A Quick Look at Vista Ultimate's DreamScene

[Jason Dunn]

You've probably heard about DreamScene, an eye-candy feature in Windows Vista Ultimate that was announced at CES (<a href="http://www.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx?aid=140735&c=1">more details</a>). Most people thought it would have shipped by now, but today (or was it yesterday?) Microsoft released a preview version of DreamScene for Windows Vista Ultimate users. I tested it out today and shot a quick video with my Canon SD800 - so the quality isn't fantastic, but I wanted it to get done quickly. ;-) I uploaded it to my Revver account, but I'm still waiting for them to approve it - these online video services are definitely not <i>fast</i> about anything!<br /><br />Here's the <a href="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/dmt/2007/dreamscene-vista.wmv">download link to the 57 MB video file</a> (640 x 480, WMV).<br /><br /><b>UPDATE</b>: Here's the video on MSN Soapbox. Revver is a slooooow service when you're in a rush!<br /><br /><embed src="http://images.soapbox.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf" quality="high" width="412" height="362" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="c=v&v=741a34c4-5ebe-41a9-9cf7-753db7be2657" ></embed><a href="http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=741a34c4-5ebe-41a9-9cf7-753db7be2657">Video: Windows Vista Ultimate Dreamscene Preview</a>

[Tim Williamson]

No worky on Vista Standard Theme... :(

[jeffd]

interesting, so it allows you to play looped animations as your background. I would have much prefered a realtime 3d rendered background, but its a step up from static backgrounds either way.

Jason, a 1080p version can be done in 2 ways and you may not like either of them. While low framerate is possible with blank b frames, technicaly we cant go below 24fps anymore. Anyways, 12fps is to low, and anything between 12 and 24 would cause "hiccups" in the video. Also

Compressed in a no or low compression like divx of wmv, the file sizes will be quite huge.

And comepressed in VC1 (h264), you could get a descent file size, but you would be taking up a fair amount of cpu resources.

In the end, there is a reason why this flip book type animation for high resolutions never caught on with wallpapers (animated desktops are nothing new, most tv adapters have offered it from the beggining) and screensavers. Realtime generated content is your best bet.

[Jason Dunn]

No worky on Vista Standard Theme... :(

Vista Standard...? You're running Vista Ultimate with Aero turned off?

[Jason Dunn]

I dug up details on the file that comes with the preview: it's a 1280 x 720 MPEG file that's 25 seconds long and 23.8 MB in size. I'm surprised they used MPEG and not WMV...

[Jeremy Charette]

Check out the Windows Vista Ultimate Blog (http://windowsultimate.com/Blogs/Links/Default.aspx), they have a link to Stardock's free Dream Gallery (http://dream.wincustomize.com/index.aspx). You can also use ANY video playing in the background on your desktop.

MPEG is preferable to WMV because it's less of a CPU hog, even if it uses more memory. Less of an impact on overall system performance.

[SteveHoward999]

I dug up details on the file that comes with the preview: it's a 1280 x 720 MPEG file that's 25 seconds long and 23.8 MB in size. I'm surprised they used MPEG and not WMV...

WMV east the processor far more than MPG.

I saw this demonstrated at a Microsoft seminar earlier this year. The guy showed a waterfall scene, and his home video. I could about understand the waterfall scene, but the shakey home video would drive you batty afted a couple of minutes.

Anyway, even the cool waterfall sceen seemed daft to me after a while. But then I don't even like animated screensavers, never mind a constantly moving desktop!!!

But then it seems like all the trendy 'kidz' want everything moving constantly, or blinking, or swishing about or something. And if it's accompanied by an annoying - oops - a kule sound too, then all the better.