NS BASIC Tech Note March 9, 1997
38. How to show Quicktime Movies
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Yes, your Newton can be used to play back Quicktime movies!
The method is to store the frames of the movie into a NewtonPress
document, then display the frames one at a time from NS BASIC.
Question: How big are the movies?
It depends. With the Newton compression, it's not too bad. Movies are
often smaller than they are on the desktop, though some of the savings
are because less information is kept (16 shades of grey instead of color).
Here's a table of some movies I made:
Movie Frames Size on Mac Size on Newton
------- ------ ----------- --------------
Plane 22 36K 23K
Juggler 287 195 398
Boys 24 20 42
LetterSpin 65 102 46
Question: What speed do they play back at?
At the moment, no attempt is made to play back the movies with any
pacing: it's a matter of how fast the Newton can display. The larger the
viewBounds, the slower the display.
How to play back a movie
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0010 rem movie player
0050 LET mspec={viewbounds: {top:0, left:0, bottom:138, right:227}}
0060 window m,mspec,"picturebutton"
0070 show m
0100 LET pkgref:=getpkgref("letterSpin",getstores()[0])
0110 LET pkginfo:=getpkgrefinfo(pkgref)
0120 LET movie:=pkginfo.parts[0].book.contents
0130 for i=0 to length(movie)-1
0140 setvalue(mspec, 'icon, movie[i].data)
0145 refreshviews()
0150 next i
0160 hide
Set the viewBounds for the movie in line 50, and the name of the movie in
line 100.
How to create a movie
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1. Use the Convert Quicktime Movie to PICT utility.
2. Use the Convert button to turn your movie into a numbered series of
pictures.
Note: This utility will run on any Mac, but will not run on a Windows
machine. If you are running Windows, you'll have to find some other
utility that can do the same thing. If you do have one, let us know -
we'll update this document!
2. Select all the files that were created.
3. Drag and drop them into a Newton Press document.
4. Use Newton Press to create a package and download it.
Note: Sample files are on the NS BASIC ftp site. Visit Downloads at
www.nsbasic.com.
George Henne NS BASIC Corporation BASIC for the Newton!
http://www.nsbasic.com Orders: 416 264-5999 Fax: 416 264-5888