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.

Comments

Why do I feel like...

[tswinzig]

...there won't be a gleeful response from the Linux crowd here?

Re:Why do I feel like...

[Johnny O]

Exactly. I was thinking - I could give a $#!T. There is no Linux player, what is there to celebrate?!?!?

Re:Why do I feel like...

[cendence]

I wonder how one could make an mpeg or avi out of the quicktime movies.

It annoys me very much everytime i want to download a movie, seeing it is quicktime. Quicktime(player) is a bit bloated IMO and besides that i really hate the curved interface, no real fullscreen and so on :)
And yes, i don't like media which can't be displayed under linux that much :)

Some friends of mine and myself had the idea to somehow convert the mov (preferably under linux), using transcode/wine/whatever, capturing the data and recompressing it in mpeg/whatever.
(and making it available to our LAN via fileserver or some kind of _nice_ video streaming)

If i remember correctly, some time ago i read about someone who was able to see quicktime mov's in linux using transcode/wine on the netscape qt plugins.

Now we just have to capture the data, but how?

[be careful: just an (bad) idea]
I wonder if it would be rational and working to capture a specific rectangle where the video is displayed, doing a single-picture-capture whenever something changes (which should happen 25 times a second or so...).

I wouldn't even mind if the resulting recompressed mpeg would be 5 times bigger, space doesn't matter to me as long as the clip is not too long. (ever seen a dvdrip in quicktime? no? me neither).

Any Ideas?
Or does there maybe even exist an implementation this?

Re:Why do I feel like...

[Sunda666]

I think QuickTime4Linux (from heroine virtual, the dudes behind Xmovie) can play quicktime (at least some kind of quicktime, it seems have more than one...)

check:

http://www.heroinewarrior.com/index.php3

Re:Why do I feel like...

[Uberminky]

Quicktime(player) is a bit bloated IMO

[snip]

I wouldn't even mind if the resulting recompressed mpeg would be 5 times bigger, space doesn't matter to me

Ummmm.... yeah....

(I wonder how much memory it takes just to use X on your system.)

Re:Why do I feel like...

[Doppler00]

Or Windows users. I used to have Quicktime player installed on my computer, but it always kept asking you to upgrade. The interface didn't make any sense on windows either. They ported over the player interface, but hen you also had a weird floating menu bar window (because on the mac, the menu bar is always on top).

Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[skrowl]

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.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[4444444]

Windows Media and other MPEG4 based solutions have already killed them
Isn't MPEG4 based on quicktime?
Plus I would hardly put Windows Media in the same catagory as Quick time

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[felipeal]

I agree with you about Quicktime.
The only think that keeps it alive is their deal to get the movie trailers at their site. I don't know how they got that (was Apple secretly adquired by the AOL/WB?), but I wish they didn't have that exclusive right (the trailers should be available on more formats).

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Destoo]

There was a time when I just wished MS ripped QT's codec and put it in their media player.

I mean.. For a player, all you need is a play button and a stop button.
We do not need animated menus or sweet shading. Just a simple old box.

Guis.. There should be an option to "turn all the options off".
Base skin should be no skin. Naked.
Just like a pen does not need some purty little bunnies on it to write effectively.

Still. Happy 10th', QT. You've put on some weight lately, but fortunately I still have an older version on my Lodoss War cds.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

>

The fact that MPEG-4 is a cheap hack based on quicktime is lost on you, isn'y it? Heck, considering that Quicktime is designed to work with so many Codecs, I'm sure there is already a DiVX ;) work-alike, or clone, or at very least, there is one being made.

Don't forget that you can have a quicktime file with a DiVX ;) movie, with two language tracks, and optional subtitles. If you want an ideal format for "Near DVD Quality," don't forget the extra features! (Also, don't forget that there are lots of Quicktime Codecs with much more than DVD quality, if you don't mind a fe MB/sec...)

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Graff]

Isn't MPEG4 based on quicktime?

MPEG-4 is based on a file format championed by Apple and used in Quicktime. The problem is that the MPEG-4 standard is not yet complete. What WiMP (Windows Media Player) and the others are using is a corrupted form of the incomplete standard. It's the usual embrace-and-extend attack from Microsoft: adopt a standard and then modify it so that it becomes so corrupted and muddled that people have to use your version to do anything.

Once again we see that Microsoft has managed to grab market share through bundling, while the better product doesn't get as much exposure. Quicktime is such a polished product that supports some of the best compression algorithms for video out there, it's a shame that it is not used more.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[MagnusDredd]

DivX is simply a codec. It is not a media layer. Codecs can be added and removed from applications and media layers. Example: I watch DivX movies under Quicktime using a file conatining the codec (although there are a few differing bastardised versions of MPEG4, generally the 3ivx, 4ivx, and 5ivx codecs I have installed here handle most formats.

Furthermore even with windows if you want support for many of these codecs you still have to go out and hunt down the codec. One of the most annoying things with avi files is the you never know what format they are in. The avi format actually can use as many as 15 separate formats (codecs) which are incompatable with each other.

What I have yet to see anywhere else is a single multimedia layer comprising MIDI synth, picture, video, panoramas, etc.

/rant/
It really is not Apple's fault that Linux developers have payed so little attention to developing Linux based solutions for Apple formats. I finbd it amazing how much of the horrible proprietary windows junk finds it's way to my linux/BSD boxen and how poor support is for Apple things. And then the galling thing is that Apple takes the blame for it here. One example was a suggestion that Apple by using their own filesystem for the iPod was horrible and proprietary and they should have used Fat 32. (reality check here) Apple should ditch their own file format and use Microsofts? kidding, right?

Microsft calls GPL evil, and Apple hires OSS developers and gives source code for core of their _current OS_ away and some of you guys still bash Apple for M$... go figure...
/rant/

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Junks Jerzey]

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.

You completely missed the point. Think back to the state of movie playing on desktop hardware in 1991. Hint: There wasn't one. Quicktime was the first attempt to bring movie playing to personal computers. This was years before the huge full-motion-video multimedia explosion that started in late 1993.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[vsync64]

It really is not Apple's fault that Linux developers have payed so little attention to developing Linux based solutions for Apple formats. I finbd it amazing how much of the horrible proprietary windows junk finds it's way to my linux/BSD boxen and how poor support is for Apple things. And then the galling thing is that Apple takes the blame for it here.

Um. The Sorenson codec, currently the most popular for .mov, is patented. Any player solution for Linux or any non-licensed platform would be illegal.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Jeffrey Baker]

Quicktime is a system. The system manages codecs, input, output, and time domain synchronization. Sorenson is a codec for Quicktime. Quicktime is not based on Sorenson.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[MrDolby]

Yeah I would like to see the trailers in other formats, but at least they aren't exclusively in Real format. Now that would totally suck.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[-douggy]

Start-run-mplayer2

OK it is version 6.4 i think but no skins there

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Another MacHack]

MPEG is heavily patented too, they just don't seem to care about free software implementations much. In ISO-land, "open" means "publicly documented", not "everybody can use it for no fee".

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Junks Jerzey]

Sigh. No. Go back in time to 1991. Notice those "amiga" computers? Get one, either a CDTV, or an A500 with an A570. Watch Neil armstrong walk on the moon, spooled from CDROM..

Sorry, no. That was a novelty for hardware that almost no one owned (even Amiga owners!). It had no effect whatsoever on getting movie playing to be a desktop standard.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[gig]

No, no, no ... you guys are talking about this like it's a QuickTime vs Real vs MS Media Player war, like the only issue is the media player clients, or streaming video. The video has to exist on the computer in the first place before you can convert it to Real or MS formats and stream it. What you're taking for granted is that this stuff even exists on computers at all. That's what the 10 year anniversary of QuickTime is about. It's the UNIX of multimedia. Saying that QuickTime is no good because more people watch streaming video in Real or MS than in QuickTime Player is like saying whether ASCII or XML is good or not depends on which text editor you use. The reason there are multiple text editors in the first place is because we have these text formats that are easily interoperable, so much so that we take them for granted. That's what QuickTime did for video and multimedia.

The video you're watching in RealPlayer was at one point a QuickTime file ... the authors are using QuickTime, the editors are using QuickTime. In other words, there's a workflow that starts in a camera and ends in your RealPlayer or MS Media Player and QuickTime was in the middle somewhere. In a sense, RealPlayer and MS Media Player are QuickTime players, but you convert the QuickTime to Real or MS formats. The fact that all this stuff has a long, long history and is well-integrated into the entire Mac platform is why Apple's iMovie and iDVD are years ahead of everyone else in consumer DV editing and DVD creation (really, the only true consumer entries, not even requiring any hardware or software installation beyond plugging in an iMac). Working with these different rich media types is just much older news on the Mac. The maturity benefits the user like the maturity of Apache over IIS benefits the server user. Apache and QuickTime are so much better than IIS and Windows Media that serving Web pages or working with rich media is taken for granted and many people don't actually ask themselves whether Microsoft's tools just aren't cutting it in the real world, to the level that other tools are.

