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10th Anniversary of Quicktime
An anonymous reader submitted a story about the 10th anniversary of QuickTime which might not seem like such a big deal unless you set your mental wayback machine to 1991 and remember what we didn't have back then. Bits from Brian Eno and others. Worth reading.
Why not just Mpg so everyone can see it?
...there won't be a gleeful response from the Linux crowd here?
"And like that
...you're sticking kicking everyone else's ass.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
DivX ;), Windows Media and other MPEG4 based solutions have already killed them. They take less bandwidth and scale from palm-based to near-DVD quality.
Yay to it's 10th anniversary, I guess... but I doubt it will see it's 15th.
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
"Not everybody decides to eschew superior technology because their pet platform is incapable of supporting it."
any actual proof that it is superior? thought not.
Didn't you guys post about this last week?
If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be respected, sit down and shut up.
hahahaha quicktime! i know we all hate wintel, but come on, let's have some good apple bashing on this one. while the rest of the world has embraced mpg, apple stil clings to it's sorry quicktime format. what's next? the 15th anniversary of adb?
Here is an history of QuickTime by a group of QuickTime developers, "Friends of Time" :
http://www.friendsoftime.org/
-J
Alexis 'jeriqo' BRET
I remember when people were talking about which was better quicktime or microsoft avi. One of them made files smaller by decreasing resolution of movies, but keeping the same on-screen size. The other decreased framerate. I just remember reading this in a really really old magazine. I still have quick time 2 somewhere. Ah DOS.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
"the 15th anniversary of adb?"
what is adb?
I remember back in 1991 when I didn't play "computer games". I played "Video games". I also didn't "Surf the web". I "bbsed". Back then things were more simple. ASCII art, a time when Microsoft wasn't evil, no obscure linux-related jokes, hell, no linux. That was when i played outside too, climbed trees, and didn't have a job (because i was 11).
Now look at us. I'm sitting here, reading news on a website named after some punctuation, and worrying about if i can talk about the newest Microsoft internet explorer to my boss, or risk being fired, and turned to the police because i know too much.
"Charging a man with murder in this place is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500" -Apocalypse No
It's important to understand that Quicktime is not a compression algorithm. If it were, then I would agree with your statement. However, Quicktime is one level above the compression algorithm--it can work with many different algorithms. There's no reason to believe that there won't be a MPEG-4 codec for Quicktime soon (if it's not available already).
While the most popular codecs involved will change, Quicktime will be around for a long time to come.
I am fed up with this Quicktime !
I am running Unix systems on my machines and I am really fed up to hit the famous: This web page require a quick time plug-in, go to download it !
THERE IS NO QUICKTIME PLUG-IN FOR UNIX
How good can be a format that is not OPEN ????
Developper have to buy the right to code a reader for this format !
This is outrageous ! But, after all, Apple and Microsoft have the same goal... world domination. Microsoft had just done some steps further than Apple. That's all.
OS X is Unix! (Well BSD based)
You would think Apple would easily be able to port over Quicktime to Linux and want to give it away in order to keep M$ from dominating yet another market.
I guess I am just not smart enough to figure out why you would not want to market to non-M$ers. I say give the player away! Make it up on QTpro for Linux like they do with the Win products.
The "staying power" of Quicktime? How is that a good thing? Just look at the "Staying power" of ms-dos.
Congrats to Apple for the success of their annoyware! Three cheers and all that.
QuickTime is a PERFECT example of something Apple got ***WAY RIGHT***
they treated it as multiplatform product, ignrored what the competition was doing, updated it frequently to accomodate new technology and changing hardware/software bases, didn't try to make a fortune off of it, and worked with their user/developer base to make sure they got what they needed to deploy it, and treated it as an "open standard" to a large degree
QT has the most stable and best rendering collection of COCDEC's of any of the video players, and for quality of presentation, QT 3D is still way ahead of the competition...
the number and variety of the CODEC's available for QT show a mature platform that can do just about anything possible with the hardware available
i'm associated with a web design company that has done over 200 commercial web sites, including record artists and film sites....
and 3 years ago everyone of the media companies we did business with always wanted QT, NOW, when we get new "Developer Guidelines", they almost always ask for Real or WindowsMedia...
we've continued to push QT, but just finished a film site that we were ordered to use WindowsMedia "or else"
at this rate, WindowsMedia and REAL will not be leaving much room for a competitive product in the next 18-36 months
Hey Apple, how about QT for LINUX???? can it save the day????
or is QT going to be another "stranded" product???
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
While QuickTime was certainly ahead of its time, and the format itself is not bad, the clients are simply horrible. Perhaps they were okay for the early 90s, but they never progressed; hell the current version of the Windows client still hasn't even implemented a full-screen mode...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Basically, quicktime allowed the birth of multimedia. The attitudes from the first posters were along the line of "say thank you, and don't forget to kick it as you walk on by"
Of course, if you really like MS Brand Duct Tape, then keep on kicking.
It is sort of like bitching at your grandfather:"I wish you were never born". Which is not exactly bright, on several levels.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
.. but criticising QuickTime is like dissing Christopher Columbus. Sure, he may have called everyone 'indians', and been a complete asshole, but we wouldn't be where we are today without him.
Same goes for QuickTime. Whine all you like about it not being on Unix, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it was the embassador of streaming video for the internet. To this day, without going into the nitty gritty and platform issues, I still prefer the quality of QuickTime over any other format, and will select a QuickTime stream given a choice from any other number of alternatives.
"Old man yells at systemd"
For those of you who know the difference between QT and Quicktime, take heed! There is hope! I've successfully played some Quicktime movies using WINE. Everybody knows the Crossover plugin from CodeWeavers. I've also had some very good results with the CodeWeavers version of Wine.
