Well I am not new to digital video and I am not an old hat either. There are days that I am excited about all the video technology synergy that is on its way, yet there are still some days I wish there was a universal video standard so compression done once would be good for all output paths. Unfortunately that day will probably never come so the never ending learning and research of new codecs, compression, and data rates will continue. The good news is that it is actually a lot easier than it has ever been for anyone entering digital video today and they don't have to worry about one tenth the problems from even five years ago. Days of hardware mpeg-2 ecoders and players are all solved with software, time based correctors can be found in being stripped of precious metals, and I haven't seen a video project use a fixed palette in years.
Of all the players, codecs, and compressions I always loved Quicktime although not a great Apple fan. The Quicktime movie format and it's great codecs and incredible functionality made it my favorite. On a sour note when I loved using Quicktime the most it did not have the penetration as it does today so it was often a hard sell. When I worked in the New Media Department at Corel Corporation in the mid to late 90's (remember they still make CorelDRAW and Wordperfect) I created a lot of training and videos that went into many of the Corel applications and online including a popular at the time Features in Action online presence. Those videos grew into Quicktours and all done in Quicktime. They all supported closed captioning and higher end functionality that few would have ever noticed.
That takes me to today where I had stopped using many of Quicktimes powerful features including closed captioning as most people didn't use or appreciate them. Now with the growth of online video Google has added closed captioning a couple of months ago. Although it is not as robust as Quicktimes it does have a great feature that the closed captioning is now index by the worlds most used search engine. This search ability is very powerful from my point of view, although most wont use it as it requires some effort but the benefit to those who take the time is well worth it. Not only did Google Video index the closed captioning but did so within an hour. The search will actually let you start the video at that time marker index. I am hoping that the regular Google search will index it within a couple days.
So below is an example and a shameless plug from my tv appearance on daytime on Rogers promoting Baby Gizmo™ in Canada DVD. Enjoy.
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