QuickTime is also much more than just streaming video or Sorenson streams. It handles all kinds of media, and a QuickTime movie is actually a wrapper for multiple media tracks. So you can easily add a MIDI soundtrack (just by cutting and pasting) to a video presentation, playing the lightweight music file through the built-in software synth that supports DownLoadable Sounds (DLS). Then you can layer on a Flash movie for an interface, and a spoken narrative in MP3. You can add transitions that are built-into QuickTime itself. All of these tracks exist within the single wrapper file.

Really, you can't overstate how important QuickTime has been and is now to any kind of computer multimedia.

Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows effort was even found in court to contain stolen QuickTime code. The didn't just copy the architecture, they also used Apple code. It's not surprising, but it's just symbolic of how much more of a leader Apple has been on this front.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Alan Partridge]

"I'm sure there is already a DiVX ;) work-alike" exactly right. In fact, there are TWO projects doing this DIVX and 3IVX. Sadly, they're both substantially inferior to pre-existing QT codecs including Sorenson Video 3.1, Zygo Video and On2 Vp3. I am absolutely stunned at the level of QT ignorance being displayed in these comments. Saying that QT is derivative is like saying Daimler Benz got all their ideas from Hyundai.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[McSpew]

When Apple licensed the Sorenson codec, didn't they license it under an agreement that forbade its use with other media players? IOW, when they licensed Sorenson, didn't they do so with the specific intention of preventing Windows Media Player and other apps from playing Quicktime movies encoded using the Sorenson codec?

If so, that's hardly open, by even the most generous definitions of open.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Hecubas]

Thank you for the background. It's sort of the analogy of Photoshop PSD format to JPEG. Having worked on only the backend of web development, I was unaware of how Quicktime related to all other video formats.

However, most Joe Webusers out there think Quicktime is a pain in the arse because they have to download a pesky plugin in order to get the dang movie to play.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Junks Jerzey]

Movie playing WAS a desktop standard, for them.

Silly troll. I've used Amigas. Great machines. Far too underpowered to really decode movies on stock hardware, though. You could hardly call the Amiga a movie-playing machine.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Drizzit]

Again Quicktime is not a file format or a compression scheme it is a framework for time based media. The anlogy I like is Quicktime is a bowl in to which you can put things, like a text file that contains the closed captioning, an MP3 audio file and a High Defintion Video complete and ready to broadcast. Quicktime is then responsible for making everything play together. Quicktime is an API and media layer that controls well media, its a set of librarys and an enviroment in which you can build media objects and control those objects. Practically entire Apps can be built using quicktime.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[Drizzit]

This is the Sys requirments for Adobe After Effects 5.5

Windows
Intel® Pentium® II, III, or 4 (multiprocessor recommended)
Microsoft® Windows® 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000, or Windows XP

128 MB of RAM installed (256 MB or more recommended)
120 MB of available hard-disk space for installation (500 MB or larger hard disk or disk array recommended for ongoing work)
CD-ROM drive
24-bit color display adapter
Apple QuickTime(TM) 5.0 software (recommended)
Microsoft DirectX 8.0a software (recommended)

As it has been said when it comes to video production Quicktime is everywhere.

Re:Quicktime and Real Audio are already dead.

[raynet]

Furthermore even with windows if you want support for many of these codecs you still have to go out and hunt down the codec. One of the most annoying things with avi files is the you never know what format they are in. The avi format actually can use as many as 15 separate formats (codecs) which are incompatable with each other.

Also a Quicktime video (mov) can be encoded with any number of codecs and there is no way to know this while you download the file. Once it's in the player you can go to Get Info and see the codec of audio/video streams. Unfortunately the Windows Mediaplayer doesn't do this anymore, the old version used to print the name of the missing codec to screen.

History

[jeriqo]

Here is an history of QuickTime by a group of QuickTime developers, "Friends of Time" :

http://www.friendsoftime.org/

-J

I remember...

[Apreche]

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.

what is adb?

[usrlocalbinladen]

"the 15th anniversary of adb?"

what is adb?

Re:what is adb?

[superlime]

ADB is the Apple Desktop Bus.. Apple's method for connecting mice/keyboards/etc to the computer.

Kinda silly 15th anniv since they've basically killed it off on the newer models (stranding people who have ADB tablets and dongles. :P

Re:what is adb?

[phillymjs]

ADB stands for Apple Desktop Bus. USB is little more than Intel's modern copy of ADB. ADB was used on Macs from the Macintosh SE, up to and including the very first blue & white G3 machines, and also on some NeXT computers. It was used to mostly hook up input devices, such as keyboards, mice, joysticks, graphics tablets, etc. Just like USB, ADB let you daisy-chain peripherals together-- the mouse plugged into a port on the keyboard, so you didn't need a mile-long mouse cord that stretched to the back of the computer. ADB also provided advantages like being able to power up the computer from the keyboard, which also allowed 'smart' power strips that could sense when the machine became unresponsive and initiate a 'three-finger-salute' all by itself-- great for machines running unattended. I have two such power strips at home, one on my main Mac, and one on my Mac server that does all my mail and routing and runs the house.

~Philly

Re:what is adb?

[Graff]

Apple Desktop Bus. It's a bus-connect technology used to connect devices to computers, such as mice, keyboards, etc. It abstracted the device from the port so all a manufacturer needed to do was use some bridging electronics and a software driver to get a device connected. It preceded USB by a number of years and it was only in use by Apple as far as I know. As a technology it was far ahead of its time. Although it didn't allow hot-swapping, it did allow you to daisy-chain a ton of devices off of one ADB port. I know that there were security "dongles" to protect your computer from being accessed, modems, trackpads, joysticks, mice, and tons of other cool electronics that were available to it.

Re:what is adb?

[Gogo Dodo]

The ADB port was also available on the Apple IIgs. I remember plugging in my IIgs' keyboard into my Mac IIci because I liked the smaller size of the IIgs' keyboard.

Re:what is adb?

[Spruitje]

Apple Desktop Bus. That thing that the keyboard and mouse (and possibly other things like modems and what not) used to be plugged into. It disappeard about the time the iMac first showed up.


When they switched to a new stanxdard which was based on ADB called USB.
Not many people know that the USB protocol is based on the ADB protocol.
And before Apple started to use USB, USB was better know as "unused Serial Bus'.
Apple was the first to really use it.

Re:what is adb?

[pi radians]

Actually, the ADB did allow for hot-swapping, and it still does (on my G3 300, the last of the ADB computers). The problem was with one line of computers (the SE 30s I think) was if you unplugged or plugged in when the computer was on and the starts were just right (so actually, just by chance) you'd fry your motherboard.

Back then it really wasn't a selling point anyway so it was no biggy just to neglect the fact that it was hot-swappable.

Re:what is adb?

[jasonbw]

Griffen tech.'s iMate. I've got one if anyones interested.

Re:what is adb?

[Graff]

Although you could swap out stuff on the ADB bus when the computer was on, it was dangerous with all Macs. The ADB bus would re-negotiate the device on the fly and the chances were that the device would work just fine, however the problem was that voltage transients could occur if you did this. There was always the remote chance that you would plug in a device, get a large drain at the start, and fry the ADB controller. I've actually seen someone do it on a PowerMac 9500. He had to get an add-in ADB board in order to regain that functionality. Apple had all sorts of warnings and cautions about hot-swapping but I know that didn't stop people from doing it anyways.

Re:what is adb?

[sarhjinian]

however the problem was that voltage transients could occur if you did this.

Well no. Apple put in safeguards against this in every Mac from either the II (or IIx, or IIcx, not sure) onwards. You can yank and hot-plug ADB devices with impunity on any modern Mac. If you did manage to torch a 9500, then you did something very nasty -- speaking which, I don't think that anyone ever made PCI ADB boards. You could go PCI->USB->ADB with something like Griffin's USB>ADB adapter, though

Some ADB device drivers (Gravis Gamepad, ahem, ahem) had issues with this sort of thing, but generally it works as well or better than Windows' implementation of hot-plug via USB.

Hey, anyone remember Access.bus?

The Internet

[eclip5e]

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.

Re:The Internet

[FortKnox]

And "Online Games" were "BBS Doors". You played a game for like 30 moves, then had to wait until tomorrow to see what everyone else did (and if anyone else attacked you). And you played those games while downloading the newest version of Commander Keen (through zmodem on a 2400bps modem).

Those were the good'ol days ;-)

Re:The Internet

[Destoo]

ASCII art's not dead!
Just reload the page at comments(-1).

