We want to give you as much information as possible about the TV-ROM so you can understand the scope of this project and the potential audience you will be reaching as a contributor, artist or performer. We also want you to understand the implications of this emerging technology, the possibilities it affords, and the overall grooviness of the threshold you are about to cross. If you have any questions beyond the basics below, there’s more detailed information that follows directly and, of course, don’t hesitate to ask.
What is QuickTime?
It’s an INIT or extension that gives a Macintosh or Windows sys-tem the ability to read and display dynamic data in a visual way.
What is the TV-ROM?
Billed as an eclectic collection of QuickTime movies, BMUG’s multimedia CD-ROM contains over 500 movie and 200 still image files optimized using QuickTime compression techniques.
What is BMUG?
The Berkeley-based computer User Group with over 12,000 members worldwide. BMUG’s motto: “We’re in the business of giving away information.”
What is Copyright-light?
Public domain software has long been a staple of User groups and a scout’s honor way of distributing information. With the increased ease of digitizing comes the opportunity/restrictions of ownership.
What does digital mean to me?
Enter digital video and the ability to cut, copy and paste images quickly and repeatedly without generational loss, forever…
The specifics follow…
What is QuickTime?
Since January 1, 1992 when Apple Computer introduced QuickTime, all color capable Macintosh computers were, for the first time, able to display/playback live action video on screen without additional hardware, wires, or connectors.
QuickTime is an instruction that the computer remembers everytime it is started up. It is also considered the first standardization of the digital video format. Windows machines now have the same playback capability of this media. QT movies are created by digitizing analog video footage from all sorts of sources such as videotapes, live cameras and camcorders. Video boards allow these devices to connect and pour the information/footage/images into the computer where it is changed into the digital format that computers can understand /read. BMUG licensed the QuickTime software for distribution on its TV-ROM .
What is the TV-ROM?
BMUG’s TV-ROM was released in January at MACWORLD Expo in San Francisco concurrently with the release of QuickTime 1.0. The CD-ROM was a collection of 400 QuickTime digital video clips also called MooVs. Clips were digitized in var-ious ways to illustrate the flexibility and constraints of QuickTime. The disc also contained over 100 examples of still images compressed using QuickTime’s compression features. Anyone working with full color PICT graphics on the Mac can use QuickTime to shrink the files 80% or more. Such compression causes a loss in image quality, so users can see these techniques in action before applying them to their own work.
BMUG sold over 4,000 copies of the first disc and produced a second edition, TV-ROM Too. Strong customer/user reaction indicates that users are in dire need of pre-digitized copy-wright free materials, curious about the process and anxious to familiarize themselves before investing in further equipment. Along with the increase in users adding CD-ROM readers/players to their computers (built in and considered standard equipment on newer models), the proliferation of content titles, such as encyclopedias and interactive children’s stories, is also on the rise. The CD-ROM format (650 MB) affords a storage space large enough to contain the animations, images and text that go into the production of a multimedia title and serves as the ultimate solution for distributing such work to a variety of computers. The response to our low priced collection is encouraging and BMUG’s world-wide network of connections opens up an international market of exposure for your contribution.
What does digital mean to me?
The quality of a QuickTime video clip does not match or even come near the original, but in its own way has a unique resiliency of quality. A digital image will last ostensibly forever. It can be duplicated endlessly with little or no degradation. Being digital, it can be sent over phone-lines to other people’s computers across the country or around the world. It can be artistically enhanced /digitally denigrated by putting it through filters to change the texture, shape, color, quality, and pacing. Coupled or layered with other images, the altered original may become something entirely new, even unrecognizable, beyond its original intent. It can be endlessly flipped, rotated, skewed, distorted, morphed into something else, wrapped around an object, magnified down to its smallest component pixel, taken in and out of context the same way you word process a text document… all because it’s digital. Like audio CDs, the data on the disc is sealed in plastic and can’t be tampered with by nature. A sharp object will scratch and endanger the integrity of the data, but under normal usage, you can’t touch this stuff. As long as the standard is digital, the media is readable. Immortality only comes this easily to the gods.
What is Copyright-light?
“Copyright-light” means that users pay no licensing fee for additional use of the materials. They can use it, but we ask they give acknowledgment to the original
artist as a courtesy and not assume credit for what they didn’t create originally. We also include an About the Artist… file that can read like a resumé or as a way of contacting the original artist for further work or higher resolution images. In most cases, the audience/consumer uses the material for the purposes of educational training, in-house presentations, and QuickTime film festivals.
We expect that any materials you contribute are also copyright-free by definition, so you or BMUG won’t have to hire lawyers to get us all out of intellectual property jail. This is a very important point, because we im-plicitly guarantee that our users are get-ting no-strings-attached images and movies. At no time should anyone claim sole ownership to materials they contribute with this understanding. Likewise, purchasers/users agree to the same terms when utilizing these clips from the public domain. As docu-mentation for future reference this serves as a very permanant record. Your published original becomes inventoried by virtue of its digital form and may insure its link to your name in the future.
Release Agreement
I, ______________________________, do hereby consent and authorize TV-ROM & BMUG the right to use my (check all that apply)
image art
scripts software
video footage animations
music performance
photographs ________________
for the TV-ROM™, a CD-ROM collection of digital video clips. I understand that the digital video clips in this collection may be used, without further permission from me, in any form, including composite or distorted representations, for advertising, trade or any other lawful purposes. I also assert that my contribution is first and foremost my original creation and will not violate anyone else’s copyright with that claim. I am of full age. I have read the above authorization and release prior to its execution and I am fully familiar with its contents.
