Wooten Class 5, July 6 -

Still having a hard time understanding for sure WHY Quicktime might be superior to other media players. It supports a variety of codecs, but so do its competition. Image quality and ease of use seem restricted to a Mac platform-I wonder if the only reason it's so popular is because Hollywood loves it so much. In terms of editing benefits, the avg consumer buys a Mac far less than a PC, so the benefits don't seem to crossover to the broadest market. Wooten seems to think its a big deal that you can rotate the image around and play it in non-rectangular skins, but I don't really understand how those features are practical. The ability to map video onto an alternate environment I suppose is becoming more of a benefit the more video serves as an extra feature rather than a primary draw to a webcast/broadcast.

I'm really interested to learn more about Quicktime VR. I'd never even heard of it until the reading. "Panarama" formats sound like maybe the direction video is going to be heading, as partially 3D flat screens are already developed. Quicktime seems to offer the most user friendly coding/editing formats for music and special FX. I didn't realize the codes for effects and music were supplied on individual codecs. The "busier" video and audio progress, I'd imagine that means more distinct codes within the stream. How will that complicate things? Will the codes degrade faster?