Jon
To be crystal... My bailiwick is New Media Show Business - client perform it or me really puttin on a real show with client footin the bill! I had one 18-month gig as a personal show thrower for a guy pitching to C-insertInitial-Os of major corporations all over the U.S. When traveling I got paid 24 hours a day! Ridiculous!
QT is a brush in my paintbox. A Very Useful Paintbrush !!
You said:
"Never really thought about it in terms of "fingers." Believe the May 1991 WDC public demo used a 320x240 display area and since this is equal to 1/16th the area of a VGA monitor (i.e., QQVGA), assumed that was how they initially arrived at these dimensions."
The User Experience
San Francisco, an Apple guy held a special breakout session at the MacroMedia Developers Conference in '92. He explained in terms of apparent resolution. 320x240 just ended up being the size that most closely fit that User Experience (Apple wrote the book on UX) specification = Smooth playing video on My Computer . Back then, 15 FPS was adequate performance - 12 FPS was good performance. It just so happened to be 1/4 of a 640x480 resolution 12" display(which was most of installed base of 8-bit/256 color displays) was just an even division of the size - see immediately following. BTW, 240x180 was the REAL PERFORMER in terms of smooth audio AND video. You can experience apparent resolution yourself right now -
- if you like, open a QT movie window and scale it to 320x240, or you can 'mind's eye' it close enough.
- sit normal in your computer chair
- with palm flat and perpendicular to the table, extend your arm to its full length toward your display
- bend your wrist 90° inward - or as close as you can to parallel to the display
- 3 straight fingers(Boy Scout Sign) is very close to 240 pixels tall when covering the QT window on your display - apparently = meaning to become clear
- tip of middle finger to where it joins the hand is very close to 320 pixels
Do the same experiment when sitting in your favorite chair in front of your television. I think you will see how close to your computer display experience it likely is. (remember, this was before big-screen TVs) - basically Apple's UX goal was to replicate the normal TV watching experience on the computer display.
FLASH Forward to 2014... What's an iPhone appear to be? Designed and crafted to the UX! A PALM size display that will blot out your Big-Screen TV from your favorite chair. Same deal as early QT!!
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Apple Core Values (c. 1992)
1] Darn FINE Design ........................ (maybe I should put white space
everywhere might be an exception) ;-)>
2] Unparalleled Performance
3] ------> Barnum-esque Marketing <-------
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You further said:
"Not a technician, so can't really comment on the technical aspects regarding order of loading/playing data... SNIP"
I am no technician - by choice.
You may be able to tell, but in my line of work - " It's All Show Business " just turned out to be a job where you had to know everything about the newest Toy the clients insisted on. Turned out that the hardware was available & darned expensive - from you know who? - to do a SHOW. == Mo' Money! for ME!! Had a pretty good time with new toys on someone else's dime. ALL of the clients insisted on keeping their purchases after seeing the Show we gave 'em. Apple sold a lotta hardware and software products because of my show's tech spec.
Also from the same Apple source at the same breakout session at the MMDC'92. We were all there because Director was the cat's meow software for Rich Media delivery. Clearly Apple had vested interest in the future hardware sales that would generate.
In particular, the user experience part. Focus-grouped, beta-tested thoroughly.
The technology was as I tried to illustrate...
Remember, back then, slow processors and slow drive transfer rates were the norm. It then became imperative to perform those demos, Steve Jobs down to the breakout session Host = ShowBiz!!
These shows were also performed with pre-release hardware - amazing to we unwashed masses.
- assuming that the final° data file is like an analog audio or video tape - played like a VCR or Walkman
- we are also assuming
- a perfectly optimized file
- a perfectly optimized drive
- I used to do 'events' - big conferences and such - Apple was a good teacher - last task before load up for the trip was Norton Disk Doctor - optimize so that the platter was like an LP record - no changes after - played like an LP record every time.
- bandwidth is fixed by the data rate that was determined by the codec chosen by description rather than tech specs
- on play - basically some number of seconds of audio was loaded into memory by the QT Player (this was an Apple tested duration that was a mean of fast and slow processor)
- then, while the audio played smooth, video was played like tape player (necessary because of the higher data requirements of the video) - this amount of video was also tech tested duration.
- then audio again
- video
- audio
- etc.
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You continued:
"Not sure I understand your use of the term "layered" here. Since QT can have up to 99 independent data tracks (what I tend the consider 1 dimension) and each track has a duration (what I consider a second dimension) and various forms of data can be "composited" (or "layered") together for playback (what I consider a third dimension), I tend to feel uneasy about your use of the term here."
O! Contrare! Methinks you do! 99 tracks is exactly what I was illustrating "ETC. ad infinitum" in the array. Back in the day, best performance was achieved by flattening a movie as a final authoring step - it was a menu choice, maybe. This is where the -- A | VVVV | A | VVVV | A | VVVV was done
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lastly, said you:
"SNIP ... differences in individual track data bandwidth. (I.e., to visually denote the measure of data being processed per unit of time over time—or in other words, to better reflect track relationships in terms of the total amount of data contained in each.) If this is what you meant, then yes, you got it."
to be frank, until just above, I had not considered bandwidth at all in the discussion! But I DO see you minds eye analogy clearly.
I pretty much think we both have a clear enough grasp of the inner workings to accomplish our needs. Mine are very low now that my Day Job is Alzheimer's caregiver. While I'm being frank, I really don't much miss the pressure of deadline-driven, client-coddling content authoring!
buenos noches
CCC
