Media Shout slams OSX/Quicktime and halts development
http://www.mediashout.com/usernews/h...ac_update.html
Released: May 24, 2006
Dear MediaShout Users, Resellers and Friends:
This special announcement is to let you know that we have stopped work on a Mac OS version of MediaShout. This has been a very difficult decision to make: not only because of the great amount of time and money we've poured into the Mac project over the past three years, but because many users have been counting on something we've promised that is now not possible to deliver.
Before work began on the project almost three years ago, we met with Apple executives and engineers to determine whether OS X and QuickTime could deliver the on-the-fly video transitions and text-over-video rendering at the performance level our users demand. With their assurances that they could, we began the work. A few months into the development we discovered limitations in the Mac OS that would require extensive custom workarounds and high-end programming that our programmers could not provide.
After more meetings with Apple, we started over with a new design and new programmers. But again, the work stalled early this year when we ran into additional operating system and QuickTime limitations that prevented the program from delivering the level of performance for all the MediaShout features demanded by our users. This time Apple conducted a comprehensive evaluation of our code and proposed potential solutions to the performance limitations. We then did a thorough evaluation of the work required to complete the project, and the projected costs of this work. The estimate came to at least twice what we had already invested ? a figure our best sales estimates can't come close to justifying.
We make this decision to not move forward with the Mac project with the knowledge that we did everything within our capability to deliver a product worthy of our users and their ministries. We completely understand your disappointment in not getting this product, and can only share that our disappointment in not delivering this project for you is just as great. However, we make the decision knowing that most of our users will ultimately be better served as we refocus on the aggressive further development of MediaShout on the Windows side.
This is not to say that we've abandoned the Mac OS. We will continue our research and exploration, and if further developments in OS X and QuickTime make a MediaShout-for-Mac project viable, we'll try again.
As always, we welcome your feedback.
Sincerely,
Todd Temple
president
MediaComplete
www.mediashout.com
------------
So what is up with this? Is Media Shout really the most advanced audio-video scripting/presentation package available today? That is my friends claim who is into this stuff?
Released: May 24, 2006
Dear MediaShout Users, Resellers and Friends:
This special announcement is to let you know that we have stopped work on a Mac OS version of MediaShout. This has been a very difficult decision to make: not only because of the great amount of time and money we've poured into the Mac project over the past three years, but because many users have been counting on something we've promised that is now not possible to deliver.
Before work began on the project almost three years ago, we met with Apple executives and engineers to determine whether OS X and QuickTime could deliver the on-the-fly video transitions and text-over-video rendering at the performance level our users demand. With their assurances that they could, we began the work. A few months into the development we discovered limitations in the Mac OS that would require extensive custom workarounds and high-end programming that our programmers could not provide.
After more meetings with Apple, we started over with a new design and new programmers. But again, the work stalled early this year when we ran into additional operating system and QuickTime limitations that prevented the program from delivering the level of performance for all the MediaShout features demanded by our users. This time Apple conducted a comprehensive evaluation of our code and proposed potential solutions to the performance limitations. We then did a thorough evaluation of the work required to complete the project, and the projected costs of this work. The estimate came to at least twice what we had already invested ? a figure our best sales estimates can't come close to justifying.
We make this decision to not move forward with the Mac project with the knowledge that we did everything within our capability to deliver a product worthy of our users and their ministries. We completely understand your disappointment in not getting this product, and can only share that our disappointment in not delivering this project for you is just as great. However, we make the decision knowing that most of our users will ultimately be better served as we refocus on the aggressive further development of MediaShout on the Windows side.
This is not to say that we've abandoned the Mac OS. We will continue our research and exploration, and if further developments in OS X and QuickTime make a MediaShout-for-Mac project viable, we'll try again.
As always, we welcome your feedback.
Sincerely,
Todd Temple
president
MediaComplete
www.mediashout.com
------------
So what is up with this? Is Media Shout really the most advanced audio-video scripting/presentation package available today? That is my friends claim who is into this stuff?
Comments
Hardly "the most advanced presentation" suite.