.avi files under my favourite OS!
Unfortunately some aspects of the UI don't work but the movies play nicely. I can't wait until TransGaming's WineX or stock Wine runs Quicktime movies as good as mplayer plays
Does anyone know exactly how crosspollination between these projects work? I would say that besides GNU and Linux, Wine has the potential to be the most useful piece of code ever created.
You are also confusing codecs or players with QuickTime. MPEG is a codec, Windows media has is wma codec and player...QuickTime is a Media Layer providing all the necessary tools to deal with hundreds of formats and just as many codecs supporting wide ranges of playback and presentation options not just limited to audio, video, graphics, vector graphics, VR...
I could got on, but instead you should go read up at on specifics here.
they've opened part of it, so far. the streaming server is open source.
a mi ng/
http://www.publicsource.apple.com/projects/stre
OK.
It has been 10 years since quicktime, most other codecs have been around for a while (MPEG, etc).
There are a lot of misc implementations of quicktime, mpeg, etc. Most are mediocre at best. Certainly none are of the quality I expect from Open Source software.
I mean even DVD support for Linux isn't that great (hi MPAA!).
So what is the problem? Why can't we get a stable Open Source project that handles video, supports multiple codes, and is Open Source?
Do I have to rely on the crossover plugin and the proprietary QuickTime on Linux? I hope not?
Kevin
happy bithday quicktime :)
Romanian Linux Help (#RoLinux, #LinuxRo -- undernet) http://marmotzel.net
Damn, where did that decade go. I remember the introduction and impact of Quicktime. Was going to be the standared, the best etc... Amazing the what perspective of time will do to an app that I am sure many take for granted. Bluetooth 10 yrs from now?
I am me...I think
"it was the first piece of software to envision the computer as something other than a desktop publishing tool and as the creative hub for digital entertainment."
:)
In 1991 I was watching 1/3-screen video with stereo sound on a Amiga CDTV.
The CDXL format wasn't compressed much (it used the HAM mode: 4000+ colors compressed into a 6bit image) but it played 8-16fps and supported stereo audio. A postage-stamp QuickTime video paled next to it.
Get your history right.
Yet another Mac history revision lesson, where the "only way" to do it was with a Mac and now it is "even better" using a Mac.
It seems to me that Sarnoff Labs (RCA) devloped a digital video system that would play back from CD-ROM around 1983, then sold it to Intel in the late 80s which was productized as DVI by around 1990. Subsequently, Microsoft and Apple trumpeted their respective file formats (Quicktime and AVI) but in reality both formats used essentially the same codecs.
If anyone remembers the San Francisco Canyon/Apple/Microsoft/Intel debacle, you'll know just how similar these technologies really are. The Sarnoff Labs technology is likely the progenitor, much the same way that Mosaic is the progenitor of all of the major web browsers.
goatse.cx
... and for that, I am thankful. It was quite a feat,back then, to show rendered 3D animation (even if it was postage stamp-sized) with a 33mHz computer and a single speed CDROM.
I don't know if I can support a standard that is responsible for bringing us another 'n sync video. Really, forget copy controls, just limit these media players from playing (or producing) crap like that and I will be happy. Now if Linux did not have the ability to play any boy band crap, think of how it would take off!
Perhaps Monkey-boy ballmer can star in there next video, sweat filled crap
Yes, unless you can figure out how the Sorenson codec works. Neither Apple nor Sorenson will release any information on it, and nobody has reverse-engineered it yet. Quicktime is an open format (there is already open-source software to read and write QT files), but almost all Quicktime files use the proprietary Sorenson codec.
Was Hypercard a video card or a programming language?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
10 years? Boy, that went quickly...
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Apple could easily build for linux but why should they, they have enough problems as it is. If you want quicktime on free Desktops, petition apple to build it and offer to pay $30 for a copy.
Goatex sounds great! I know I'll be needing a pack or two of those for the holidays!
I do have one question though, are these Goatex anal tampons better than the Malda brand ass panty pads? You can get them with wings or tabs...super absorbant!
Well since they are not of the "Quality you expect" why not code one yourself? And you asked what is the problem? Well the answer is closed codecs. How can you write a player for a format if it's just a bunch of ones and zero's?
"Quicktime did nothing that the Amiga didn't already do 5 years before and better. More Apple self-aggrandizing."
are there some good cited examples?
Hmm... back in 1991... we had the Amiga IFF formats for synchronised pictures, animation, and sound, and even the IFF format CDXL for full-motion video from CDs...
The Amiga invented "Multimedia", not apple, in fact, the Amiga IP portfolio included (IMO evil) patents on playing simultaneous audio and video from CDs, for example. Apple was a latecomer, but MUCH better at marketing.
For some reason, in the USA, the amiga was almost completely ignored, incredibly irritating given how far ahead it was at the time - in europe it was the most popular and common computer for about decade. Oh well.
Does anyone remember when the first BSOD happened? That would be a day worth remembering, the day it all went to heck.....
AFAIK the codec is patented, so even if someone RE's it, it's illegal to use without a license. The reason why there are no good open source video players is because there's big money in keeping all the codecs closed.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
the fun little changes in slashcode I think plus I have posted in the previous article
Closed Source
-- Multics
Check it out in, "How to Convert a MacOS X 10.1 Update into an Install CD"
``The amazing thing about Quicktime is that there was nothing like it before, and everything has been like it since,'' notes PBS commentator Robert X. Cringley. ``Look at the guts of Real Player or Windows Media Player, and you'll see structural copies of QuickTime.''