(geez.. next time I read /. at work, I'll remember to wait at least 5 minutes after a new topic is posted)

Re:The Internet

[Bob McCown]

Commander Keen ROCKED! I just downloaded them off an abandonedware site for my 8 year old. I ended up playing all of them through. God, the memories.

Re:The Internet

[ret]

ahh yes, BBS doors... LORD, Usurper, Planets TEOS... perhaps I'll setup a telnet BBS with these games so we can all play them again (I did a couple years ago on @home and then got busted and had to take it down). hmmmm... perhaps someone should code web based versions of LORD and Usurper... not I, I blow at coding and haven't touched any languages that would work well for that, like asp and whatnot.
--

Re:The Internet

[Cardhore]

And also, the best video game system is a PC :)

Re:Ergh.

[felipeal]

You're right. Some people prefer to 'eschew superior technology' because:
a) THEY don't provide the support for the pet plataforms
b) the 'superior technology' is not open (and hence can't/shouldn't be a standard)

Quicktime is not a compression algorithm

[crow]

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.

Re:Quicktime is not a compression algorithm

[moongha]

Its not a player - the player is just a gui for controlling a quicktime movie object. You could equally embed your quicktime movie in a word document and play it from there without using the Quicktime player app (awful POS that it is).

You would think with OS X

[DebianDog]

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.

Re:You would think with OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, the underneath bits. but Aqua is not X. It's harder port the graphical stuff from Aqua to X (and visa versa, which is why X for OS X exists -- it was easier to port X than all the apps).

And apple wants people to have a reason to go with OS X over a linux box -- this is one of them.

but there is a QuckTime for Java -- no idea if it works.

Re:You would think with OS X

[ocelotbob]

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.

It wouldn't be easy at all. The base for each of the OSes are the same, but the windowing system, which is where the most difficult parts of the coding would be, are totally different. Aqua is Display PDF, and is incompatible with X; the design philosophy is nearly 100% different. This would be no easier of a port than before Apple migrated to Unix.

Though I do agree with you that Apple should make their product available under Linux. They wouldn't be losing any marketshare by doing so - there is very little overlap between Mac and Linux user demographics, and those that are in those overlapping markets probably already use both systems.

Re:Ergh.

[Zach Garner]

And:
c) its only superior to animated gifs.

QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[darkPHi3er]

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???

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[BWJones]

It is always difficult to be the first and often others capitalize on your success while you are relegated as an also-ran (like so many times with M$ and Apple).

However, that said, QT is a superior product in many ways and it has every possibility of becoming a media platform if of itself. M$ knows this and it scares the hell out of them. This is why they are trying so hard to defeat QT and even tried to kill it a couple of years ago by leveraging Office for Macintosh against Apple.

Don't be suprised to see QT media devices being produced in the next couple of years. All tying into the "Digital Hub" concept.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[KarmaBlackballed]

QT may be great, but reality is that it is not as simple for a Windows user to use as WindowsMedia. We know why:

1. WindowsMedia player is part of Windows
2. QT requires a download. Not everyone has broadband. Not everyone is smart enough to install it. (Yes, just double click and reboot. Some moms cannot do this however.)
3. The GUI is cool but strange.

What can Apple do about this? I don't know. At this point it may be a battle lost.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[frank_adrian314159]

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...

And yet, in the end, Microsoft's inferior technology will again win. Look at the marketshare figures for WinMP vs. Quicktime. More importantly, look at how any large organizations are deploying WinMP streams vs. Quicktime. It's only a matter of time before the non-Microsoft web (including QT-based sites) goes dark.

Yes, it sucks. But geeks gotta learn that good technology doesn't always win. In fact, in my cynical old age I'd tend to say that the probability of commercial success is inversely proportional to technological quality. But, still, I will continue to fight the battle, even though it seems hopeless, because, in the end, I still have to live with my choices. But it still sucks...

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[necromaedian]

"...geeks gotta learn that good technology doesn't always win."

all you gotta do is take a look at your keyboard

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[jht]

Actually, QuickTime is part of the MacOS, just as Windows Media is part of Windows. Of course, there are far fewer Macs, but that's besides the point...

Also, QuickTime doesn't require a reboot nowadays, at least not on Win2K or XP. It is also included on a the CD with a lot of cameras and scanners, which helps, too.

The UI has issues (it deviates too much from Apple's UI guidelines), but is generally cleaner and easier to navigate than either Real or Windows Media Player, IMHO.

What Apple does with QT marketing that's really annoying is the relentless shilling for QT Pro that pops up darn near every time you open a document (I won't get started about how they stiffed those of us who'd bought the Pro version with QT3 and then were stuck with QT5 and the OS X upgrade).

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[90XDoubleSide]

What can Apple do about this?

Go after the content creation market, which they own. It is definitely an uphill battle, but the fact that Apple drives the creative market has often allowed them to force the market to use a cross platform solution; if graphic design was done on Windows, we might all be using a web page format that you can only use in IE.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[msouth]

Hey, I'm a big Apple fan and all, but even I wouldn't suggest that they did this in APL. C'mon!

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[delay]

Well although QT is not bad, it's surely not perfect. The player one can download is awfully slow on windows, annoys you with loading movies you don't want to watch when you start it up looks quite non-standard and ugly. QT files usually use the proprietary Sorensen codec which isn't available on Linux and makes QT files useless to anyone without Windows or Linux. If you want to deliver Video over the Internet use straight MPEG-4 (no matter whether divx, m$ or whatever). That works on nearly any platform in standart-players.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[abhinavnath]

>...Microsoft's inferior technology...

This was true earlier, but WinMP's latest codecs (version 8?) blow the competition out of the water, IMHO. 300 k streams look much much better than 300 k Real Player or 300 k Quicktime streams.
Right now Microsoft does have the better technology. I'd give the new codecs a spin, if you're running Windows.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[gig]

There are plenty of digital cameras that have QuickTime inside, so the QT media devices are already here. QuickTime is alive and well with media developers. The MPEG-4 file format is QuickTime's file format. If the client that the end user uses is going to be Windows Media because that's what's been included with Windows, well, so what? Microsoft wants to build a rip-off client so they can embrace and extend. So what? Doesn't change the fact that if you are editing or working with rich media, QuickTime will save you time and money and increase the quality of your work. If you are viewing rich media on your computer, you owe a debt of thanks to QuickTime just like text editing owes ASCII.

And the Amiga guys ... PLEASE! The Amiga was amazing in its day, but it was an analog (TV) thing, not a digital video or multimedia thing. There was no interactivity in the client. Chroma key effects are not what we're talking about here.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[virtual_mps]

And yet, in the end, Microsoft's inferior technology will again win. Look at the marketshare figures for WinMP vs. Quicktime. More importantly, look at how any large organizations are deploying WinMP streams vs. Quicktime. It's only a matter of time before the non-Microsoft web (including QT-based sites) goes dark.

I find this incredibly ironic, since I can play most windows media files on my linux machine, and cannot play most of the newer quicktime files. Don't get caught up in the fantasy that MS is the only company trying to borg the web.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[mlong]

Quicktime is also the only current multimedia format that I've seen which seems to commonly get video and audio out-of-sync. Not to mention the annoying "Buy QuickTime Pro", the fact that usually when you download the installer from Apple it downloads yet another "updated" installer and starts over, the fact that it shoves an icon on your desktop without asking, etc. I think I'll stick to windows media or avi simply because its unobtrusive.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[G-funk]

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

And when that happens, I will be a happy man. Windows media is a better product, the compression in aif files is so much nicer than .mov (I know it's a wrapper but most .movs are in the same codec which sucks), and frankly, the only company more evil than Microsoft is Apple. WHY SHOULD I PAY AU$120 TO SEE A HIGH-RES STARWARS TRAILER I CAN'T EVEN SAVE TO MY DRIVE!?!?!?

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[Arcanix]

Actually, QuickTime is part of the MacOS, just as Windows Media is part of Windows. Of course, there are far fewer Macs, but that's besides the point...

The fact that the Mac has tremendously less market share than Windows is not besides the point, it's a huge factor on what format will be dominant.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[Sentry21]

WHY SHOULD I PAY AU$120 TO SEE A HIGH-RES STARWARS TRAILER I CAN'T EVEN SAVE TO MY DRIVE!?!?!?

You shouldn't, nor do you have to. The shareware version of Quicktime plays the star wars trailers fine. Perhaps you should get a clue, then get Quicktime, then actually try it.