Move along.
fuck you. We're incompetent and don't care for that to change.
Yours sincerely,
MediaComplete
Somehow I think MediaComplete's story is pure baloney. With Quartz, overlaying text onto *anything* is a joke...you don't even need to write a single line of code for it to happen.
Anyone can try it with Interface Builder. Zero code...if that's too difficult for MediaComplete, I don't think it would be a good idea to have such an incompetent software dev on the Mac side.
However, we make the decision knowing that most of our users will ultimately be better served as we refocus on the aggressive further development of MediaShout on the Windows side.
Because, clearly, they know so much about "aggressive further development on the Windows side".
It sounds like MediaComplete simply mismanaged their software development. They can't pull off text overlays on video? Nah, that's never been done before.
Originally posted by dfiler
Quicktime's legacy codebase is pretty convoluted and crusty at this point. But this mostly means that it is harder for apple to maintain. Developers building on top of quicktime have it pretty simple.
It sounds like MediaComplete simply mismanaged their software development. They can't pull off text overlays on video?
It's pretty sad really. To MediaComplete's total discredit, they mentioned OS X and QT being the source of their misery. I built in 10 seconds flat a window that displays QT movies and text right on top of it (granted the text isn't dynamically changing but this is a 10 second project containing zero lines of code.)
I'll send my resume to MediaComplete...they should be impressed with what I've whipped up in mere seconds.
Originally posted by dfiler
Plenty of other programs do exactly what they're describing as impossible.
Not only that; they also do it at incredible speed. OS X's frameworks in this regard are significantly better than what Windows has to offer.
Nothing they describe hasn't already been done.
A few weeks from now, googling for their company/product will likely turn up threads like this.
Originally posted by dfiler
Whew, talk about bad press.
A few weeks from now, googling for their company/product will likely turn up threads like this.
They deserve no better. I have no respect for a company putting up such false claims. It seems clear that the true reason they gave up is that they weren't willing to pay decent engineers to begin with.
Originally posted by aplnub
[url]A few months into the development we discovered limitations in the Mac OS that would require extensive custom workarounds and high-end programming that our programmers could not provide.
This is a really odd thing to say' they were building an app, not a quicktime extention/plugin, having "high level" people is just how the business works...and what exactly do they call hi-level about the programming that needs to be done? text over moving backgrounds is just a matter of having the text in its own layer with alphachannel over the motion graphic; hell, this could be done as an extention to quicktime; you have one pane of RTF files, a second pane of motion graphics and a preview window, then you throw the finished output out to the second display or an AJA card for projection or distribution...
It has been 2 years since I last tried so that may have changed but last I knew the windows version was a turd.
It's too bad. A lot of churches have used it and liked it. I guess they'll have to stick with Windows.
Originally posted by blue2kdave
I am pretty sure this guy was at Cocoa Boot Camp last year with me. I am betting that they were frustrated by the lack of cocoa specific quicktime capabilities. I am guessing here, but don't think they wanted to get into raw QT programming.
Jebus, did this guy expect the app to code itself.
And really... QuickTime is kinda grody, but it isn't *THAT* bad. I've had to deal with much worse.
Originally posted by Chucker
Dear formerly potential customers,
fuck you. We're incompetent and don't care for that to change.
Yours sincerely,
MediaComplete
That is exactly what I was thinking as I read this letter.
Originally posted by maimezvous
That is exactly what I was thinking as I read this letter.
I was thinking something along the lines of "We asked Apple to code our application for us but they refused. Therefore you will not be getting a Mac version because we don't want to pay anyone to build it."
However, I've been to enough Christian music seminars/conferences to know that Christian musicians favour Macs by a wide margin.
It's quite the opposite on the Pastor side, since Windows has more advanced bible study options than the Mac.
If their claims are somehow true, my guess is that Apple knows whatever limitations were discussed and will update QT in the medium term. Then someone will write some cool code to challenge Media Shout and a whole bunch of Christian musicians will switch over.
You will notice that they left the door wide open to re-enter the Mac market.
They are aware that abandoning the market will entail serious risks.