Question re problems with .wmv for Macs

Les Wilson · December 20th, 2004, 06:06 AM

That's fine Dan. By all appearances. you've joined this thread promoting a WMV agenda (as you've done on other threads) that didn't address the questions in the originating post and you've used this thread to serve your campaign for WMV9. The posts that I and others have made proving your statements and positions either wrong, faulty, conflicted or biased, are there for the other readers that seem to be hitting this thread (around 15 a day) so that when you state your opinion, they can decide how much stock to put in it.

Mark Sloan · December 20th, 2004, 09:51 AM

Dan, I don't think I've argued that QT is better than WMV9 in terms of quality. Simply that in some cases it is the right decision to use QT. At every bitrate WMV9 is going to win in quality unless you use AVC/H.264 like Sorenson MPEG 4.

"mark, i don't want a bunch of drive icons on my desktop... you keep bashing these g.u.i.'s based on your silly personal preferences, which does not work... our brains do not all work the same way... for example, most of the engineers i've supported over the years wouldn't be caught dead with an apple computer, but newbies and artists tend to like macs"

They aren't my silly preferences. Its based on over 40 years of studies. Studies that have proven that putting the menu system at the top is way more efficient than on the window (Fitts Law)... especially for new users, you are supposed to provide the things they need to access the most, the most easily. You then have things like keyboard equivalents to allow experienced users to move more quickly. You put the drives on the desktop because the brain is much better at remembering WHERE you put something in a physical space than say, its name and folder heirarchy. The default should be more usable and let there be options for preferences.

As for the engineers... I don't know who you talk to, but all of my old college friends are engineers and they love Macs because it is the easiet to maintain of the Unix based platforms and their laptops are top of the line. Getting proper driver support in a Linux distro for new laptops is not fun... at least, not since having tons of time in college. ;-)

Dan Euritt · December 20th, 2004, 09:00 PM

mark, you can't have any engineering friends working on macs, because all of the engineering software is written for pc's... and it's been that way for many years.

i do find it funny that the fact that you can put a shortcut to the drive icon in windows pretty much ruined your tirade, tho ;-) lets not confuse human psychomotor efficiency with how the brain stores and processes information.

and of course fitt's law won't help a web surfer who has to wait longer for his qt video to download, because the file had to be made bigger, due to the lousy quality of qt video.

for a guy who is supposed to be into useability, you have conveniently ignored that very important fact... and so have all the other mac people in this thread.

today i re-ran the same encoding test with sorenson squeeze pro version 4, the very latest release... i had it also create your AVC/H.264 mpeg4 file, but then it was unable to play the file back! the latest version of qt didn't recognize it as a legitimate file, either.

at least the vlc player sort of played it... right now there is a lively discussion over on the sony vegas forum... many complaints about how the latest qt won't even play simple mpeg2 files, lol.

so that's two file formats that qt can't handle... sounds like a pretty poor choice for useability to me.

Mark Sloan · December 20th, 2004, 11:46 PM

Wow, Dan, I'm so glad you are here with your vast depth of knowledge to educate me so that I can now go tell my computer engineer friends (I'm an ex-programmer) that they don't know what they are doing. How did you know that all engineering software is written for PCs... you have knowledge of all engineering fields... that's amazing. I should also go tell my friends who are architects that no serious structural design work is done on Macs so they don't get sued for a building falling down or something. Or were you just insinuating that I'm a liar? I'm sure your computing ability and usability design skills are amazing as well, as seen on your site.

The fact you think the drive icon ruins my point simply highlights the point that you don't understand the issue. Nor does looking up the word psychomotor efficiency on google make you any more knowledgeable about how the human brain stores and processes information. When you've studied cognitive science, human computer interaction and usability for a couple of years... then write something. The only reason I've responded to you to this point was that I actually believed that you might be interested in having a rational discussion... which it is clear you don't. You're only interested in slamming QT and Macs (which they do have their faults, just as MS stuff does) and that is it.

