as far as
>> I know. iTunes enhancement should be a major industry for developers
and
>> content-creators on the Mac side of things, and yet there is nothing.
>>
>>> I find it quite entertaining that even Flash is probably used more
>>> commonly today to deliver video content than the interactive content
it
>>> was originally designed to deliver.
>>>
>> I don't think that that is quite true. Plenty of websites implement
>> simple buttons and other GUI stuff using Flash, even though they don't
>> provide any kind of video content as far as the end-user is concerned.
>
> Yes, but a lot of this stuff is actually moving to JavaScript, which is
> much more of a "native" web technology, and will probably end up on SVG
> in a few years.
>
I don't think it is moving TO JavaScript so much as moving FROM
JavaScript.
> Meanwhile, YouTube built a business that Google just paid $1.65B, using
> Flash to deliver what (though YouTube does make some minor use of its
> interactivity features) basically amounts to plain old non-interactive
> video.
>
>> Animation studies/special FX studios were using Flash+webbrowser to
>> create GUI front-ends to Maya until the latest version when web browser
>> sup****t was removed.
>
> Err? I've never heard of anything like that.
Check out the threads on user interface in MEL in the maya forums at
cgtalk.com. At least SOME maya techs are pissed at AutoDesk for pulling
webbrowser sup****t.
>
>> > Hopefully Adobe will take note and
>> > implement H.264 in it. (As things stand now, flash video is 2-3
times
>> > as large as H.264 QuickTime for similar quality.)
>
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