In computing, QuickTime is the name of the US company Apple's media player software, and a file format popular on the Macintosh operating system platform. It is also widely used by web developers to create cross-platform video clips that can be downloaded from the internet. QuickTime 1.0 for Mac OS, the first version of the player, was released on December 2, 1991. In November 1994, Apple released QuickTime 2.0 for Microsoft Windows, the first-ever port of QuickTime to that operating system (Egbert, n.d.).
It is a standard for displaying video, audio, virtual reality and almost any kind of multimedia content on computers. The format is designed by Apple Computer.
Apple QuickTime Player 6.4 playing The Polar Express trailer thumbnail
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2 QuickTime and MPEG-4 3 Platforms and versions 4 References 5 External links |
The tracks in turn contain track media, which rely on specific codecs—like the Sorenson codec, Motion JPEG, AC3, etc. It also has an "edit list" that indicates what parts of the media are to be used.
The track media in turn contain several samples of the media stream. These samples may be in the same file, another file, or on a network.
Internally, this format is maintained as a tree-structure of "atoms," each of which is 4 bytes in size, has a 4-byte identifier, and content whose structure is determined by its identifier. An atom can be a parent to other atoms or it can contain data, but it cannot do both.
The following is a list of updates to QuickTime 6 released by Apple.
Developers can use the QuickTime Application framework to develop multimedia applications for Mac or Windows with the C programming language or the Java programming language.
Independent players for QuickTime 6 (MPEG-4) exist for many operating systems, and the FFmpeg library even supports the Sorenson video compression format. Apple, however, is the exclusive licensee of Sorenson technology.
See also: NATO.0+55+3d
Architecture
A QuickTime file contains tracks with particular types, such as audio, video, effects, or text (e.g., for subtitles).QuickTime and MPEG-4
In 1998, the ISO approved the QuickTime file format as the basis of the MPEG-4 file format, with supporters noting that it was a good "life-cycle" format, well-suited to capture, editing, archiving, distribution, and playback (as opposed to the simple file-as-stream approach of MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, which are poorly suited to editing). MPEG-4 compatibility was added to QuickTime 6 in 2002. However, Apple delayed the release of this version for months in a dispute with the MPEG-4 licensing body, claiming that proposed license fees were prohibitive for many users and content providers (Sigvartsen, 2002). A compromise was reached, and QuickTime 6 was released in July of that year (Egbert, n.d.).A list of updates to QuickTime 6
Platforms and versions
Apple has released official media player software for Mac OS and Windows under the brand QuickTime Player. Apple also has a version of the software that can create "QuickTime" brand files, under the brand QuickTime Pro. Additionally, the company's iTunes audio player (designed for easy manipulation of audio media) utilizes QuickTime in its playback technology.References
External links