Aside from the overblown technological utopianism in this article that would make Theodore Roszak (The Cult of Information) physically ill, we have this man's opinion. Robert X. Cringley, self declared cyber evangelist telling us that QuickTime is the end-all, be-all of ALL multimedia formats. Aside from the fact that he's always prone to blow things out of proportion, Cringley has very little technical knowledge, let alone an understanding of software strucutre (or "guts" as he puts it). (Note he completely ignores that most features found in QuickTime today such as streaming capability and portal functionality were derived from RealMedia's software.) Oh yes, QuickTime has brought about a revolution in digital media! It brought democracy to the web! And nobody has ever duplicated it or surpassed it since! Nonsense.
This is all just foolishness and people need to calm down. It's a media format wrapper (not a codec like MPEG as most of these Slashfools are contending). That's all. QuickTime didn't start a revolution. It didn't change the world. And it certainly isn't the greatest thing in multimedia today. Similar technologies were being developed by a number of groups at the same time and we have equivalent if not better tools for producing and converging digital media today.
Why bother.
I mean, c'mon. How come we can run something as tightly tied into windows as Windows Media Player in wine with no problems, but we can't run QuickTime? It's mainly because Apple decided to design QT base don a non-standard toolkit, and make it's user interface a living hell. Not only that, but in windows it takes 3x as long to load as Windows media Player. I don't hate it as much as Real (Hello, bloatware / spyware!), but Apple really messed up awhile back, IMO.
I miss the old QuickTime installs that would put themselves on a Windows box and be a codec for other media players. (True, the Windows 3.1 insall was hell at first. Manual editing of the system.ini, etc...) What was wrong with following standards? Why do I need this bulky media player now to play Quicktime 3 and above content?
Quicktime definitly has not gotten better in the 10 years it has been out.
It required an expensive video editing system, that included a $10,000 professional video card called a HyperCard
Wasn't hypercard the popular freebie utility included with Macs back in the late 80's? Was the name later reused for a hardware device?
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
Do you post anything that isn't sixth-grade level sarcasm?
You seem like a reasonably intelligent guy (I haven't been around here long enough to understand why everyone disses you and Propaganda constantly... I use and really like your backgrounds!) but it seems to me you've got some serious issues if ALL YOU EVER POST are snide remarks. What's the point? I read through your posting history. I don't get it.
Am I missing something here? Did I just fall for a troll?
(anonymous since I feel like an idiot for even asking this)
Possibly, but the same thing was said about MP3. In fact, I think all the MPEG codecs are patented. Sometimes people can get around patents by using a different method of decoding, and sometimes the patents only refer to encoding. IIRC, Apple and Sorenson have both said they can't release information on the codec, because they have exclusive contracts with each other.
The reason why there are no good open source video players is because there's big money in keeping all the codecs closed.
Aviplay (Avifile) and MPlayer work fairly well for me. MPlayer can use FFmpeg, an open-source implementation of several codecs (including Microsoft's MPEG4 format, and a really old version of RealVideo - see ffmpeg.sf.net for details). But neither of these supports Sorenson.
Where is the money in keeping the codecs closed? I guess Apple probably makes money on the encoder, but do they get any money from the decoder? Does the QT player show ads or something? If they released infomation on how to decode Sorenson video, there wouldn't be a good open-source encoder for several years at least (and companies using an open-source encoder would probably still have to pay patent royalties to Apple/Sorenson), and an open-source decoder would just increase demand for Apple's encoder.
As has been pointed out, QuickTime is pretty much just a different shell on codecs made by someone else.
Where Apple really innovated is in how helpful their website is. I had thought that I just wanted the free version - they let me know I was wrong to think that way.
Real deserves some credit here too, but they give up too quickly. Only Apple takes the high road, giving me a chance to upgrade every time I log in. It's like Real just doesn't care about me once I've made the wrong choice.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
QuickTime is an API framework for passing data through converters. These converters are called codecs (from encode, decode.)
Sorensen is probably the highest quality video codec with good compression for QuickTime. But there are a dozen other free codecs, including the widely available H.263 codec.
QuickTime is available on Linux, it's only the Sorenson codec that is not.
Given these simple facts, why does the Linux community continue to bitch about the absense of QuickTime for linux? Where are the open-source codecs to replace Sorenson? Why isn't the community insisting that web authors use a more widely available codec than Sorenson?
Or, to invert the question, why aren't the few open-source codecs that _are_ being developed being developed as QuickTime codecs? Why can't I get OggVorbis as a QuickTime codec? If the open source world built codecs for QuickTime, they would be usable with a minimum of fuss on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux, which would have a huge impact on adoption. Plus, so much of the boilerplate work, like authoring and playback software, would already be done for them!
It's sad, the opportunity being wasted like this.
-pmb
I had a QuickTime movie of my rabbits, on my personal homepage in 1995 which, if you had the QT plugin installed, would start playing as soon as it calculated it could reliably play the whole movie without having to pause. The little control bar filled up with gray and then it started playing automatically... very cool.
Considering that the prototype of pro-quality streaming was QuickTime Conferencing in 1994, allowing n people each to stream video to n-1 friends, I think you've got your chronology turned around a bit.
And I don't know what you mean by "portal functionality" but if you mean what I think, that's pretty trivial :)
Well, that's kind of the point; it wasn't just a codec. At a time when everyone else was doing FLC animation (shudder) or straight-shot MPEGs, Apple envisioned a media format which was extensible and flexible. Its design played well with time. Basically the multimedia revolution has been another case of Apple being the skunkworks R&D department for the entire industry.
Apple is claiming soaring rates of QT adoption.
I think it is just because it is the only way to view the latest Star Wars and LOTR trailer. Personally that's the only reason I downloaded QT software.
