Interactive QuickTime Authoring, Part 1

As incredible as this may sound, one day I found myself thinking. There are, after all, twenty-four hours in a day, and once I wake up I do have a good three, maybe four hours to kill. So between the time m'stories come on and the daily dates I keep with the Honorable Judges Judy/Larry Joe/Mablean/Joe Brown/Mathis/Hatchette, I do try to fire up the old noodle every once in a while in a mostly futile attempt to come up some intriguing stuff for you, the valued reader. On one such occasion recently, while the Hormel Chili (no beans) was slowly bubbling its crimson, nitrate-y goodness on the stove, I got to thinking about QuickTime.

I don't know about you, but I've always felt that QuickTime was destined to be much more than just a way to watch movies on your computer. And while I'm thrilled to see that QuickTime has more or less found a popular niche as the technology of choice that may Hollywood studios use to deliver their latest trailers online, I've always wondered why the whole interactive element of QuickTime seems, to a large extent, somewhat underutilized. After all, QuickTime has shrugged off its revolutionary-but-humble beginnings and has evolved over time into a powerful, cross-platform media layer. So why, if the capability is there, do we not see more interactive projects with QuickTime at the core?

I'm not dumb enough to think that I'm smart enough to have the answer to that last question, but it seems to me that there are several inherent pros and cons to choosing QuickTime as the basis of (or at least a major component in) interactive projects. And it may just be that the cons overshadow the pros. On the plus side, QuickTime gives you identical playback as well as authoring on both Windows and Macs. This is huge, since you don't have to be tied to any one platform for development. QuickTime content can also be deployed both offline and online, meaning it's pretty easy to move a web project to CD or DVD, or vice-versa. Plus, QuickTime has an extensible architecture in a couple of different ways. First, QuickTime's capabilities are constantly being extended through third-party codecs that Apple provides through the QuickTime updater application, and second, when the time comes that QuickTime itself gets a version rev, QuickTime practically becomes a plug-in to supported applications, seamlessly giving those apps all the functionality of the new QuickTime version without upgrading each package individually.

Ah, but the cons, the biggest of which is unlike programs like Director, the final QuickTime MOV file isn't self-contained. Director, for example, will package up a nice little projector for you which contains all of the movie assets (provided, of course, that they don't rely on some outside technology) as well as the Director player, and turns it into a native Windows or Mac application which will play ever-so-nicely on a user's machine without much of a fuss. QuickTime files, on the other hand, won't play unless the QuickTime framework has been previously installed on the host machine, which in the real world translates to web sites that have to check for a plug-in or CD ROMs that try to detect the presence of QuickTime and prompt the user to install if they have to. This can be perceived to be an instant turn-off to your user base, especially on the Windows side where QuickTime isn't a native technology, and as such may prompt developers to look for a more hassle-free solution. I, for one, also despise the "Go Pro" reminder Apple insists on subjecting the free version users to every time they open the QuickTime player, so even that has kept me from really embracing QuickTime as an interactive authoring format. The last large drawback that I'll mention is that interactive QuickTime, frankly, isn't exactly easy to author. If you've ever tried to manually add a text track with the QuickTime Pro player, you'll know what I mean. Add in the fact that Apple has done a really, really poor job of explaining what QuickTime is capable from end to end and applying some of its famous ease-of-use to some of the more obscure features buried in QuickTime, and maybe it's not that hard to make the leap as to why QuickTime is most widely known as a video-only media format.

However, for all its troubles, it's hard to argue with the fact that the potential for QuickTime as a widely accepted interactive authoring platform is certainly there, and maybe the time is right for developers to force the issue a bit and start putting more QuickTime-enabled interactive content out there. So with that statement, over the coming weeks we're going to look at programs that take advantage of the interactive functionality QuickTime has to offer. In the words of Justin Wilson, let me tell ya what I'm gonna did: for each program, we're going to outline what it does and how it uses QuickTime for interactivity. We'll then give you the skinny on how you can get your hands on it, and what it'll cost you. And while we're going to be using Mac OS X on the authoring side, we're going to showcase programs that allow you to author on Macs and Windows alike (except if/when noted otherwise). As a final tidbit, we're going to keep this an open-ended feature, so we'll be able to bring you new and improved products in this area as they pop up. Sound good? Thought so. So please, stay tuned...

NEXT TIME - Part 2: iShell, Therefore iAm

Filed under: Feature on October 28th, 2002

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