jasonhenley: Web

Intro to Quicktime

Like any man oozing with sex appeal I've had video codecs on my mind for the past few weeks. Having finally taken the full plunge into HD video, I've had to interact more often with various video formats which I think can be damn confusing. So today I thought I'd talk a moment about how Quicktime works.

Think about your home theater setup and all the various devices you hook up to it. There's DVD, Blu-ray, DVR, game consoles, CD players, MP3 players, etc. All of these devices function differently and all have their own specific uses. Media is created with a specific format in mind. If you were a musician, you wouldn't create your music album as a video game or a Blu-ray disc, that wouldn't make any sense, you'd create a CD or MP3. People who make music, movies, video games, TV all have their own very specific technological needs. The unifying factor within this popuri of devices is the TV and speakers. No matter what video will always show up on your TV and audio always plays through your speakers. This collection of audio/video equipment is collectively dubbed "The Home Theater."

Since imaginary equipment is so much fun, Imagine stripping down all the physical components from a home theater, you would be left with just software from the equi and data-only version of the home theater. Quicktime is the software only version of the home theater. The software's interface acts like a TV and speakers and its codecs act as unique devices, all you need to add is the media.

Pretend I want to play a Blu-ray disc at your house but you don't have a Blu-ray player. To play that media you are required to go out to a store and purchase a new device to make your home theater compatible with my media. In the purely digital world of Quicktime, physical devices are irrelevant, and acquiring updated technology is only a matter of a quick download and not and expensive purchase (sometimes). If you aquire media files but lack the software to handle them, you simply download those software instructions or codecs. The term codec refers to code/decode which basically means how audio/video is created assembled from data.

All Quicktime files carry the file extension .mov. Don't be confused into thinking that all .mov files are the same. All .mov means is that this particular file belongs in the digital home theater, it does not say anything about what kind of media it is. There is an obscenely large number of codecs for Quicktime and I still only understand a small handful of them, but for some reason I find this interesting.

Oct 8, 2009 11:59:24 AM | Fun, Movies, Music, Sci/Tech, Television, Web

Google Fast Flip

Google Labs just released with Fast Flip. It's a new way of interacting with news stories. The best way I can think of describing it is: You know how web browsers are now displaying bookmarks graphically with baby-sized previews of each web page? Well Google Flip is that idea but with news articles. You select the topic: World, Politics, Business, Science and Technology, Health etc. and Google Flip graphically shows you the websites (five at a time) and you an scroll forward to see even more.

Once you settle on something that sounds interesting to you, you click on it and the article goes full screen, however the coolness doesn't stop there. Once you are brought into the website you selected, you sill have the ability to cycle (or flip) through forward and backward other articles. It's supposed to make you feel like you are flipping through a magazine or newspaper.