Introduction
PICT-Play is a stand-alone application which can load a numbered sequence of PICT files (such as that created with RenderBoy) and "play" it as an animation. There are several settings which you can use to control this animation on the screen. This chapter compares PICT-Play to Apple's QuickTime capability, as well as describes the system requirements of PICT-Play. The remaining chapters in this document describe the functionality provided by the pull-down menus of PICT-Play.


PICT-Play Compared To QuickTime
PICT-Play offers a functionality similar to Apple's QuickTime extension.  For those not familiar with QuickTime, it is a software standard (and system extension) which allows "movies" to be read and played from a computer file. A variety of applications are now available which can access Apple's QuickTime system extension (if installed) in order to provide these capabilities. PICT-Play provides a similar capability, but does not require QuickTime.

QuickTime reads its movies from disk files and plays them from disk (relatively slow). As a result, QuickTime animations are somewhat slow and Jerky (at least today).  PICT-Play loads its movies from sequentially numbered PICT files and plays them from memory (relatively fast).  As a result, PICT-Play animations are very smooth and flowing, even on a "slow" Macintosh.

QuickTime movies can be any size, as long as they fit on your disk.  PICT-Play movies can be any size, as long as they fit on your disk and can be loaded into available memory (RAM). In this respect, QuickTime has an advantage, since PICT-Play movies require a tremendous amount of RAM. For example, on an 8-bit (256 color) display, each pixel in each frame requires one byte of memory.  This means that thirteen frames of a quarter screen (320x240 pixel) movie will require almost one megabyte of free RAM. Unless you have a lot of RAM (by todays standards), your movies will need to be short in duration or small in size.

Fortunately, QuickTime utilities are available which can convert a PICT file sequence to a standard QuickTime movie. So if you do have QuickTime, then you can have the best of both worlds.  For more information on QuickTime and QuickTime applications, consult your Apple Macintosh dealer.


Hardware/System Requirements
PICT-Play will run on any Macintosh with System-6 or System-7. A hard disk and at least five megabytes of RAM are required to store and play movies of a reasonable size. Although PICT-Play will run fine on a black&white display, a display with color or gray-scale capability is needed in order to display a high quality animation.