--Dan

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[BWJones]

(I won't get started about how they stiffed those of us who'd bought the Pro version with QT3 and then were stuck with QT5 and the OS X upgrade)

Hey, your pro license worked for QT3 AND QT4. What are you bitching about? Who else would have let you purchase a license for one product, AND then let you use that license for a completely new version with a ton of new features? I thought it was kinda cool that my pro license worked for QT4 without having to pay more. Also, if you bought QT4Pro, you could use that QT4Pro license for QT5 for no upgrade $$'s

Jeez, give some people free software and all they want is MORE and MORE. That said, I will agree that it would be nice if Apple would simply allow you to use QT as a player with an option of turning off the advertisement with the understanding that you do not want the Pro features.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[DGolden]

Well, there you go, then. Apple may not have invented it, but they managed to _tell_ people that you could use your computer for digital video.

e.g. You and I know that you can store and manipulate photographs on computer - but lots of people don't think to do that until they see a "My Pictures" folder thoughtfully provided for them. In a similar fashion, the Amiga was fully capable of Quicktime-like feats of multimedia in 1991 (I know, I had several), but it wasn't SOLD as such all that much (thanks largely to managerial and marketing incompetence in CBM, most of America and a fair bit of Europe seemed to think of the Amiga as solely a games machine).

That's a mistake that developers make a lot - they, being smart, can see that one can quite happily use a text editor to make out a shopping list, or even keep a load of lists in a general purpose database, but joe-average-IQ on the street may not even think to do so with the status-symbol computer he just paid a small fortune for, unless there's a "My Shopping List" button for him to click, even if it only opens up a window with a "My Shopping List" titlebar containing a limited text editor component tied to a shoddy little database. There are people in the Windows world who can, and have, paid quite a bit for such products, which one could knock together in 5 minutes in tcl/tk in the linux world.

Microsoft and Apple understand this very well - general purpose tools are often unsuitable for people because people often aren't imaginative enough to use them. As a Very Clever Person, I'm always vaguely disillusioned by the "inside the box" thinking of most people I meet,
but one must recognise that People Are Stupid.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[Pig Hogger]

1. WindowsMedia player is part of Windows
...
What can Apple do about this?

A DLL.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[jht]

I bitch about it because virtually all software short of the OS itself is usually a free upgrade. Windows users can upgrade to the latest Windows Media without buying extra software - they don't even have to buy a new copy of Windows to do it. Apple has a tradition of being generous with their software updates, with minor versions usually being free and all the updates that go with it.

The other thing is that I was a normal MacOS 8.x user. And I paid for QT Pro. When I bought an upgrade to MacOS 9, my QT Pro continued to work. Then I shelled out $120 for MacOS X - now if I want to keep QT Pro, I have to fork out another $30 on top of that.

I have no objection to paying for the Pro edition - but if each OS/QT upgrade is going to kill my Pro features then I don't expect to pay $30 for the Pro upgrade. Either bundle it (after all, I paid $120 at retail for it) with retail copies of the Mac OS, or charge a hell of a lot less (like maybe $10) for the Pro version.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[Sentry21]

I don't know, the big trailers work fine for me. Maybe it's you?

Also, don't be such a pansy and hide behind AC. You posted with your original username, and then replied as an AC. It's transparent AND stupid, not to mention cowardly. Stand up for what you say, or don't say it.

--Dan

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[rfsayre]

QT is a superior product in many ways and it has every possibility of becoming a media platform if of itself. M$ knows this and it scares the hell out of them.

Microsoft knows it has the possibility of becoming a media platform. It doesn't really scare them at all. They're good baby knifers.

Re:QT rocks, an example of APL at it its finest

[phillymjs]

the fact that it shoves an icon on your desktop without asking, etc

Yeah, no Microsoft products have EVER sprinkled icons all over my carefully-pruned Start Menu, taskbar, desktop, Favorites... Puh-leeze. The only offender worse than Media Player is Outlook Express, which would probably keep showing up on my desktop if I cracked open the hard drive and cut the area where its bits resided right out of the platter.

And Microsoft keeps on sneaking more and more DRM shit into every successive release of Windows Media Player. One day you're gonna wake up and find that you can't play a lot of the stuff on your hard drive because it's 'not in compliance with licensing,' or some such nonsense.

~Philly

PS- Go ahead, mod me down! I'm at the karma cap!

QuickTime clients are horrible

[Trepidity]

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...

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[pi radians]

I thought that was only an option for the pro version? I don't know much about the Windows side (thank god) but I am confident that you'll have to pay $29.99 for full screen (plus a buch of editing options.)

(If you're using a Mac, just use an older player, like 2.5. You can still view the newest video and all of the functions are accessable.)

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[Refrag]

You're obviously on crack. QuickTime supports fullscreen mode on Macs and Windows. It's one of the options for all of the LOTR trailers at Apple's movie trailer site.

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[CaseyB]

the format itself is not bad, the clients are simply horrible

I am constantly amazed at the Quicktime UI. Apple, without a doubt, has some of the most talented designers in the world. And after so many years to work on it, it still manages to release the most incredibly AWFUL client software for Quicktime.

It's an historical case study in bad interface design! And every subsequent version is just as bad. Clunky UI elements. Inconsistent behaviour. Complete absence of any sort of optimization.

The very awfulness of it is fascinating. It's the roadside car wreck of software development.

hell the current version of the Windows client still hasn't even implemented a full-screen mode...

Oh, it's there. But you have to pay extra for it! Unbelievable.

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[Saturn49]

Yes they do have a full-screen mode. It is only available in the "Pro" version, and it is called "Present Movie". Works like a charm.

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[Refrag]

I've stated this previously, but your link refers to a beta of one-version-old software. The user interface is much improved since then. At the time QT4 was being developed, physical interfaces were thought to be the way design apps for the population at large. The UI community has learned since then that that is not always the case.

Also, full screen mode is in QT5, and you don't have to pay for it. Just look at the LOTR trailers Apple hosts.

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[CaseyB]

but your link refers to a beta of one-version-old software

You have no idea what you're talking about. The release version of Quicktime 4 fixed none of the problems listed. Quicktime 5 still suffers from many of the same problems.

It still brazenly defies one of Apple's own cardinal rules of UI design -- that you should always use common UI elements and dialogs, so that all applications behave consistently. Instead, the Quicktime client does everything with a custom, nonstandard hack, even simply opening a file. The UI community has learned since then that that is not always the case.

You say that like it wasn't already painfully obvious even before the software was released.

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[Refrag]

It wasn't painfully obvious. It still isn't. Almost every MP3 player out there uses the physical interface concept. Back when QT4 was being developed, that was all the rage. They've since cleaned up the UI greatly, getting rid of the dial and replacing it with a slider for instance.

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[Refrag]

How often do you change the contrast, brightness, etc? Not that often, so why should they bother cluttering up the nice and clean UI with more controls?

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[Refrag]

QuickTime is skinnable. You don't have to have the Pro version. However, the skins are dictated by the media file. Which, is really the way it should be.

WinAmp uses a what your favorite site would say is not a control to pull up the about window in the same fashion that QuickTime does it, yet no one screams at Nullsoft. WinAmp also uses a clutterbar which is not a standard UI element. Windows Media Player uses the same style of interface as QuickTime, down to the metal-look theme. The only think Microsoft did that Apple didn't was put the app in a standard rectanglar window, and that doesn't even go for WMP XP.

Re:QuickTime clients are horrible

[Refrag]

QuickTime for Windows is my favorite media player on that platform. Windows Media Player is a horrible bloated application and suffers from playback glitches. Real player is a filetype grabbing, spying piece of junk. QuickTime is fast has no problem playing back its own MOV files or MPEG files.

Birth of Multimedia

[Alien54]

The only thing missing was the duct tape.

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.

Re:Birth of Multimedia

[poot_rootbeer]

Basically, quicktime allowed the birth of multimedia.

Lest the Microsoft-loathing zealots of Slashdot forget, the initial release of Windows Media Player also took place 10 years ago.

Re:Birth of Multimedia

[LoadStar]

Yes, but all it did for many, many years was just play WAV files. I don't exactly consider that a direct predecesor to the current Windows Media Player.

If you take a look at that timeline, it wasn't until 1999 that Microsoft actually incorporated video playback into Media Player, renaming it Windows Media Player. Before that point, the only game in town really was QuickTime.

Re:Birth of Multimedia

[rpk]

Err, that's just a simple audio player.

Windows 3.1 had a simple multimedia API but it was pretty simple, and didn't do video without obscure, specialized hardware, unless controlling laserdisc players is your idea of video on a PC.

Re:Birth of Multimedia

[squiggleslash]

And the Amiga's ANIM and other animated IFF formats that preceeded this by at least two-three years were the birth of what...? QT is undoubtedly a smart system, but it wasn't the first.

Re:Birth of Multimedia

[Sentry21]

Yes, but CD and audio players were not revolutionary back then. Digital video was.