I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people. - Jack Handey
About the only thing Quicktime was fast at was telling me I didn't have the right version.
On a windows platform they were better than REAL, but not WMV
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Oh how I yearn for the days of yore, when my Mac II cx had quicktime and could do multimedia while my friend's PCs didn't. Oh, how I bragged...
You can't take the sky from me...
It really is Apple's fault, to some degree-- the Sorenson codec (probably the most popular quicktime video codec) is patented, and any open-source implementation of it would be illegal.
Not to mention that even a closed-source implementation is currently not possible, since Sorenson is only licensing their codec to Apple through an exclusive deal. So unless Apple or Sorenson write a Linux version, there won't be one.
Here's a link that mentions it in regards to xanim, and another on ZDNet that states "Apple has never released a binary player for Linux or a binary module for the XAnim video and animation player, and it has no stated plans to do so. Moreover, the company won't allow open source programmers to make their own Sorenson-aware players."
So before you bash the hardworking folks who make linux do as much as it does, make sure you have your facts straight.
The term "slashfools" is flamebait. Please, use the proper terminology: "slashdorks"
Thank you.
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
Sir, this is a real nice classic first post!
I kneel before you.
Well, ADB was neat for its time, but wasn't it severely bandwidth limited? Google found articles that said it was 10kbps (thus making it possible to have 2400bps ABD modem... neat hack), meaning that it is/was usually only useful for keyboards and mice. Of course that's what it was designed for. However, saying USB is but a lousy ripoff sounds bit like an overstatement. :-)
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Converting a single three-minute music video from videotape to a digital video could literally take several days... It required an expensive video editing system, that included a $10,000 professional video card called a HyperCard, a Macintosh and a laser disc player.
Admittedly, I originally presumed Apple's graphical programming language (based on an index card metaphor) was hardware, but that was when I was in Jr. High. These guys could use some fact checking.
Also, it's complex coding, so 13 year old boys can't do it for fun in the morning while waiting for Mom to make more Kool-Aide.
You, and the idiots who moderated your spew up.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I would view Quicktime as more of what big software companies keep doing: using their market position to push through a proprietary document standard. Video ought to be encoded in open, non-proprietary formats, but thanks to Apple, Microsoft, and RealNetworks, almost all our on-line video content requires you to use proprietary software, and almost all our on-line video content will become inaccessible in a few years.
We shouldn't be grateful to Apple for this; to the contrary: we should hold Apple responsible and make sure this doesn't happen again in the future.
Celebrate the 10th with my IT gear, cheap and cool
gear here, please look
While other groundbreaking software has faded into irrelevance -- anybody remember VisiCalc? Mosaic? -- QuickTime has shown remarkable adaptability and staying power.
Mosaic lives on in Internet Explorer and Netscape, and all modern spreadsheets derive conspicuously from VisiCalc. Ms. Chmielewski's opus, in addition to being poorly researched, is as irrelevant as a losing ticket for yesterday's lottery. Let us hope that someday she either learns to do her homework, or at least take kickbacks from the companies whose press releases she regurgitates.
In older versions of the software, if you turned on Baloon Help and put the cursor over the QuickTime extension, the balloon would read:
"Time n. A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future."
if it weren't for my addiction to lotr and the like tralier trash, i could stop installing the silly thing (quicktime).
or perhaps someone can tell me how to prevent it from co-opting from within the brower every other media format under the sun, mp3s included?
it's getting quite annoying, but oh that video trash.
An open question:
My familiarity with this field is week, but I acknowledge the need to maintain an accurate history free from marketting hype. It was my understanding that the Amiga with the early VideoToaster cards was the first consumer-targetted machine with video editting capabilities, and that the capabilities of Video Toaster was well beyond anything QT could do for several version.
I couldn't find the exact dates on the Video Toaster inception, in my brief search, but I know the amiga was circa '85. Is it that the Toaster isn't considered a consumer-grade video editting tool, or that it is hardware as opposed to QT, or that it came out after 1991 or that the amiga is simply forgetting in a corner of modern computer history?
Slashnerds, slashbitches, slashmonkeys, slashidiots all also work well.
Some of these people need to pull their heads out of their asses and see that not everythign had to be "open" to be good. It's no Apples job to write a media player for *NIX, even though they basicly did with the Darwin implimentation, which could be ported (lazy slashdorks).
I had no idea quicktime was 10 years old.. my first experience with movies and such was some bizaar movie formats that I don't think exist anymore do to their craptacularness that I downloaded from BBS's using 2400bps modems.. even when the web revolution or whatever started, I didn't hear about quicktime until after I heard about real and a few other formats.. I wonder how long quicktime has worked under windows..
Never been a fan of it...the quicktime player sucks, is slow, and buggy. Wished trailers didnt appear only in Quicktime
VP3 is an open source QuickTime video codec that some people claim rivals Sorenson in quality (I haven't tried it myself).
Apple envisioned a media format which was maximally under their control, and at that they have succeeded. Quicktime's plug-in architecture was a further attempt by Apple to tie users to its software. Quicktime is a marketing and business construct, not a technical one.
Technically, there is little reason to put animation, MPEG video, audio, and other features all into the same viewer: the amount of content that usefully mixes multiple formats is negligible. And technically, there is every reason not to have "plug-ins": you want well-defined, standardized codecs, not a profusion of proprietary codecs.
I'm kind of glad to see Quicktime losing market share to alternatives. While the alternative are just as proprietary, they may show that Apple's gamble is not working in the long term. Maybe if Apple sees itself excluded from its own home turf by Microsoft, Apple will adopt open standards next time around.
hey've opened part of it, so far. the streaming server is open source.
Yup, and it runs on Linux, NT and MacOS (X).
