Quicktime : the dying and abandonned file format

[Paul Fierlinger]

It's a sensitive topic. Many, if not most of us on this forum, earn a living using this very powerful and well designed professional software, which has been 20 years in the making and naturally don't mind sharing a small part of our earnings with the people who provide us with continuous improvements of our most vital tool. When I finished a feature film on which I had spent several years animating day in and day out, I expected anyone who wants to watch it to pay for it, but most people can find it for free on line, because thieves know how to steal it from me and generously throw it out there for anyone to download for free. I naturally have great sympathy for software developers. I wonder whether this episode has changed your mind at least a little and make you save up the money to come back one day and buy it.

[yety]

I am very sorry, I know what it means.
also happened to me, my ideas,the concept of characters, maquette, storyboard and months of work,for people who are then escaped.
i'm sorry for your film, for your dream, for your time.
the world is not going as we would like.
I did not want to take advantage. conversely.

Thanks, ciao
good luck with everything
soon

[Paul Fierlinger]

My students noticed that Quicktime is now completely missing; is this permanent?

[Elodie]

Hi Paul

(I divided the previous topic where you wrote the post above, as it didn't have anything to do with the AAliasing).

Apple stops the support of Quicktime on Windows 64 bit. So if you are using TVPaint 64 bit, you can't export in Quicktime.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Ah; makes sense doesn't it, considering that every Apple.com has to rot at one point.

[Fabrice]

nb : UPenn can install the 32 bits version of the software on the same computers without any damage. (just create two shortcuts on the desktop)
This would allow your student to export with Quicktime if it's necessary.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Thanks, but it's not necessary; they are perfectly happy with AVI, as am I. By the way in search of the best universal player I came across a freeware, called TVP It stands for Total Video Player. Are you familiar with it and if so, what do you think of it?

I like it for it's simplicity. It has no codec of its own but just plays almost anything you throw at it. 32bit or 64bit. For a quicky view of your current selection (to check real time playback and such) it's just about ideal.

[Fabrice]

it's funny.

I would personnally recommand the famous VLC.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Sometimes VLC plays back in jerky chunks if the file is on the larger side.

[slowtiger]

VLC is great in opening and playing nearly everything (including cave paintings), but it lacks one important feature: frame-by-frame.

The new Quicktime player on Mac is a PITA. Clearly they design from a mobile point of view, with that damn control panel always IN the frame (and it's so dark that you barely can see the controls). The controls vanish after some seconds - which is too long if I only want to check a short scene, and srupid anyway if I watch something longer and want to check where the playback is, relatively to the whole length. And the file name also is IN the frame, which cost me half a day because I was trying to match two scenes and didn't realize at first that the player cut off the top 15 px.
Fortunately there's a trick to install the old v7 player, at least with OS 10.6.

[idragosani]

mplayer (with smplayer GUI) is also a good 'universal' media player. Runs on all platforms, too!

[artfx]

mplayer (with smplayer GUI) is also a good 'universal' media player. Runs on all platforms, too!

I like this one too, but like VLC, as Slow Tiger mentioned, no frame-by-frame.

[Paul Fierlinger]

So does mplayer have frame by frame? Does anything besides the damn QT?

[idragosani]

Very few general media players can do frame-by-frame properly

[Paul Fierlinger]

But if you say few, do you mean only QT or is there at least one other?