README for patlabor.intro.qt.bin

This is a QuickTime movie of the intro to the Patlabor TV series.

It is saved in flattened format so that people with any QuickTime
capable platform will be able to view the movies. I guess this just
means PCs and SGI? Anyway, the movie is in MacBinary format, so to put
them on another platform, you may have to put the movie first on a
Macintosh, then transfer it to the target machine in straight binary
format--not MacBinary format. I don't have much experience with Video
for Windows, so it may or may not handle the MacBinary format
directly.  I don't know.

I am aware that there is an XWindow QuickTime player that some people
use--xanim or something. As far as I know, the Cinepak CODEC used in
this movie are not yet supported by xanim.

You need to have QuickTime 1.5 in order to play this movies. The newest
one is 1.6.1, and 1.6.2 for PowerMacs. If you have 1.0, you can get 1.6
from the usual Mac archives (sumex-aim.stanford.edu,
mac.archive.umich.edu, wuarchive.wustl.edu, maybe ftp.apple.com, etc.)


Info on how this movie was created:

The movie was recorded on a Sigma Designs MovieMovie installed in a
PowerMac 8100/80. QuickTime version 2.0d3 was used. The movie was
initially captured using FusionRecorder 1.0.2 compressed on-the-fly in
Animation Compressor set at 5.0 (most quality), which is a lossless
format. They were then recompressed in Cinepak with every 20th frame a
key frame and quality set to 4.0 (high) using Apple's Movie Recorder.
The sound was recorded in 16 bit stereo at 22kHz using the built in
sound of the Mac.

(I am not really satisfied by the 8 bit sound of 99% of QT movies. If
you have 16 bit sound in your Mac, then you really ought to have decent
speakers to really appreciate the good sound. I would have done it in
16 bit 44.1kHz stereo, but the file size would have gone way up, as
well as more dropped frames.) If you have just 8 bit sound (everything
other than an AV series or PowerMac), then I guess it will still sound
pretty good.

I tested this movie on the whimpiest CPU I have, which is a IIsi
(20MHz 68030) with a PDS video card and 64K cache (yields about IIci
speed). This was with QuickTime 2.0d3 and System 7.1. The hard drive is
a Quantum 80MB drive. They worked fine in 8 bit color. Anything above
this should work fine. I doubt an LC or LC II will be able to keep up
with the 30fps of the 160x120 movie, but you're welcome to try it out.

I'm sorry about the poor video quality, but it's off of a
multi-generation fan sub. (Thanks subbing it, AA).