Media player back then was not multimedia, it was media. It played audio. It played CDs, WAV files, and probably MIDI files (win3.1's version did for sure), but that is not multimedia any more than plain text is.

--Dan

Say What You Like

[SirSlud]

.. 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.

Re:Say What You Like

[itachi]

Don't forget, QT is on unix. Who needs it on linux when you can get it on a stable unix that has a real gui?

itachi

Re:Say What You Like

[SW6]

.. 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.

Well, without Columbus, I would be living in England. With Columbus, I'm still living in England, but with the added benefit that we got rid of a load of people who are unable to comprehend that not everybody is the same as them ;)

Re:Say What You Like

[kilroy_hau]

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

I'm a direct descendant from the original mayan princes, those so called "indians". Of course I would be where I am today, or maybe better.

Re:Say What You Like

[SirSlud]

'we wouldn't be there we are today' neither specifies who 'we' is, not specifies where 'where' is, so I'm not neccessarily saying we/you/us/them/him/her/it is any better/worse/happier/sadder/richer/cleaner as a result of him. I don't know where 'here' is, but we're there (all of us)!

Or, in other words, the world would be different, which was the point I was making with QT. The net would be different had it not hit the scene. QT ushered in video to the net like Columbus brought in the Europeans. Good enough?

I do conceed that my phrasing was probably not as carefully selected as it could have been, and any apologies if I came off as being discriminatory. :)

Linux users that yearn for Quicktime!

[Bollie]

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.

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 .avi files under my favourite OS!

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.

MPEG4 is based off QuickTime

[spicyjeff]

MPEG4 is based off QuickTime with Apple playing a major role in its development.

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.

Re:Apple's a Black Hole

[Anonymous Coward]

they've opened part of it, so far. the streaming server is open source.

http://www.publicsource.apple.com/projects/strea mi ng/

Re:quicktime?

[TheCrazyFinn]

mpg is dead, AVI and Quicktime killed it in the streaming format, try finding streaming mpg's anywhere. DivX MPEG4 is getting kinda popular in non-streaming though. The Crazy Finn

10 years and still no Open Source implementation

[burtonator]

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 :)

[marmotzel]

happy bithday quicktime :)

Ten years already?

[tino_sup]

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?

Revisionist History

[dfinney]

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.

Re:Revisionist History

[Refrag]

Can you refresh our memories about the "San Francisco Canyon/Apple/Microsoft/Intel debacle?"

Re:Revisionist History

[rpk]

The similarity is no accident. Apple sued Microsoft for stealing codec code; I beleive it was settled out of court, and might have been one of the terms of Microsoft's $150m investment in Apple.

Re:Revisionist History

[xphase]

Here
and
Here
But you'll notice that both of these links seem to agree(as do I) with the points that you make in your comments, not the person you are responding to.

--xPhase

QT made Myst possible

[Stavr0]

... 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.

Re:QT made Myst possible

[bonzoesc]

So QuickTime destroyed adventure gaming? Now I know who to blame!

the biggest fault from the article

[dcgaber]

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

Hypercard?

[kisrael]

Was Hypercard a video card or a programming language?

Re:Hypercard?

[trash eighty]

its a programming language... kind of. its a little bit like visual basic, only came out first. i've only ever used its results though

Re:Hypercard?

[SmackDown]

HyperCard was a hyperlink-based programming environment developed by bill atkinson and the original mac team. It's programming language was based on natural languaged, called HyperTalk. It allowed you to make constructs like:
"if the value of checkBoxOne on Card 3 is set to true, then set the card to MyCard and set the value of checkBoxOne on Card 3 to false." EXTREMELY easy to learn how to program on. This is what they should teach kids to use in school. Oh, well, I supposed Apple has moved away from supporting the education environment, now that Dell and Compaq and MS have forcefully taken over that arena.

Re:Hypercard?

[trash eighty]

indeed, the problem with apple sometimes is that they have too many good ideas - and a lot fall by the wayside

there have been rumours of hypercard OSX but i doubt it will ever come!

Re:Hypercard?

[irix]

Hypercard is what I used to learn how to program. I did some stuff with BASIC on an Apple][e and C/64 before that, but it never amounted to much.

Hypercard, on the other hand, let you do some seriously cool stuff. Once I got into programming Hypercard it opened up a whole universe to me. It had an API (RCMD) that allowed you to hook C or Pascal programs in, which got me into C, and the rest is history :)

If the rumours of Apple bringing it back are true, then I will be really happy. I can't think of a better way to get kids into programming.

Re:Hypercard?

[marmoset]

Well, Applescript Studio looks a lot like what a modern Hypercard might have evolved into -- a very usable interface construction kit with hooks into the Cocoa API's, using natural language syntax (AppleScript)

Re:Hypercard?

[irix]

Actually, that C API was XCMD. I the acronym for that and the silly insecure WindowsNT ResKit remote shell program mixed up :)

A little joke...

[Marx_Mrvelous]

10 years? Boy, that went quickly...

Re:10 years and still no Open Source implementatio

[Davace]

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?

Re:10 years and still no Open Source implementatio

[BitwizeGHC]

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.

what don't you get?

[Multics]

two words

Closed Source

-- Multics

An Article With Real Substance^H^H^H^H^H Bullshit

[Lethyos]

``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.

Quicktime is such a pain because of its player

[brunes69]

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.

Re:Quicktime is such a pain because of its player

[Refrag]

Your link refers to a beta of QuickTime 4. QuickTime 5 is out, and the user interface doesn't contain many of the (assumed) flaws your document points out.

Remember, UI design is an art, not a science. It is largely subjective. They came out with what a lot of people at that time felt was a good interface -- one based off of devices people use physically. Since then, people have realized that is not always the best way.

Re:Quicktime is such a pain because of its player

[cpt kangarooski]

There's actually a lot of science involved in UI design. Cognative psychology has always been a big one. And the testing process is intended to operate under the scientific method.

People who approach it as an art generally don't know much about it, in my experience.

Re:Quicktime is such a pain because of its player

[Suppafly]

fuck you.. this is not flamebait.. its not my fault that apple doesn't know how to use standard system widgets when they port their software to other OS's. At least MS products on macs can manage to make us of the standard system widgets instead of making their own up that people can't use..

Re:Quicktime is such a pain because of its player

[Refrag]

So you use psychology, which is at best a soft-science and at worst pseudo-art, to back up your statement that UI design is a science and not an art? Ha.

Re:Quicktime is such a pain because of its player

[cpt kangarooski]

Yep. Because it's possible to design and conduct tests with meaningful results that provide information as to the ways in which people behave under certain circumstances. I strongly encourage you to read nearly any scholarly work (i.e. not 'design user interfaces in three easy steps and eight hundred hard steps') and you'll see.

It's really less to do with the underlying reasons as to why people behave differently depending on their stimuli as what those behaviors are.

Too bad it's a media program now...

[Drakino]

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.

Hypercard Hardware?

[KarmaBlackballed]

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?

Re:Hypercard Hardware?

[Gogo Dodo]

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?

HyperCard was/is more than a "utility." It was a full-blown programming environment. Call it the BASIC of it's time, but so much more... GUI, object-oriented of sorts, easy syntax, and free.

I've never heard of a video board called HyperCard.

Re:Hypercard Hardware?

[ers81239]

Wow.....you are right! I wrote some little apps in hypercard in middle school (circa 1990).

Re:Yeah right!

[marmoset]

Hey, I was selling Amigas in 1991... :)

What Quicktime got right (and it saddens me to see people falling over themselves to flame it B3KUZ 1TZ PRUHP1Et4RY) was that they spec'ed a really nice, solid API with architectural room to grow. When Quicktime was released, mainstream personal computers had 16-33 MHz CPU's, maxed out at 8-16 megabytes of RAM, a 32-bit video card cost >$1000, etc.

Quicktime's API was so clean that a video playing application (such as Popcorn or the original Simple Player) written for Quicktime 1.0 in 1991 can still run on top of Quicktime 5.x today, taking advantage of all the codecs written in the interim period. When Apple added PNG support to Quicktime, any program that relied on Quicktime for graphics file import immediately gained the ability to read PNG files, without even a recompile.

Quicktime is not a video player, it is not a streaming plugin, and it is not a replacement for MPEG.

Re:quicktime?

[Graff]

Um, Quicktime has little to do with the compression format. It uses other people's compression algorithms to store the compressed video. The person who sets up the video can choose any number of compression formats.

I know there are some people out there who are annoyed that Linux is unable to read some Quicktime files out there. That's not Apple's fault at all, rather it is the fault of the compression format used. Most of the Quicktime files are compressed using the Sorenson codec, because of the superior quality and great compression it offers. The problem is that Sorenson holds the patent on the codec and they have only produced a decoder for Windows and MacOS. In order for Linux users to play those Quicktime movies which use the Sorenson codec, Sorenson would have to produce a Linux version of the decoder. There are a few programs out there that can play Quicktime movies, but only the movies that use codecs supported by Linux.