Second, contrary to WMP and REAL it is completely free.
And with the MPEG4 codec you'll have the best streaming video solution on the market.
Ten years of QuickTime?
Great, how's about a browser plugin that supports scripting (javascript, anyone?) instead of the brain-dead, and completely useless, features it's had since its release?
The article refers to something called a "HyperCard," although HyperCard was a trademark of Apple's well before 1991. HyperCard, in many ways, explored the possible functions of the WWW, and helped people learn to program in HyperTalk. However the article says: It required an expensive video editing system, that included a $10,000 professional video card called a HyperCard, a Macintosh and a laser disc player. Well, Hypercard and Quicktime both kick lots of ass. That is all.
--hongpong.com
Crossover. Shut up.
I myself am wary to celbrate the anniversary of software that is wholly incompatible with anything causing numerous crashes while still delivering low-end bulky quality. why can't we all just be happy with MPEG-4?
PS - while reading this post, a trailer off quicktime.com just crashed my browser. point proven
Maybe it's just me and my friends, but QT has done nothing but cause us grief. Examples:
- QT install thrashes all kinds of browser associations.
- Start QT and the app freezes.
- Start QT and windows freezes.
- Install QT and have what little stability there is on windows destroyed.
Of six computers running windows in my home, QT will on work on one of them.
1. That isn't "most features" that is one feature (two if you rally consider "portal functionality" a feature).
2. QuickTime's streaming technology is drastically different from Real's; It uses some of the same codecs as non-streaming video and really helps blur the line between streaming and non-streaming video, making the different versions of the video much easier to manage. QuickTime also uses the RTSP standard.
3.QuickTime's streaming technology delivers at least 4x the clarity of the same video encoded with the Real codec at the same bitrate, so in any event you have to admit that QT streaming video runs circles around Real and WM
4. QuickTime Streaming Server is open source, so you can go look at the "guts" yourself and stop your reflexive Apple-bashing
Oh yes, QuickTime has brought about a revolution in digital media!
True; the sarcastic parts of your post seem to be more accurate.
And nobody has ever duplicated it or surpassed it since!
I think a large part of the article was about how many people have duplicated it. QT still ships with the best codecs, integrates more technologies, and lets content creators do more, so player notwithstanding it is still the best video technology.
It's a media format wrapper (not a codec like MPEG...
That is why it was such a revolutionary technology, although Apple does take a role in the development of some of QT's important codecs, the reason QT allowed multimedia to spread was that it allowed you to deal with codecs transparenttly, even today most people still just think they're dealing with QuickTime video whether it is compressed with the Video or Sorenson codecs, nor will they be aware if the audio is uncompressed, MP3, PureVoice, or QDesign, or even if the author switches codecs midstream (do that with your "equivalent if not better tools").
QuickTime didn't start a revolution. It didn't change the world.
Yeah, that multimedia thing never really caught on.
The author has a very valid point: QuickTime is one of the very few technologies that was responsible for the explosion of a technology and is still the premier technology for it. Don't try to tell me that there are better technologies for multimedia content delivery; real multimedia professionals are not using MPEG or Real, and WM is almost as big a joke as the current Real codec. Today, Cleaner and the Sorenson codec are the Photoshop of high quality web multimedia, sure there are GIMPs of web multimedia, but don't try to say they are better.
I know many /.ers can't use real QuickTime, and I really think Apple should create a Linux version, but lets not have a bunch of sour grapes.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Good points, but I don't have anything against sarcasm or black wit in general... I just don't understand why Bowie can't seem to post anything but.
Variety = spice of life, and all that.
It really is not Apple's fault that Linux developers have payed so little attention to developing Linux based solutions for Apple formats.
If the quality of responses here is representative of the Linux/Open Source community at large, and I hope it is not, then it would seem that they can't even comprehend what QuickTime is.
QuickTime is not a movie format, at least in the sense that a LOTR trailer is a movie. It is not a codec. It is not an application with a window. It is an architecture and a set of organizing principles to tie time-dependent data together that negotiates amongst an essentially unlimited number of codecs and data formats.
Now, it just so happens that one common use of QuickTime is LOTR trailers. It also just so happens that a lot of people use the Sorenson codec. It also just so happens that there's a somewhat ugly piece of software called the QuickTime Player 4 (but the previous version still works and is nicer). However, that doesn't define what QuickTime is. Maybe people are confused by the fact that the name QuickTime is used in conjunction with other words. Maybe people are confused by the fact that the word used in QuickTime is "movie," even though Apple goes to great lengths to explain that it is not necessarily a literal movie of image frames. Honestly, though, I would expect a community of hackers to be able to look under the hood.
For the people talking about MPEG4, well, it does begin to approach this level of universality, but that's because it is based on Quicktime, with Apple contributing heavily to the standard! MPEG4 is, to all extents and purposes, a new version of QuickTime with some codecs included.
There is nothing to stop you, me, or any Open Source developer from using the QuickTime architecture and file format to do anything from a movie player to controlling the geometry in a 3rd-person shooter to keeping track of thunderstorm data. However, in order to do that, it is necessary to appreciate the value of an overarching architecture rather than a tool to do a thing in a file format.
I wonder if this lack of what must be called "vision" is emblematic of Open Source. I certaintly hope it is not. However, it would be consistent with some of the problems with making a desktop acceptable to the consumer.
One doesn't need to integrate software to the point of stupidity as does Microsoft. However, to achieve synchronicity in a system of pieces, it is even more important to have architectures and organizing principles on the order of QuickTime.