The fact you tried to play an AVC/H.264 file in QT only proves you don't read. QT doesn't support AVC/H.264 yet, which was pointed out again and again. As for MPEG2... How many file types are out there? How many does WMP support? How many does Real? Each manufacturer made their choices. QT doesn't support MPEG2 by default, but you can buy it as an add on... Why? MPEG2 isn't used for the web, it is used by video professionals, and so they decided to make it an extra charge.

A longer download isn't a usability issue... its a user experience issue. Go google those terms and learn some more... but I'm done here. Sorry for the tangent Marcia.

Dan Euritt · December 21st, 2004, 06:09 PM

i worked for a number of years at some of the top rf engineering firms in the country... i supported the computers that were used by both hardware and software design engineers, on all kinds of projects... e.e.'s, m.e.'s, chip design, circuit board design, case design, you name it, no macs anywhere!! that's real world experience, so spare us your "friends" b.s....

and making whiney excuses about useability vs. user experience is absurd, lol... how would that matter to somebody who is waiting for that qt garbage to download?

fyi, it's only the very latest version of qt that won't play those mpeg2 files, and the people having problems have the plug-in... pay attention and you might learn something :-)

Les Wilson · December 22nd, 2004, 05:14 PM

Epilog...This just in on the wire....Wednesday December 22, 2004...

....MSFT ordered by a European Union court to change its business practices and immediately market a stripped-down version of Windows...

...The world's largest software maker said it would comply immediately by introducing a stripped-down version of its computer operating system without its Windows Media Player music and video software next month....

...The commission had found the U.S. software giant abused the virtual monopoly of Windows and also levied a record 497 million euro ($665 million) fine....

....a decision the commission designed to prompt computer makers to choose from various audiovisual offerings....

...."Anything that helps create a level playing field, anything that puts a premium on quality, not on monopoly, is good....

Excerpted from:
http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=965933&tw=wn_wire_story

Dave Perry · December 22nd, 2004, 09:12 PM

Any moderators here? LOL!!! This is actually funny at this point.

Mark Sloan · December 23rd, 2004, 10:03 AM

"friends b.s."
hm. That's twice now you've called me a liar.
"that's real world experience"
That's old experience. And not your experience either, you're not an engineer nor do you have any programming ability. And one RF firm is not every firm either, so to make categorical assertions and call me a liar is plain wrong, but then, you tried to play an AVC/H.264 file in QT... Its nice that you are a self learner and have done a lot and enjoy computers, but that doesn't make you an expert and certainly doesn't give you the right to write this kind of crap in an open forum.

Yes, the actual implementation of circuit design is still done on PCs. I said my friends had and worked on Macs, and it isn't because they are Macs, and it is only since 10.2 that they started looking at them because that is when X11 and great POSIX compliance really came in. There are many steps to the design of a motherboard or a video card, one being writing a test bed for the software strawman of the board. My friends prefer their favorite Unix/Linux tools and can run them on their Powerbooks. At that level they are working on assembly, C or C++ code, they don't have to do it on a PC and they prefer not to. Even before then, creating block diagrams, developing finite state machines to do high level process development, none of that has to be done on PCs, any platform works. Hell, one of my friends replaced the Aqua gui with his own, favorite windowing system, so it isn't the fact they are "Macs".

Les Wilson · April 19th, 2005, 05:29 PM

Epilog II ... This Just in..Interesting data from December when this thread was glowing

Ironically, this story was printed in the Seattle Times:
"Penetration of selected media applications in Internet-enabled PCs"
Flash: 98.2%
QuickTime: 59.6%
Real: 58.5%
Shockwave: 52.7%
Windows Media Player: 42%

sources: NPD Online Research, Macromedia

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...0_adobe19.html

Dan Euritt · April 19th, 2005, 06:20 PM

"2,000 participants, comprising a representative Internet sample responded to this survey..." -http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/npd/

last month my websites pulled in ~28,000 unique url's... a far wider sampling of the state of the internet than that measly npd survey of only 2,000 people.

my desktop operating system webstats show winxp 73%, win2k 12%, both of which came with windows media player as a mandatory part of the o.s... you cannot uninstall it from winxp: "Windows Media Player is a feature of the operating system and cannot be removed entirely." -http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/faq.aspx#2_4

so the windows media player is installed on over 85% of the computers on the internet.

