New Software Expands Use of Video on PCs : Computers: Microsoft and Apple are introducing products that will give most IBM-compatibles advanced capabilities found on the Macintosh.

Seeking to bring video into the mainstream of personal computing, Microsoft Corp. and Apple Computer today will introduce competing software products that make it possible to play video clips on most IBM-compatible PCs.

Microsoft’s Video for Windows and Apple’s Quicktime for Windows will give PCs equipped with Microsoft’s Windows operating system the same set of video capabilities that have been available for about a year on the Apple Macintosh.

Any PC will be able to play brief, low-quality videos in a small window on the screen, and people who want to create their own PC video clips--or enjoy large, TV-quality images--can do so by buying a special video circuit board.

The technologies are expected to lead many software developers to build video into their programs. Thus it will be possible to illustrate a spreadsheet or word processing document with a video, incorporate video clips into corporate presentations, add video to computer game programs, or even send video clips as part of an electronic mail message.

Though many computer companies have high hopes for video, it remains unclear whether consumers and businesses will leap at the chance to use relatively low-quality video or be willing to pay a premium for an add-on circuit board to get better quality.

Video for Windows incorporates technology from Intel Corp. to convert video into the compressed digital format that can be handled by computers. The system is “scalable,” meaning that it will automatically adjust to the capability of the computer system being used.

That means the same video clip can be played at TV-quality resolution on a PC that has a $1,000 video circuit board from Intel, and can also be played at low resolution in a small window on a PC that doesn’t have the special hardware. Creating the video in the first place--using either a video camera or animation--will require an add-on video circuit board.

But Apple, which introduced the Quicktime technology for the Macintosh about a year ago, still has a lead in bringing video into the PC world. Video for Windows “is the functional equivalent of Quicktime, and Apple has about a year’s lead,” said David Baron, associate editor of the newsletter Digital Media. Although Microsoft and Intel say their product has more advanced capabilities than Quicktime, Baron characterized that claim as “mud-slinging.”