I can produce an image file on the Macintosh and write drivers for QuickTime and be sure that any reasonably well written image-processing program on the Macintosh will be able to use it automatically without my having to do anything else, and that's just the beginning. Doesn't anyone think this kind of capability would be useful on an open operating system?
its ok to defend a murdering kidnapping slime ball
asshole, but dont you fucking mispelle 'ambassador' you self
righteous redneck twit!
It's not the patent that's the issue-- it's Apple and Sorenson's refusal to allow 3rd-party open-source OR proprietary software using the Sorenson codec to be built. Check out the links in my first post.
/. great. Cheers!
MPEG is patented, yes, but the patent holders have most definitely allowed other people to produce their own proprietary implementations of the MPEG codecs. Additionally, they seem to be very lenient on open-source MPEG implementations. (I don't know if this means open-source versions are legit, or just ignored, though)
And finally, doesn't anonymous name-calling make you feel especially good about yourself? It's folks like you that make
So, people don't write non-Sorenson codecs for QuickTime under Linux because they wouldn't be as good as Sorenson. Of course, they do write non-Sorenson codecs all the time, just not for QuickTime under Linux.
So QuickTime is bad because it can use the Sorenson codec which is better than the codecs you can use with or without QuickTime. Writing a codec without QuickTime is good, but writing a coded with QuickTime is bad, because QuickTime is bad. So if you write a codec, make sure to write it without QuickTime, because otherwise you'd be bad. Of course, you don't get any advantages from QuickTime, but that's a small price to pay for purity. Also, because you don't use QuickTime, then that means it doesn't exist for Linux.
Of course, the "you" in the preceding paragraph does not mean you personally. I'm also not questioning your description of the logic; it's just a kind of logic I don't see often outside the White House and old Beavis and Butthead reruns.
Uhh ... no. Possibly the best video solution I have seen is mplayer using an mga_vid kernel module.
My son, a winmx junkie, and source of many of my vids, go hashmaster, boots Linux and uses mplayer on the stuff that won't work anywhere else and he has a shitload of windows players. He also uses it on clips with bad sound sync as you can move that around in mplayer.
CC
At first, Quicktime was cool. Yet in the past two years, Quicktime has gone downhill.
Quicktime 1.0 - Good
Quicktime 2.0 - Better
Quicktime 3.0 - At it's prime
After 3.0, it went downhill. The latest version is designed to somewhat imitate the "Aqua" feel, yet the problem with the look enhancement is that it makes it quite slow, even on my Celeron 600.
I usually shrug if I see a Quicktime video for downloading as RealPlayer and Windows Media (which are both plagued with problems, but face it, they're better) is much better.
It is sort of sad to see such a decent format go into the rut that it is in now.
QT doesn't have a codec, precisely. It's a framework. The QT format allows for multiple codecs.
For example, QT for the Mac comes standard with the following codecs for video:
You can also install your own codecs. I seem to have:
There are a comparable array of audio codecs.
Most of the stuff you see on the web these days is Sorenson. But content creators usually don't work in Sorenson; they work in the higher-quality codecs. I'm leaning towards On2VP3 these days, although in the past I was pretty much a straight-up Indeo man.
It also allows you to encode without using a codec, i.e. raw data & Big Files. This is what the really serious editors with the Really Big Drives (Avid and so on) use.
BTW, the DivX ;-) player for the Mac uses a QuickTime framework, and can play the DivX inside QT player.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Amiga was right up there with Video Toaster (Newtek's product) but Avid rule here. These guys were recording direct to their Macs right in the TV studio - straight out of the cameras!
That was classic intercourse!
first of all there is no standard video mode-setting software in linux.
/dev entries. none of that.
you have to ask your user to edit their XF86config and add resolutions to the modeline,
but alot of times it wont work. ok then theres svgalib? ggi? fbdev? how many kernels compile w fbdev support? how many boards does fbdev support? svgalib is dead!
in DOS-vga, 320x200x256 was there no matter what.
in linux, you have no way to do this. SDL tries, but since its dependent on shit like X, it fails.
in DOS, you were the only thing running. the kernel was not going to pop up and
make your shit all jerky unpredictably. dos wouldnt try to bring up your network card and check your mail periodically thus making your video skip. you , the poor user, wouldnt have to try to figure out which config file to edit to stop your machine from doing this. there were no external tasks to worry about. there was no
'root user' bullshit to worry about. you didnt have to ask your users to understand
root vs user vs all this vs setting chmod on their
ok, in DOS you had to do your own memory management, or else buy a
loader like the DOSGW, or if you were on a big city BBS maybe a crappy
free one that was out there.
in linux you can use as much ram as you want.
trouble is in linux it can get swapped out to disk,
or cached or buffered or god knows what introducing all sorts
of unpredictable bullshit into your programming experience.
in DOS, there were actual working code profilers, for like 150 bucks.
in linux there is gprof, which sucks total ass.
nice interface, gnu-shitheads. thank you for being smelly
pretentious assholes.
it is a fascinating study in the problems of software reuse.
theoretically all these libraries and OS layers are supposed to make
th programmers job easier because she doesnt have to
mess with the hardware details in her programming.
in actuality, in the area of video game accessible video modes, sound, etc, these libraries are buggy bloatware
crashy bullshit that ask the user to fiddle with obscure and stupidly designed config file formats,
that introduce horrible unpredictabilities into the entire
code running process, and design decisions 'made for you' by ignorant
elitist asshole open source bigot-queens like torvalds, cox, the window manager people,
the X people, etc. i remember being on irc when some
enlightenment sound daemon dipshit at redhat was telling people
there didnt need to be a way to have two sounds play at once.
can you say lazy stupid fucking anti-customer asshole?
he didnt even want to listen to anyone, just sit there on his high horse
and act like god. truly truly truly truly pathetic.
of course, in DOS you had to free all your memory properly and not dereference things or your OS/compiler would crash and youd have to reboot.
now linux allows programmers that dont even understand what malloc and strdup do to
program memory leaks all over the place, thus opening up the possiblity
of future illegal memory references that crash the program, or if you leave the program open,
eventually suck up the entire system resources.