Les Wilson · April 19th, 2005, 07:57 PM

Yawn.

Same old flawed logic. It isn't about what OS is installed. It's about what media application is used. That's what was counted in the survey, something web hits don't/can't count.

If I recall, your site caters to the drag racing crowd whereas the NPD survey claims a representative Internet sample, something else your stats can't claim.

Mick Isdes · April 20th, 2005, 10:40 AM

This is a great disscusion.
I am a pure mac user and I have just opted to offer WMP on my site as I saw that out of 9000 or so hits aprox. 6500 are P.C. users and it seems they choose to not download QT. I am slightly dissapointed as I have near lossless video in QT but the WMP has -1 mediorce video quality at best, -2 you have to wait for it to buffer -3 the audio is pure crap.
I know there will greater choices in the near future but for now I am a primary quicktime user.

If you want you can look for yourself.

Nick Jushchyshyn · April 20th, 2005, 11:27 AM

It really comes down to your target audience, and the player reference demographics of that particular audience. The challenge is, this is something that is very difficult to measure.

Material you REALLY REALLY want to be watched should probably be posted in both MOV and WM9 formats. Most Windows computers come preinstalled with Media Player 9, so even in offices where users are not permitted to install ad-on applications, WMVs are genearlly playable. My (limited) experience with consumer users is that the ones that are really into downloading/playing videos on their PCs will have both QT and WM players, so you probably get best general coverage by offering these two formats.

There is a good sized contingent of Mac users who simply can't or won't play Windows Media files. I've had no problem using WM9 files on my Dual G4, but admitedly, I'm primarily a PC user and have only had the Mac for a couple months. I don't know what issues long time Mac users may have encountered with earlier versions of WM on earlier Macs. Long short, if you offer "only" WMV, you exclude this audience. It can be an important one too. A major portion of the creative industry (ad agencies, post production houses, etc.) is very Mac-entrenched.

Other players and formats are out there, of course, but I'd be surprised if someone could show that there was a significant popluation that had some other player installed that did not ALSO have either QT or WMP available.

Bottom line, if you release something in BOTH MOVand WMV, you are likely to be compatable with the widest audience. Also, unless the content of you're video is platform specific ("How to configure this on a PC" or "Using this cool feature on a Mac", there are almost definitely populations prospective viewers that will NOT watch the video if one of these two players is not supported.

Dan Euritt · April 20th, 2005, 02:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ernest House

It isn't about what OS is installed. It's about what media application is used. That's what was counted in the survey, something web hits don't/can't count.

your crippled survey did NOT count what media application is used, it attempted to count whether the media application was installed and working, by used the retarded logic of viewing still images, not moving video... wmp is not a still image viewer, so the results are meaningless:

"The survey presented respondents with several pages, each with an in line image in a different format on each page, and asked respondents to indicate whether or not they could see each of the images." -http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/npd/

i just proved that the wmp player is on 85% of the computers on the internet, you can't ignore that level of player penetration... you don't have a clue what the qt player penetration level is.

mick, your wmp files are lousy because you are using a mac to create 'em... up until a couple of months ago, there were no decent wmp creation tools on the mac platform... since you haven't read this thread, i'll re-post the codec test i ran, you can see that all the native qt web codecs are garbage: http://www.oceanstreetvideo.com/videocodectest.zip

and once again, lets not forget that only 2.9% of all the computers on the 'net are macs.

Les Wilson · April 20th, 2005, 07:20 PM

Dan Euritt Said:
"wmp is not a still image viewer, so the results are meaningless:"

If your claim was true about the survey then the WMP results would be zero. Since they aren't zero, your claim that the results are meaningless is false. Nothing new here.

Your survey only demonstrates 85% of visitors to your drag racing site have XP and therefore WMP. Perhaps representative of the internet. Perhaps not. You don't know. It is well documented here that you make blanket claims ad assertions based soley on your personal experience. Nothing new here.

