Moving pictures. Moving sound. Moving the industry (Apple@NAB)

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I guess I'll have to disagree somewhat on the MPEG4 thing. I spent two full days a month ago doing nothing but video compression testing with Cleaner and Compressor. I think I still have the spreadsheet somewhere, but my conclusion was that MPEG4 was by far the best 'POUND FOR POUND" codec.

That's a subtle distinction. It's definitely not the best quality, but for me it encoded to very usable quality at very workable rates in a much more flexible manner than the others. It also encoded the fastest. For me, if I could only pick one for an all around solution, MPEG4 is the one. I do a lot of client video processing that doesn't need to to look fantastic (e.g. acting talent casting sessions posted via the web for mass review), so I blast through an MPEG4 on a dual G4 way faster and more efficiently.

I only find the base version of Sorenson 3 to be slightly better than MPEG4 overall. Sorenson 3 Pro is definitely the bomb though.

And for anyone who cares. Cleaner is a big pile of junk these days. They are way behind on codecs on the Mac side. It's dog slow, too. Compressor is quite good, though its interface takes a bit of getting used to. Again, Compressor blasts thru MPEG4s, which is huge for me.
 
All I know is that when I watch streamed or live webcast or other programs I always try to use a mac and try to get it in QT. The colors are sharper and video and audio always sync up when using a mac. My girlfriends PC HP (great machine) does have some issues when running QT.

Ellen's site on the WB is a prime example of near perfect implementation of QT. It's just works flawlessly. From instant on to syncing to streaming its just beautiful. I haven't found one WM or Real powered site that works as well. CNN and MSNBC kill me half the time I have to use a pc to watch clips and they are washed out never sync up and take 3 seconds or more to buffer up. It's sad that these guys are actually paying to use this crap. And talk about Microsoft and their open standards, heck I can't even watch a video since I don't have the right OS??

It's sad that quicktime is slowly dying. If they don't get 2 or 3 content sites to start using is I think it's going to go the way of the dodo and quickly look at what happened to netscape, unless Apple buys out Real the world is not going to have 3 standards.
 
Real has really made improvements since their early years. I remember how crappy it was way back when, now it gives you great streams, a very nice inerface, and a lot more sites use it over QuickTime. But I'm for QuickTime anyday, and i hope to see it bounce back.
 
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