The QT Player bugs you to buy the full version of the player, so it's basically nagware. It's also the only player that can playback the files, so of course it has some potential for Apple, even if 90+% of the users never buy the full player (besides, the encoder sales are probably better for them anyway, and market share determines demand for encoders in most, though not all, cases).
The fact that the QT player is as native to the Mac OS as the Windows Media Player is to the Windows OS, and that the music, video, and publishing people tend to gravitate towards the Mac also helps them with mind share in the areas that the player's formats would be most often used.
Watching the OLD Quicktime Demos at Saturday nights party reminded me just how long lasting the file format and architecture has been.
After all this was content created circa 1991/1992 and was being played back with QT5 !
Admittedly there was a little scrabbling to find some pretty old codecs that have long since dropped from view - but once found they worked fine on Saturday !
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
The Windows Quicktime client is, and always has been, a buggy mess. It loves nothing more than to complain about missing updates. Don't get me started on the bloated interface. It's about as bad as Windows Media Player 7.
1- Who told anyone they couldn't write their own movie-player? Once the architecture is installed, any app on your system has access to that architecture. I have had multiple movie players on my system, including Peter's Player that would load a whole movie into memory to ensure no skipping back on my slower proccessors and hard drives. This includes Sorrensen and any other codec you can get for Quicktime. Once it is installed, it is available to all applications.
2- Quicktime for Java is available from the regular quicktime installer. Go install the thing and write a movie player on Linux., or for your other java-enabled portables. I don't know what you're complaining about!
3- Quicktime is the basis of the next mpeg standard precicely because it is widely available and a great architecture for combining all kinds of different media. It is robust and scalable (very tiny streams all the way to HDTV). This is not a closed platform, and will only become more open when mpeg4 is finalized. Sorrensen is licensed, but there are just as many other small-compression formats you can get for free that plug-in to the QT architecture just as well.
4- I use different operating systems for different things. Unix has traditionally been great for server things, Macs for graphics and multimedia, and Windows has been good for keeping Tech Support staff, Security Experts and Lawyers gainfully employed. I am so happy under MacOS X to have a Unix server AND Quicktime AND a decent GUI. I'm not saying it's better for anybody else, but I really like it. If I didn't like it, or I wanted to continue to use other OSes as well, or thought Apple charged too much for hardware, I wouldn't be running it-- but I also wouldn't be complaining that they should give it all away for free.
-The Minister of Quicktime
Please let us know who put money on the table to licence Sorenson and got turned down.
(Most people who have this hypothosis are basing on developer relations e-mails where apple and Sorenson are pointing at each other. What they are trying to do is brush off you ghetto mofos because they know you can't afford it.)
PCs were doing multimedia with attached laser
disks for ten years before QuickTime. Nice try.
Wow. I remember hypercard. We learned how to use it in gradeschool (6th grade). I think I was the only person in my class who actually figured out how to program with it instead of just drawing stupid animations (stick figures shooting each other was only fun for so long...). I made some sort of dice rolling program. I think that was something like 7 or 8 years ago. I still have the source code too. Yikes. Time goes by fast.
-jfedor
What many folks are unaware since they did not have the pleasure of working at NeXT and then later Apple is that Apple still has a ways to go with maturing QuickTime and merging some cool NeXTTime stuff- some of which is already in MacOSX since its how it got to port it so readily in the first place.
What will be a change for sure is if Steve finally goes for it and lets the Cocoa/Objective-C version of QuickTime with all the NeXTTime stuff merged into it instead of continuing using just the Carbon stuff.
In other words, the only people who could get it done, for any amount of money, are people who, with MacOS X, are in direct competition with Linux.
Seriously, if it was a matter of money, don't you think Microsoft would have a version of it by now?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
What about QuickTime Sprites? Are they still around?
Thank you for the compliment.
This response was, yes, meant to be sarcastic. Brian Eno is one of those guys who people in the music industry seem to attribute everything to. First he invented synth music. Then he invented electronica. Then he invented synthesized drums. On and on and on, like a snowball of stupidity. The guy is basically responsible for nothing. Synth music is over a hundred years old. Electronica was around in the late 1930s. Synthesized drums were around in the 1950s. Brian Eno popped up in the mid '70s, and took credit for the work of other obscure musicians and inventors..
I felt it was worthy of pointing this out, because to this day people still slap his name on news articles like he's some sort of authority. He isn't. Brian Eno's opinion on X, whatever X is, matters about as much as asking the local assistant pastry chef at a bakery about subatomic physics.
.
Bowie J. Poag
Take a look at the Dark Age of Camelot from Mythic Entertainment. It came out on in Mid October. This is an awesome new game that is the logical decendant of Muds, EverQuest and other MMORPG's. It was the best selling game for a few weeks in October before the major software retailers sold out of the first run. Its kind of a first person shooter, but its based on human mythology rather than some dorky made up fantasy world like Ultima Online, Asherons Call and Everquest. You can become a Knight, Archer, Healer or Majic user in Albion (England, or Camelot after Arthur died), Midgard (the Norsman mythical land) or Hybernia (Celtic lands, perhaps ireland. You cant kill anyone that is from your realm, but you can fight with the people from other realms if you go to a central area called the Frontier. Each Realm has Forts and guards in the Frontier and it takes the coordinated efforts of hundreds of people to take another Realms fort. There are also "Relics" at certain forts which you can take if you have a huge group of coordinated fighters. For example, Excallebers scabord or Thors hammer. As of Dec 1, 2001 no one on any server has taken a relic. This game has legs... There are plans for a European server that will have 4 more Realms... rumor says it will be Germania, Italia(post roman), Frank (post Charlemane) and Spanish. Others have speculated that additional zones will include the Middle east (Egypt, summaria, Ottoman turks and perhaps Jews), Asia (Japanese Samaris, Chinese, Siam and perhaps Phillipinos) and South America (myan, aztec, Apache and Polynisians.) This Game is terrific for kids because unlike some of the violent and goofy Doom clones out there, this game will teach you about history, mythology, Theology, and perhaps even community, cooperation and the values of other cultures. There are hundreds of DAoC web sites... some of them are very sophisticaed... My favorite is http://camelot.stratics.com/ The game only costs $29 at best buy and $10 a month with your first month for free. Come to Valhalla in your own time! - Elton John WinterBear TrueHeart Guild: Dragonfist Knights and Knights of no Remorse lvl 25 Healer, Midgard Palamines Server lvl 10 Friar, Albion Bedever Server lvl 9 Minstrel Hybernia Merlin Server
No way in hell would Microsoft pay a per-unit royalty to Apple. Plus NIH. Plus their codecs are competitive.
Money solves all problems. Either get a viable desktop software market going on Linux or pay off the guys with the technology. End of story.
quicktime for windows is a pos
Well, sure, but he WAS a founding member of Roxy Music, the greatest band ever. That excuses a lot of faults in my book.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
Hypercard got me into computer science.
I wish that Apple did keep this up to date. It is a great tool for kids to play around with.
I made some crazy stuff with hypercard back in the day. I made a fairly massive role playing game with multiple characters with hypercard... which sadly crashes now that hypercard is so out of date.
People start out by making animations with some sounds, they then learn to make some of it interactive, and so on.
All the little games I made with Hypercard I could have never done with a real language like C or Java... even the learning languages like Turing or Pascal would still have been too much work for my short attention span.
I found this great quote two days ago (thank you fortune()!).
Guess "Windows Media" sells ...
It's sad, I can play Real and Windows Media under Linux, but can't get Quicktime 5 trailers to work. (Note the '5' - they changed the codec.)
The major problem that quicktime solved was "how do you represent time streams in an indpendent manner." Reading through the QuickTime 1.0 docs was pretty amazing; you see lots of API calls about codecs, but most of it (or at least most of it for me) was about TimeBases, TimeBase conversion, TimeBase representations, etc.
The reason that QuickTime was chosen for MPEG-4 and will survive into the future, is that QuickTime at its core models time, not audio, video, or other media.
Just "quick"-scanned this thread and saw only one other Amigan post. This was back in the time of Jerry Fallwell and the "Moral Majority". The joke bumper sticker read "The Moral Majority is Neither". The corresponding dig from the Amigans for QT was that QT was neither quick, nor on-time, since it did a herky-jerky postage stamp sized animation without the dominatrix of a time code or control track to keep things in synchronized. Contrast with the Amiga architecture at the time which was keying events to the vertical blanking interval of either 30fps or an external signal, putting 4096 colors up in HAM mode at a respectable 320x200 or 320x400 interlaced or genlocking and overlaying a video image. I think I'd rather celebrate the birth of Lorraine and the 20th anniversary of her showing at the '84 Comdex a few years from now.
You are confusing APIs and streaming/archival formats. I don't care what kind of formats you or Apple use for authoring or in the privacy of your own home.
What I care about is the fact that huge amounts of video data of public interest are being stored in a proprietary format that only Apple has the keys to.
Unless you have pointers to a project working on a cross-platform multimedia architecture then methinks you haven't the foggiest.
See, unlike you, I actually have developed video software. I don't want Apple's "architecture". In fact, dealing with Quicktime has been one of the most problematic issues when developing cross-platform solutions. I want a reasonably high quality, publically documented interchange and streaming format that I can use together with libraries and viewers of my choosing. And I don't want a couple of companies to hold the keys to media content.
Controlling video content is a lucrative business and Apple's business strategy has been deliberate. But there is no reason that the rest of the world should go for that. Video content is too important to leave it at the whims of a couple of big software companies with uncertain futures.
As a "digital media specialist", I think you should think a little further than just the next web site.
and perhaps some will this i'm childish.
but when i go to mtv.com, i expect to see music videos... on ANY computer. it seems that they are using realmedia because of corporate alliances.
fuck that.
they should be creating content for everone, not a select few who choose to buy/use certain software.
the same holds true to msnbc and almost all nbc affiliates. i can't look at video feed because... gee-whiz... nbc is in bed with microsoft.
sorry guys - i have mac os x. i expect to be supported. if you expect to be supported as well, take a page from cnn.com's playbook. that's about the only site i can think of that's both large, and (to a good extent) platform-independent.
>>1) the normal CODEC's last I saw were proprietary and covered by APPLE intellectual property protection.
Some of them are, some of them aren't, is MPEG owned by Apple? I think not. Quicktime is a Multimedia Framwork that uses codec plugins. Applications developers can use the framework to access these plugins for video editing, compression, and playback. Quicktime IS NOT A PLAYER, and DOES NOT HAVE A SET "APPLE" CODEC. It is an archectecture.
>>2) if APPLE wanted *everyone* to use their strange and warped view of a multi media stream, they'd have opened the source -- better yet given away a good sample implementation with a certification service to assure everyone was on the same page.
See above, you are welcome to develop the next great codec and open source it. Quicktime is just the API that lets developers access your codec on the mac and windows.