You assert it is "my crippled survey". To the contrary, it is NPD's survey.

December 22nd, 2004, 09:12 PM	#67
Dave Perry Major Player Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Roanoke, VA Posts: 796	Any moderators here? LOL!!! This is actually funny at this point. __________________ Dave Perry Cinematographer LLC Director of Photography • Editor • Digital Film Production • 540.915.2752 • daveperry.net

April 20th, 2005, 10:40 AM	#72
Mick Isdes Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: HI Posts: 93	This is a great disscusion. I am a pure mac user and I have just opted to offer WMP on my site as I saw that out of 9000 or so hits aprox. 6500 are P.C. users and it seems they choose to not download QT. I am slightly dissapointed as I have near lossless video in QT but the WMP has -1 mediorce video quality at best, -2 you have to wait for it to buffer -3 the audio is pure crap. I know there will greater choices in the near future but for now I am a primary quicktime user. If you want you can look for yourself. __________________ _________ Mick

December 20th, 2004, 06:06 AM	#61
Les Wilson Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Boca Raton, FL Posts: 3,014	That's fine Dan. By all appearances. you've joined this thread promoting a WMV agenda (as you've done on other threads) that didn't address the questions in the originating post and you've used this thread to serve your campaign for WMV9. The posts that I and others have made proving your statements and positions either wrong, faulty, conflicted or biased, are there for the other readers that seem to be hitting this thread (around 15 a day) so that when you state your opinion, they can decide how much stock to put in it.

December 20th, 2004, 09:51 AM	#62
Mark Sloan Major Player Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Venice, CA Posts: 346	Dan, I don't think I've argued that QT is better than WMV9 in terms of quality. Simply that in some cases it is the right decision to use QT. At every bitrate WMV9 is going to win in quality unless you use AVC/H.264 like Sorenson MPEG 4. "mark, i don't want a bunch of drive icons on my desktop... you keep bashing these g.u.i.'s based on your silly personal preferences, which does not work... our brains do not all work the same way... for example, most of the engineers i've supported over the years wouldn't be caught dead with an apple computer, but newbies and artists tend to like macs" They aren't my silly preferences. Its based on over 40 years of studies. Studies that have proven that putting the menu system at the top is way more efficient than on the window (Fitts Law)... especially for new users, you are supposed to provide the things they need to access the most, the most easily. You then have things like keyboard equivalents to allow experienced users to move more quickly. You put the drives on the desktop because the brain is much better at remembering WHERE you put something in a physical space than say, its name and folder heirarchy. The default should be more usable and let there be options for preferences. As for the engineers... I don't know who you talk to, but all of my old college friends are engineers and they love Macs because it is the easiet to maintain of the Unix based platforms and their laptops are top of the line. Getting proper driver support in a Linux distro for new laptops is not fun... at least, not since having tons of time in college. ;-)

December 20th, 2004, 09:00 PM	#63
Dan Euritt Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Carlsbad CA Posts: 1,132	mark, you can't have any engineering friends working on macs, because all of the engineering software is written for pc's... and it's been that way for many years. i do find it funny that the fact that you can put a shortcut to the drive icon in windows pretty much ruined your tirade, tho ;-) lets not confuse human psychomotor efficiency with how the brain stores and processes information. and of course fitt's law won't help a web surfer who has to wait longer for his qt video to download, because the file had to be made bigger, due to the lousy quality of qt video. for a guy who is supposed to be into useability, you have conveniently ignored that very important fact... and so have all the other mac people in this thread. today i re-ran the same encoding test with sorenson squeeze pro version 4, the very latest release... i had it also create your AVC/H.264 mpeg4 file, but then it was unable to play the file back! the latest version of qt didn't recognize it as a legitimate file, either. at least the vlc player sort of played it... right now there is a lively discussion over on the sony vegas forum... many complaints about how the latest qt won't even play simple mpeg2 files, lol. so that's two file formats that qt can't handle... sounds like a pretty poor choice for useability to me.

