For playing Quicktime movies using metacard, I have used two programs with
some success.
The first option is to use xanim, which is an X movie player that plays
quicktime and .avi files that use certain compressors. It at least supports
the "Apple Video" compressor and no compression. Just flatten the movie,
either using something like Premiere and FTP it over. The color mapping is
iffy, but the movies play at a reasonable rate.
The second option is to use mpeg_play and play the movie as an MPEG compressed
file. There is a program for the mac, called Sparkle 2.02, that does a nice
job of converting Quicktime movies of any compressor (I actually do DVI files)
to MPEG movies. The files are usually *much* smaller than the compressed
Quicktime movie, but the playback over a network of a 320X240 window is only
about 5 fps (your mileage may vary greatly).
The reason I chose these formats over the FLI format was the file size.
Though the playback speed is reduced (at least in the MPEG case) the quality
was about the same and the file sizes up to 40 times smaller.
* You can find xanim (release 2.64.0) at ftp.x.org in contrib/xanim.tar.Z
* You can find Sparkle on sumex-aim.stanford.edu in ?graphics?. Note that
you will also need the thread manager extension from ftp.apple.com.
* mpeg_play is available from the toe.cs.berkeley.edu site
Hope this helps!
Mark Luetzelschwab
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute