What is the .DREAM format?
Animated wallpaper format
Thursday, February 15, 2007 by Frogboy | Discussion: DeskScapes
This topic is touched on in this article. But it's an inevitable question -- why did Stardock develop the .dream format?
A little history here -- Microsoft has created a cool new feature in Windows Vista Ultimate called Windows DreamScene. Concurrently, Stardock was developing its own animated wallpaper program called DeskScapes. Early in development, it was decided it made a lot more sense to team up.
Windows DreamScene allows users of Windows Vista Ultimate to play video as animated wallpapers. The concept is very straight forward -- .MPEG or .WMV as animated wallpaper.
Stardock's view was that we wanted to take it one step further and address potential problems that might come up.
Giving artists credit...
For instance, look at your wallpaper choosing dialog in Windows Vista (or even XP). There's no credit or author info on who made the wallpaper. Maybe that wasn't an issue back in the day of making bitmaps for wallpapers that didn't require effort. But believe us, creating a decent animated wallpaper can take weeks. We strongly believe that artists would want to get credit for what they've done.
Finding the stuff...
Trying to find an animated wallpaper on the Internet? Good luck. Look for .WMV or .MPEG? Or maybe type in "animated wallpaper" and find all sorts of weird stuff. People who make this stuff are going to want to find it. That's one of the reasons we wanted to create a specific extension for animated wallpapers so that people would be able to know that THIS was created to be an animated desktop and isn't just some random video.
Extending the capability...
This has been discussed elsewhere but playing video as the wallpaper is just the beginning. The natural next step is dynamic content. DeskScapes provides that capability. Same for triggers (events that change what is being played as the wallpaper). In the coming weeks, we'll begin posting the documentation and examples on creating this sort of thing along with samples.
Providing a community site...
Another thing that is important that I don't know if most people realize is that for this sort of thing to take off, you need stable, reliable, trustworthy sites to host and provide a base for this kind of thing. 100,000 people downloading a 50 megabyte file is simply beyond the capability of most sites. And while torrents and such might solve some of that, you're still stuck with having to hunt and peck for things rather than see what you're getting and talk to the people who made them directly.
So that's why we created the .dream format. It does create some confusion initially that it's not part of Windows DreamScene. That may change in the future as the format matures, but obviously initially the extra step of downloading DeskScapes can be a hassle for some but on the other hand, because we're not Microsoft, we have a lot more latitude on what we can do in the short-term.
As for us at Stardock, we're just jazzed that animated wallpapers are finally a practical reality (they've been around in impractical forms for years -- even on OS/2 <g>).
Reply #3 Thursday, February 22, 2007 2:06 PM
Thanks,
Derek
ps. If there are legal reasons this can't be done that's understandable but I thought it would be worth mentioning.
Reply #4 Monday, March 19, 2007 11:53 AM
Did you ever hear back from someone at Stardock about your proposal to develop an activex to play .dream files on Windows XP?
I, too, would very much like to see some sort of means of displaying animated wallpaper on XP! I'm not much of a programmer, though, so attempting to create something on my own is beyond me.
--Thanks,
Pete
Reply #5 Monday, March 19, 2007 12:09 PM
Not a good business move. I wouldn't hold my breath.
Reply #6 Monday, March 19, 2007 12:13 PM
Saying "I wouldn't hold my breath" is an understatement, frankly.
-Yosmel
Reply #7 Monday, March 19, 2007 12:32 PM
Reply #8 Sunday, April 15, 2007 7:14 PM
the .dreams at an inflated price.
XP has an active desktop that ran animated gifs quite nicely. and we all know that you can do a hell of a lot with animated gifs.
Reply #9 Sunday, April 15, 2007 7:18 PM
the .dreams at an inflated price.
XP has an active desktop that ran animated gifs quite nicely. and we all know that you can do a hell of a lot with animated gifs.
Fourtyacres
Reply #10 Sunday, April 15, 2007 7:40 PM
Reply #11 Sunday, April 15, 2007 8:16 PM
I think .dream format is a bunch of crap,designed to get more money out of the public.If wanting it your going to have to spend more money to upgrade your windows so you can buy
the .dreams at an inflated price.
XP has an active desktop that ran animated gifs quite nicely. and we all know that you can do a hell of a lot with animated gifs.
Fourtyacres
Talk about IQ of the new century.
And also your 256 color 8-bit GIFs that move at 2 frames per second.
Waidaminit... you DO really enjoy XP, right?
Reply #12 Sunday, April 15, 2007 9:42 PM
the .dreams at an inflated price.
XP has an active desktop that ran animated gifs quite nicely. and we all know that you can do a hell of a lot with animated gifs.
Fourtyacres
Woah man, chill. If you honestly think your gonna find some *quality* seemless looping GIF file thats not resource hungry comparable in quality to .dreams, then you are sadly mistaken. lol. And stop whining about price this and that. Its an extra feature in Vista Ultimate & stardock doesn't charge for deskscapes. Thats like expecting to buy a car fully loaded for the price of the basic model. LMAO. Also if 5 to 10 bucks for a quality dream is too much for you, then use the free ones.
Reply #13 Monday, April 16, 2007 3:23 PM
None of the "premium" dreams have impressed me in the slightest. I don't understand why they feel the need to charge for these videos which have been better done by others and are free. I don't think they are "quality" material, no more so than the freebies. And $5-$10 for a stupid looping video file? Yeah that's kinda excessive. But it's your choice to pay that price. I choose not too.
Reply #14 Monday, April 16, 2007 3:49 PM
None of the "premium" dreams have impressed me in the slightest. I don't understand why they feel the need to charge for these videos which have been better done by others and are free. I don't think they are "quality" material, no more so than the freebies. And $5-$10 for a stupid looping video file? Yeah that's kinda excessive. But it's your choice to pay that price. I choose not too.
Given that the article explains the rationale behind having .DREAM files (and no, they aren't just video fiels, .DREAM supports many types of content including triggered content and dynamic content) I'm not sure what your point is.
But if you think it would be "better" to go hunting for WMV or MPEG on the net then by all means, go. Go now. Personally, I prefer to know that a given file was designed to be an animated background.
One big reason artists choose .DREAM is because they get credit. Obviously, someone like you who is just a user who doesn't contribute anything back wouldn't see the point. But for the people who spend hours and hours on these things, having their name appear in the dialog matters.
Reply #15 Thursday, April 19, 2007 6:15 AM
Stardock only wants to advertise itself by making some stupid dream formats...
It's stupid...
Don't get me wrong, I still love Stardock but sometimes it gets on my nerves.
Reply #16 Thursday, April 19, 2007 6:24 AM
quipe: The dream format is more than just a video container. It also supports the dynamic dreams such as the ovals one which was uploaded a couple of days ago.
Dynamic dreams are a fraction of the size of video dreams (ovals is less than 300K), run at the native resolution of your monitor and barely use any cpu.
Reply #17 Friday, April 20, 2007 11:22 PM
Note for Stardock if you're reading this: A suggestion would be a warning before loading/running any dynamic content to trust the source of the content? Dream files prevent users from knowing if the content is dynamic or static. I haven't (yet) heard of a virus in a WMV file... But dynamic content is far cooler, IMHO.
Reply #18 Sunday, May 25, 2008 3:05 AM
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Reply #1 Friday, February 16, 2007 3:50 PM