December 20th, 2004, 11:46 PM	#64
Mark Sloan Major Player Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Venice, CA Posts: 346	Wow, Dan, I'm so glad you are here with your vast depth of knowledge to educate me so that I can now go tell my computer engineer friends (I'm an ex-programmer) that they don't know what they are doing. How did you know that all engineering software is written for PCs... you have knowledge of all engineering fields... that's amazing. I should also go tell my friends who are architects that no serious structural design work is done on Macs so they don't get sued for a building falling down or something. Or were you just insinuating that I'm a liar? I'm sure your computing ability and usability design skills are amazing as well, as seen on your site. The fact you think the drive icon ruins my point simply highlights the point that you don't understand the issue. Nor does looking up the word psychomotor efficiency on google make you any more knowledgeable about how the human brain stores and processes information. When you've studied cognitive science, human computer interaction and usability for a couple of years... then write something. The only reason I've responded to you to this point was that I actually believed that you might be interested in having a rational discussion... which it is clear you don't. You're only interested in slamming QT and Macs (which they do have their faults, just as MS stuff does) and that is it. The fact you tried to play an AVC/H.264 file in QT only proves you don't read. QT doesn't support AVC/H.264 yet, which was pointed out again and again. As for MPEG2... How many file types are out there? How many does WMP support? How many does Real? Each manufacturer made their choices. QT doesn't support MPEG2 by default, but you can buy it as an add on... Why? MPEG2 isn't used for the web, it is used by video professionals, and so they decided to make it an extra charge. A longer download isn't a usability issue... its a user experience issue. Go google those terms and learn some more... but I'm done here. Sorry for the tangent Marcia.

December 21st, 2004, 06:09 PM	#65
Dan Euritt Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Carlsbad CA Posts: 1,132	i worked for a number of years at some of the top rf engineering firms in the country... i supported the computers that were used by both hardware and software design engineers, on all kinds of projects... e.e.'s, m.e.'s, chip design, circuit board design, case design, you name it, no macs anywhere!! that's real world experience, so spare us your "friends" b.s.... and making whiney excuses about useability vs. user experience is absurd, lol... how would that matter to somebody who is waiting for that qt garbage to download? fyi, it's only the very latest version of qt that won't play those mpeg2 files, and the people having problems have the plug-in... pay attention and you might learn something :-)

December 22nd, 2004, 05:14 PM	#66
Les Wilson Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Boca Raton, FL Posts: 3,014	Epilog...This just in on the wire....Wednesday December 22, 2004... ....MSFT ordered by a European Union court to change its business practices and immediately market a stripped-down version of Windows... ...The world's largest software maker said it would comply immediately by introducing a stripped-down version of its computer operating system without its Windows Media Player music and video software next month.... ...The commission had found the U.S. software giant abused the virtual monopoly of Windows and also levied a record 497 million euro ($665 million) fine.... ....a decision the commission designed to prompt computer makers to choose from various audiovisual offerings.... ...."Anything that helps create a level playing field, anything that puts a premium on quality, not on monopoly, is good.... Excerpted from: http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=965933&tw=wn_wire_story

December 23rd, 2004, 10:03 AM	#68
Mark Sloan Major Player Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: Venice, CA Posts: 346	"friends b.s." hm. That's twice now you've called me a liar. "that's real world experience" That's old experience. And not your experience either, you're not an engineer nor do you have any programming ability. And one RF firm is not every firm either, so to make categorical assertions and call me a liar is plain wrong, but then, you tried to play an AVC/H.264 file in QT... Its nice that you are a self learner and have done a lot and enjoy computers, but that doesn't make you an expert and certainly doesn't give you the right to write this kind of crap in an open forum. Yes, the actual implementation of circuit design is still done on PCs. I said my friends had and worked on Macs, and it isn't because they are Macs, and it is only since 10.2 that they started looking at them because that is when X11 and great POSIX compliance really came in. There are many steps to the design of a motherboard or a video card, one being writing a test bed for the software strawman of the board. My friends prefer their favorite Unix/Linux tools and can run them on their Powerbooks. At that level they are working on assembly, C or C++ code, they don't have to do it on a PC and they prefer not to. Even before then, creating block diagrams, developing finite state machines to do high level process development, none of that has to be done on PCs, any platform works. Hell, one of my friends replaced the Aqua gui with his own, favorite windowing system, so it isn't the fact they are "Macs".