The same thing has happened with AVI on the Mac. There are a few Intel codecs that are used by AVI files which have no Mac version of a decoder. Thus, viewing an AVI on a Mac is kind of a crap shoot. I'm sure that this is a planned thing by Intel. Fortunately AVI seems to be dying a slow death as better formats are appearing.

That being said, Quicktime fully supports mpg. In fact, there are only a few odd or proprietary formats that Quicktime can't or doesn't support.

Why no open source codecs?

[sfgoth]

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

Re:Why no open source codecs?

[Jeffrey Baker]

I think the answer is that the Sorenson codec kicks ass over all other codecs. People will use it because when they export from Final Cut Pro that's what they get.

If you have a quadruple PhD in math and you would like to create a codec that is not encumbered by intellectual property toll booths, join the Ogg Tarkin project.

Re:Why no open source codecs?

[sfgoth]

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?

You seem to be mistaken about the way codecs are developed. Generally, you develop a codec and create an implementation, and if you want it to be widely adopted you make source available for that implementation (if not completely open source, then you make it available to the standards bodies and their members). The individual developers (Apple in the instance of QuickTime) then implement the codec in their software, in most cases. If Ogg isn't available for QuickTime, that's the result of QuickTime not being popular in Ogg's target audience, as well as Apple not taking the time to implement Ogg (probably because Ogg isn't popular in Apple's target audience, either).


That's a great explanation from the technical implementation point of view, but completely ignores the reality of the end users who actually use software instead of write software.

When you say "The individual developers (Apple in the instance of QuickTime) then implement the codec in their software...", you miss the point of QuickTime.

If the OV developers released their codec as a QuickTime plugin, it would work on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux, in any authoring or playback application that understands QuickTime.

Sure, Apple could do the integration for the OV developers. But why should they?

Apple has given the world an open, extensible architecture for multimedia. And no one is using it, because they either believe they need to own the whole widget (Real), or can't be bothered with anything as mundane as users (OV).

For example, Real could implement their entire business on top of QuickTime, and the user experience wouldn't be any different at all, but Real would suddenly only need to do 1/2 the engineering.

The really sad thing is that Apple would rather keep people using their player, so they can display their nag screens, than make plugins readily available for other players, or make a deal with Sorenson to make the format open to others to make those plugins for them.

The plugins (codecs) that Apple ships work in any QuickTime player. The QuickTime Player that Apple ships/sells is just ONE implementation of a QuickTime player. QuickTime itself is free, and widely available! Apple's QuickTime Player is NagWare for buying Apple's Pro Player, but you can get all of the same functionality from any of dozens of other freeware and shareware player applications.

In fact, you can play QuickTime movies from SimpleText on the Mac! That's about as minimal a player as you can find!

In my perfect world, the Open Source community would realize that QuickTime is a vehicle they could "embrace and extend", ensuring that their platforms are first class multimedia citizens.

After all, QuickTime is just an API. There's no reason why the QuickTime API couldn't be the native multimedia API for Linux, even if they shared none of the codecs!

-pmb

Re:Why no open source codecs?

[blukens]

Of course, all this ignores the reality that there are a handfull of OggVorbis developers working very hard on creating an Ogg QuickTime plugin. It's just taking quite a bit of effort on their part to get something that's actually functional. Apparently there are some issues inherent with the QuickTime architecture that makes Vorbis on QuickTime non-trivial. Search though the vorbis mail lists for more information: http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis-dev/masterinde x.html.

Re:Why no open source codecs?

[epeus]

There are issues inherent in the ogg format that make it hard too. If the 3 peoepl trying it independently would share code it could go quicker...

Re:An Article With Real Substance^H^H^H^H^H Bullsh

[jamie]

"most features found in QuickTime today such as streaming capability and portal functionality were derived from RealMedia's software"

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 :)

"It's a media format wrapper (not a codec like MPEG as most of these Slashfools are contending). That's all."

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.

Star Wars and QT use

[bubblegoose]

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.

Might be nice in principle, but....

[Ozan]

the windows-client is just a pain in the ass. No drag&drop, no playlist, windows 3.0-type dialogues, and the renderer slows my whole system down if i scale the output window bigger than 100%. Since i have a 1280*960-desktop and most flics are around 640*480 big or smaller playing them back at 200% needs me to close all non-idleing processes just to get an output of about 8 frames/s at 99% processor time on an Athlon-500. Please!

Re:Might be nice in principle, but....

[Knobby]

Well, here I go.. Feeding the trolls again..

If the interface on the client is so horrible, find an undergraduate CS major taking a software design class and having him help you build your own!!! Quicktime is a programming API... The client is just an app that passes calls the API.. Have you ever used a Mac? If you have one available, or can find one to sit down in front of for a few minutes, pop open something like SimpleText and open a movie.. SimpleText will call the Quicktime API and have it play the movie within the SimpleText window.. Then pop open iCab.. iCab is happy as a clam letting Quicktime render images and movies..

The point is, that there's no reason a simple, bare-bones, client couldn't be written that supports playlists, and windows 3.0 type dialog boxes..

As for the 99% cpu at double size option; all I can say is Wow!.. I just popped open one of large pixar trailers on my B&W G3 450 with 64MB RAM and at double size it used about 10% of the cpu at 12.25 fps, and at some size (non-integer scaling) greater than 200% it only used less than 15% of the cycles.. Huh..

Quicktime, quick to tell me I don't have right ver

[Shivetya]

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

Re:proof?

[Spruitje]

DiVX * MPEG4.
The next version of Quicktime will support MPEG4 but not DiVX.
The file format MPEG4 uses is the quicktime file format.

multimedia monopoly

[Scrameustache]

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...

It *IS* Apple's fault there's not QT for Linux.

[raygundan]

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.

Re:An Article With Real Substance^H^H^H^H^H Bullsh

[zorgon]

The term "slashfools" is flamebait. Please, use the proper terminology: "slashdorks"

Thank you.

10kbps bandwidth with ADB...

[Doomdark]

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. :-)

Re:10kbps bandwidth with ADB...

[cipater]

There actually was at least one ADB modem available: the original 2400bps Global Village TelePort fax/modem. Plugged into your ADB chain, worked great (mostly because GV's fax software was the best you could get for many, many years). Since it didn't take up a serial port, I could use a faster modem through my serial port and leave the GV modem installed just for sending and receiving faxes.

Just plug in this $10000 HyperCard...

[David Leppik]

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.

RTFM

[Doktor Memory]

You, and the idiots who moderated your spew up.

typical rewriting of history

[vscjoe]

No, Apple did not invent desktop multimedia. The MPEG working group was established in 1988, and other codecs for digital audio and video were around long before that.

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.

Re:typical rewriting of history

[Drishmung]

At an Apple Developer Conf in 87 (just after the introduction of the Mac II) they showed a technology demo of multimedia playing on the new Mac. IIRC this was the precursor of QuickTime. The cool thing was that it did not require any extra hardware.

Amiga did amazing things even then, but had loads of specialised video chips. The Mac II was a 68020 (!) with a very vanilla video card and truly pathetic video b/w by today's standards. Again, IIRC, one of the early milestones was not the CODEC but rather the blit code.

It was long ago and far away, the challenges then were not the challenges of today.

Re:typical rewriting of history

[mj6798]

So? What does that have to do with whether Quicktime was new technology or not?

Video compression had been worked on for years by that point. People were already talking about object-based video compression. The 68020 was being used in desktop workstations running UNIX.

Both then and now, Apple put a nice face on existing technology.

Re:typical rewriting of history

[Binary Boy]

Interesting. MPEG-1 is not "multimedia", it is a desktop video codec and file format specification. Quicktime IS "multimedia" - a single file format/container and API for audio, video, text, still imaging, realtime effects, scripting, and much more.

Anyway, the issue is hardly who "invented" multimedia anymore than we would question who "invented" desktop digital imaging. Apple, however, revolutionized this part of the desktop media industry and if you worked in video or multimedia you would likely know this.

MPEG has always been a delivery platform, not a content creation, editing, and delivery platform. That means a single API to support many arbitrary codecs and datatypes, a huge boon to media application developers and for content creators themselves who don't have to deal with compatibility issues between their creative apps.

Why the backlash? Typical SlashDot "if it doesn't run on Linux it isn't worth a pile of beans"... of course this just reflects your world, not the opinions of people who have actually been working in those particular trenches which would have a professional perspective on the subject.

Hold Apple responsible? Yeah, nice idea. How about we hold Microsoft responsible for the forking of the GUI world? Or Linus for the forking of the Unix world?

