wwp@yahoogroups.com:
One more day for photography, and a Quicktime bug warning
Yahoo Account 2009-Sep-21 19:56:00
Dear listmembers,
tomorrow, September 22, marks both the Equinox and the end of the panorama shooting period. I'm really excited and looking forward to the interpretation on the topic (and I'll admit I've not shot my panorama yet, but at least I've secured a location and time for tomorrow ;)
The most recent Quicktime update, sadly, has introduced a bug in the browser plugin of Quicktime for Windows which also affects the WWP site. It boils down to this: If a QTVR movie is made with a default size bigger than the one used on the web page, the movie will not show if "scale=tofit" is set. Sadly, "scale=tofit" is absolutely necessary for fullscreen QTVRs, and for rescaling QTVRs to keep a fairly consistent look on the normal pages of the WWP.
Apple is aware of the problem, and is investigating, or at least that's the most recent information given to Apple's QTVR mailing list community.
If you have uploaded (or plan to upload) a JPEG image, then the automated conversion on the WWP server will take care of this issue for you.
If you plan to upload a "home-made" QTVR file, then you can work around this bug setting the default size really, really small while still keeping the panorama image inside the QTVR big.
Example: Your source image is 6000x3000 pixels, i.e. fullscreen quality. Your usual default size - which is the size of Quicktime player if you open it "standalone" - may typically be 1200x600 pixels. This will fail to show if the browser window is smaller than this, e.g. on a 1024x600 netbook where the effective playback size may be 990x500 pixels.
To work around the "quicktime plugin cannot scale down" bug, you need to pick a really small playback size instead, e.g. a 100x50 pixel setting. Now the "scale-to-fit" command of the plug-in will work correctly and bring the playback up to the required size, including fullscreen. It looks weird if you open it in Quicktime Player, yes. However, using this "thumbnail-size" workaround will keep your contribution visible on the Internet until (and also after) Apple comes out with a bugfix.
To recap, in a short bullet list:
- Quicktime 7.64 has a bug
- It doesn't like to scale down QTVRs in the browser
- It DOES scale up QTVRs in the browser just fine
- IF you upload a JPEG to the WWP, don't worry at all.
- IF you upload a MOV/Panorama:
- prepare your panorama as usual
- BUT make the QTVR playback size setting very small, like only 100x50
- On the WWP, the browser will enlarge it to fit the page/screen/frame automatically
- IF you upload a MOV/Object:
- make the WWP object size match your object size, or make it a pixel or two larger
If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Of course, if Apple comes out with a fix tomorrow, then you can safely throw away my workaround suggestions.
-Markus