April 19th, 2005, 05:29 PM	#69
Les Wilson Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Boca Raton, FL Posts: 3,014	Epilog II ... This Just in..Interesting data from December when this thread was glowing Ironically, this story was printed in the Seattle Times: "Penetration of selected media applications in Internet-enabled PCs" Flash: 98.2% QuickTime: 59.6% Real: 58.5% Shockwave: 52.7% Windows Media Player: 42% sources: NPD Online Research, Macromedia http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...0_adobe19.html

April 19th, 2005, 06:20 PM	#70
Dan Euritt Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Carlsbad CA Posts: 1,132	"2,000 participants, comprising a representative Internet sample responded to this survey..." -http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/npd/ last month my websites pulled in ~28,000 unique url's... a far wider sampling of the state of the internet than that measly npd survey of only 2,000 people. my desktop operating system webstats show winxp 73%, win2k 12%, both of which came with windows media player as a mandatory part of the o.s... you cannot uninstall it from winxp: "Windows Media Player is a feature of the operating system and cannot be removed entirely." -http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/faq.aspx#2_4 so the windows media player is installed on over 85% of the computers on the internet.

April 19th, 2005, 07:57 PM	#71
Les Wilson Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Boca Raton, FL Posts: 3,014	Yawn. Same old flawed logic. It isn't about what OS is installed. It's about what media application is used. That's what was counted in the survey, something web hits don't/can't count. If I recall, your site caters to the drag racing crowd whereas the NPD survey claims a representative Internet sample, something else your stats can't claim.

April 20th, 2005, 11:27 AM	#73
Nick Jushchyshyn Major Player Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Philadelphia, PA, USA Posts: 548	It really comes down to your target audience, and the player reference demographics of that particular audience. The challenge is, this is something that is very difficult to measure. Material you REALLY REALLY want to be watched should probably be posted in both MOV and WM9 formats. Most Windows computers come preinstalled with Media Player 9, so even in offices where users are not permitted to install ad-on applications, WMVs are genearlly playable. My (limited) experience with consumer users is that the ones that are really into downloading/playing videos on their PCs will have both QT and WM players, so you probably get best general coverage by offering these two formats. There is a good sized contingent of Mac users who simply can't or won't play Windows Media files. I've had no problem using WM9 files on my Dual G4, but admitedly, I'm primarily a PC user and have only had the Mac for a couple months. I don't know what issues long time Mac users may have encountered with earlier versions of WM on earlier Macs. Long short, if you offer "only" WMV, you exclude this audience. It can be an important one too. A major portion of the creative industry (ad agencies, post production houses, etc.) is very Mac-entrenched. Other players and formats are out there, of course, but I'd be surprised if someone could show that there was a significant popluation that had some other player installed that did not ALSO have either QT or WMP available. Bottom line, if you release something in BOTH MOVand WMV, you are likely to be compatable with the widest audience. Also, unless the content of you're video is platform specific ("How to configure this on a PC" or "Using this cool feature on a Mac", there are almost definitely populations prospective viewers that will NOT watch the video if one of these two players is not supported.

April 20th, 2005, 07:20 PM	#75
Les Wilson Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Boca Raton, FL Posts: 3,014	Dan Euritt Said: "wmp is not a still image viewer, so the results are meaningless:" If your claim was true about the survey then the WMP results would be zero. Since they aren't zero, your claim that the results are meaningless is false. Nothing new here. Your survey only demonstrates 85% of visitors to your drag racing site have XP and therefore WMP. Perhaps representative of the internet. Perhaps not. You don't know. It is well documented here that you make blanket claims ad assertions based soley on your personal experience. Nothing new here. You assert it is "my crippled survey". To the contrary, it is NPD's survey.