Proprietary multimedia standards exist for a reason, as do their open equivalents. Standards groups like MPEG and JPEG create specs that are of great interest to hardware vendors and others who rely on interoperability with packaged products like cellphones and set-top boxes which aren't practical to flash update all the time. Proprietary solutions fill the void left by the standards-based solutions, primarily for flexibility and updatability but also on the much-forgotten CONTENT CREATION level, which you seem to ignore.

This all may change with MPEG-4, but then that's a highly proprietary solution too whose standards body can't even decide on broad licensing issues. What else do you suggest? Animated GIF? Sorry, CompuServe's got that one. MNG? Oh please.

Currently the only two systems capable of satisfying the single-solution demands are Quicktime and MPEG-4, however MPEG-4 still doesn't have established profiles for studio and high-end needs, nor the flexibility of Quicktime, let alone the OS-level support needed to encourage developers to jump on the bandwagon. And as Quicktime supports most "standards" as well the content is not locked-in, unlike Windows Media and Real (which are technically non-editable, though hacks do exist).

Unless you have pointers to a project working on a cross-platform multimedia architecture then methinks you haven't the foggiest.

Binary Boy
Digital Media Specialist

Re:typical rewriting of history

[Binary Boy]

I have nothing against MNG - in fact I await the day we have MNG support in Quicktime as yet another example of QT's flexibility.

The point of my MNG comment was rhetorical, and properly expanded/disambiguated would have been soomething like this:

"What suitable replacement options do you have for the Quicktime architecture? MNG?"

Yes, MNG has it's place, and will I'm sure be supported as an import, track, and export media type within Quicktime. We currently have PNG support everywhere that counts, it's not much of a leap. My point was that all the non-Quicktime options out there are primarily distribution formats/codecs, not the all-encompassing media architecture that Quicktime provides. Even if you were wanting to end up with an MNG file there would be benefits to using Quicktime to produce it - namely, the application support and integration of multiple media types available on Mac OS and Windows. Yes, if you just have a bunch of still frames to merge into an MNG this is trivial - but if you want to produce video in an NLE with content coming from a variety of sources, Quicktime is the foundation that makes this happen.

Cheers,

BB

Stoopid mistakes in article

[Weasel Boy]

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.

Re:Stoopid mistakes in article

[90XDoubleSide]

Didn't you understand what the author was saying? Of course the features of those products have been handed down to new software; that is what always happens. QuickTime is different because it, not a product derived from it, is still around and still innovating.

Pioneer in digital video? What about the Amiga?

[marphod]

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?

wow

[Suppafly]

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..

VP3

[Wesley Felter]

VP3 is an open source QuickTime video codec that some people claim rivals Sorenson in quality (I haven't tried it myself).

Re:VP3

[Alan Partridge]

On2 (formerly Duck) VP3 is an exceptionally fine codec, certainly a rival for Sorenson Video 3. If the open source want superb QT quality, they should organise an Ogg QT codec and a VP3 that runs under linux? These must be among the simplest OSS projects imaginable! On2 have already made VP3 QT codecs for MacOS and Win32, and will give you the source. Ogg is obviously the same and Apple have a new found interest in OSS and would LOVE to see QT adopted by the linux community. It's up to you developers to do it, how much more help do you need?

Re:VP3

[WWWWolf]

VP3 [vp3.com] is an open source QuickTime video codec that some people claim rivals Sorenson in quality (I haven't tried it myself).

Hmm, Yet Another Open Source License. Since it's somewhat verbose, I have to ask, does it really meet DFSG or OSD requirements?

(Or maybe OSI won't approve the license only because Slashdotters are bored of "OSI approves xxxx license, no one cares" headlines =)

it's not a technical thing

[vscjoe]

Apple envisioned a media format which was extensible and flexible.

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.

Re:it's not a technical thing

[flimflam]

I think that you're really wrong about this. First of all, you seem to be under the impression that Quicktime is a viewer. This is wrong. Quicktime really isn't analagous to Realvideo or WMP. Quicktime is an architecture for dealing with any kind of media that changes over time, whether it be animation, video, audio, etc. There happens to be a player that ships with Quicktime that may leave a lot to be desired, but the application itself isn't quicktime, merely an application that uses Quicktime.

To me, it makes a lot of sense to have a plugin architecture for video. I am a professional in the film industry and do a fair amount of editing using Final Cut Pro. In the past I used to use an Avid. I really really like that FCP is based on Quicktime (Avid isn't). With Final Cut, I can edit anything as long as it's quicktime. That means out of the box I can use a little DV camera and edit everything at 29.97fps using the DV codec. If I want to add a professional video board like a Targa card or something, I can, and because the codec for the Targa card is just a quicktime plugin, I can use it in any program that uses quicktime, including FCP. If I want I can add a board that does uncompressed High Definition Video, and as long as my RAID array has high enough bandwidth I can edit that format. If I want to edit something for the web at 15fps and half-resolution, I can do that too because I have codecs that can handle that.

If we were to do things the way you propose, we'd be stuck using either a few standardized but completely outdated codecs for everything (for distribution), or a seperate editing application for every format and/or vendor (for production -- this is the way it used to be).

And Quicktime works perfectly fine with industry standard codecs (unlike RealPlayer), so I really don't know what you're talking about.

Re:it's not a technical thing

[jamie]

I don't think you know what you're talking about. QuickTime runs on a variety of platforms. People think that because the (popular, closed-source) "Sorenson" is proprietary that the whole system is. It's not. Go download all the tech specs, including file format and APIs and such. "Well-defined" and "standard" are two words that definitely apply to QuickTime and its codec platform.

"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."

Yeah, who would want to have, like, audio and video play at the same time. Whatever...

Re:it's not a technical thing

[vscjoe]

You're on the right track. Yes, indeed, Quicktime allows many CODECs to be used. In particular, it allows proprietary, undocumented CODECs to be used. And that is why Quicktime content often ends up in proprietary, undocumented formats. By supplying both the container and a number of proprietary CODECs, Apple gets a great deal of control and a lucrative business.

MPEG-2, on the other hand, is a complete format for audio and video. It does not allow you to "plug in" arbitrary CODECs, which is why content in it ends up being conformant with a published specification and will remain accessible in the future. MPEG-2 is not state-of-the-art anymore, but it is good enough for a lot of content. And rather than replacing it with something like Quicktime, we should be replacing it with another documented video compression standard that does not allow proprietary plug-ins. (I'm not sure MPEG-4 fits the bill, but we'll see.)

(Incidentally, you do not need Quicktime to combine MPEG audio and video streams; MPEG formats contain both.)

Re:it's not a technical thing

[vscjoe]

To me, it makes a lot of sense to have a plugin architecture for video.

Yes, it makes a lot of sense to have a plug-in architecture at the level of your libraries so that application writers don't have to worry about handling different formats.

But Quicktime goes further: it makes it appear as if files encoded with different CODECs are all the same type and just magically work. Furthermore, Quicktime is commonly used with proprietary CODECs, whether or not that is theoretically necessary. The generality of Quicktime that you correctly point out causes additional problems.

The net effect is that almost all Quicktime is not archival and cannot (easily) be viewed on anything other than Macintosh or Windows machines. People like you who create the content often don't even think anything is wrong (until 10 years from now, you try to get at your old video files and can't). And people like me who write software for processing video end up with lots of headaches because what works fine on your desktop is a big pain trying to get to work on a server, if one can get it to work at all.

So, my point is still: Quicktime is a business strategy for Apple, and it's a good one. I don't expect it to go away, but I hope people like you will think more about archival issues and accessibility of their content.

Re:it's not a technical thing

[epeus]

MPEG2 is proprietary though - you have to pay license fees to decode it (big ones for the audio).

If you want archival files, QuickTime is your best choice as the file format is documented, and you can archive in a standradised format like JPEG, H263 or DV if you choose.

Its format is designed for editing, whereas MPEG isn't.

Re:Apple's a Black Hole

[Spruitje]

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.

probable inaccuracy in article

[HongPong]

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.

Re:quicktime?

[TheCrazyFinn]

Nope, most AVI is not mpg, some is mpeg4 (AKA DivX), but that is rare for streaming. And DVD's are old tech, thus the encoding is MPEG-2. Not really applicable for the computer market, fast as it moves these days. The Crazy Finn

Re:A Post With Real Substance^H^H^H^H^H Bullshit

[90XDoubleSide]

most features found in QuickTime today such as streaming capability and portal functionality were derived from RealMedia's software

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.

Re:Ergh.

[Alan Partridge]

QuickTime is NOT Sorenson compression! Why don't you try reading about it? it has been around for 10 YEARS now! QT currently supports over 200 different media types, including MIDI, Mp3, Flash, png, TIFF, AVI (cinepak, indeo, divx), TGA, gif, JPG, PICT, AIFF, AU, SND, wav. Video codecs supported under QT include: DV, Apple Animation, Apple Component , Avid ABVB & Meridien, H.261 & .263, Cinepak, MJPEG, PJPEG, Zygo Video, TM2X, Sorenson Video 1 & 2 & 3, On2 Vp3, Digital Voodoo 8 bit and 10 bit etc. In addition, QT also supports playback and embedding of MPEG1, mp2. If you can name a richer multimedia environment, I'd love to hear about it. Muppet.

Rant Rant

[epepke]

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?

Re:Rant Rant

[flimflam]

The QuickTime player is the only one that can open a file format that is commonly referred to by the QuickTime name, which is actually utilizing a Sorenson format which no one except Apple can use.

Actually, you are wrong. I could erase the QuickTime player from my computer and still view Sorenson-encoded movies in any other application that can play Quicktime files.

Re:Rant Rant

[flimflam]

I can play Sorenson content in any old QuickTime program without having to "associate a dedcoder" (whatever that means). Of course, I have to have the Sorenson codec installed on my machine, but there's nothing special about the QuickTime player.

Re:Rant Rant

[vought]

Actually, I believe that should say:
'any other application with which I've associated the decoder for the Sorenson-encoded movies'.

You really don't have any idea how Macs or QuickTime work, but you presume to criticize them?

*sigh*

It's the licensing of the patent, not the patent.

[raygundan]

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.

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 /. great. Cheers!

Re:Not an open format !

[gig]

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.

I am fed up with this Apache !

I am running Windows systems on my machines and I am really fed up to hit the famous: This IIS server needs to be patched in order to not kill routers and tie up Internet traffic with malicious worms like Code Red and Nimda! Go run Apache if you want a real Web server!

THERE IS NO APACHE WEB SERVER FOR WINDOWS!

How good can be a Web server be that is not running on Windows ????

Developper have to buy a non-Windows computer to run this Web server !

This is outrageous ! But, after all, Microsoft and Linux/UNIX have the same goal... world domination. Microsoft had just done some steps further than Linux. That's all.

Re:yuck

[Mr. Sharumpe]

I have found QuickTime to be every bit as stable as Real, and much more stable than WMP. I have had movies played through the plug-in crash the browser, but the browser will also crash for no reason on its own, as well. Plus, in the short time that I actually tried to use Real's browser plug-in, it never worked.

Sure, QuickTime isn't perfect, but it's the best alternative, IMO.

Mr. Sharumpe

Re:Ergh.

[Alan Partridge]

you might WANT to try letting QT take over AVi, as it apparently is more compatible with MS' old standard than is WinMedia Player. Figure that one. QT only asks ONCE, anyhow - Real is WAY more invasive.

QuickTime isn't a codec

[hearingaid]

There was a time when I just wished MS ripped QT's codec and put it in their media player.

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:

• Animation
• Apple BMP
• Apple H.261
• Cinepak
• Component Video
• DV - NTSC
• DV - PAL
• Graphics
• H.261
• H.263
• Intel Raw
• Microsoft RLE
• Motion JPEG A
• Motion JPEG B
• Photo - JPEG
• Planar RGB
• Sorenson Video
• TGA
• TIFF
• Video

You can also install your own codecs. I seem to have:

• Intel Indeo Video 5.0
• Intel Indeo Video R3.2
• Microsoft Video 1
• On2VP3 Video 3.2

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.

Re:QuickTime isn't a codec

[moongha]

Mod this up for gods sake! It's all true and for once someone actually gets the point of Quicktime!

Re:QuickTime isn't a codec

[hearingaid]

Oh, don't worry. I only get modded up when I post inflammatory yet well-worded posts, or occasionally when I go off the deep end (most of my 5 posts, I look at and wonder - why?) Mods won't touch that one: I was clear, lucid, and somewhat lengthy. :)

This is why you should read at a threshold of 2. Most of the interesting posts have a value of 2. They are the ones posted by people who write well enough to attract moderators' attention fairly often, but who have lost the moderator on this particular post.

There are exceptions, though: mostly karma whores. Sigh. A few trolls too. Bigger sigh.

Re:Yeah right!

[TotallyUseless]

Taking a complete guess here, but that is more than likely due to the fact that the game programmers looked for a specific version of quicktime, rather than looking for a version equal or greater to what was needed. This used to be a common mistake in quicktime games

Re:Pioneer in digital video? What about the Amiga?

[Alan Partridge]

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!

Re:How about a decent plugin?

[spongman]

actually, i was thinking more of being able to script the plugin from javascript running on the containing page. SMIL is a good standard, but it doesn't provide the kind of flexibility that script provides.

someone modded my original comment as 'flaimbait'. i think it's a reasonable complaint, after all, the MacOS plugin exposes an object model to AppleScript (hardly a standard) why not expose the same model to JavaScript?

Longevity

[awk2]

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 !

More history at Mercury Center

[Infonaut]

This article talks about the impact of QuickTime, and gives some interesting tidbits about the development and use of QuickTime over the years.

Quicktime for Java exists

[shovelface]

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

Re:Quicktime for Java exists

[Binary Boy]

While I support Quicktime fully, your statement number two is completely wrong:

Quicktime for Java is there to bridge the gap between Java/JMF and Quicktime, yes, but ONLY on operating systems with Quicktime already installed and supported. Quicktime for Java does NOT implement Quicktime IN Java, it simply allows Java developers to use the Quicktime APIs from native Java applications.

This gets Linux users nowhere.

- BB

Re:Quicktime for Java exists

[shovelface]

I stand corrected. I was misinformed by other parties AND misread docs on Apple's site. Sorry about that.

This would be a good thing though, yes? If Apple developed a native set of java classes that provided Quicktime functionality and APIs to any machine running Java, this would allow Apple to retain it's intellectual investment, but allow lots of not-directly-supported machines to run it and Open Source folks more leeway to make apps for it. Hmmm...

Sorry again for the error. Thanks for the correction.

-Minister of Quicktime

Re:Hypercard!!!!!!

[Doppler00]

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.

1991

[jfedor]

There are many more interesting things that began in 1991 than some proprietary format (its quality mostly sucks anyway).

• id Software
  
• Linux
  
• ... um, The Web, or something :)
  

-jfedor

Re:1991

[Sentry21]

The fall of Russian Communism?

Well, it started around then anyway. I think it's impacted more lives in better ways than id Software or Linux have.

Quicktime on the other hand, was the pioneer of digital video. Without digital video, we wouldn't have DVDs, digital cable, streaming media (not good media anyway), or people digitally filming movies in Australia and sending the recording to California to have special effects added.

I'd rather have the fall of communism, but QuickTime has (indirectly) affected more people in more ways than Linux or id have.

--Dan

Re:1991

[jfedor]

Well, indeed, I'd rather have the fall of communism over any of the above as well, but here in Poland we usually think of the year 1989 in this context, because it was that year when the important things happened for us.

-jfedor

Re:Ergh.

[moongha]

Quicktime only even asked to take over Macintosh native formats when I last installed (V5.0)

QuickTime and NeXTTime

[tyrione]

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.

Re:How about a decent plugin?

[10 Speed]

I'm not an expert, but I am pretty sure quicktime does support scripting (windows and mac) via a scripting language called qscript.

I knows its not javascript and has its own unique quirks but it is there none the less

Re:It's the licensing of the patent, not the paten

[DavidTC]

Even if Sorenson wanted to, they couldn't make a version of their codec for Linux. Apple has the exclusive rights.

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?

Re:How about a decent plugin?

[Binary Boy]

Sorry, but the Mac OS version of the browser plugin does not expose itself to AppleScript on IE or Netscape, though it does expose itself to JavaScript on Netscape.

The Quicktime Player *application* has an AppleScript dictionary, but there is no way to programmatically access the plugin when running in Internet Explorer via JavaScript OR AppleScript. This is because IE on Mac does not SUPPORT a scripting interface to Netscape plugins. Complain to Microsoft, or use Netscape.

- BB

Re:Hi. I'm Brian Eno.

[Bowie J. Poag]

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.

.

Dark Age of Camelot is Best game of 2001 IMHO

[winterbear]

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

Re:Quicktime for IRIX

[yomegaman]

Perhaps Apple is perfectly happy with Quicktime the way it is, and doesn't want to bother supporting a bunch of whiny Linux lusers? You know you dolts would only bitch, after they gave it to you for free, about how sucky it is, etc. It's not worth their time.

Re:Hi. I'm Brian Eno.

[yomegaman]

Well, sure, but he WAS a founding member of Roxy Music, the greatest band ever. That excuses a lot of faults in my book.

Best Learning Language

[Gastropod_ca]

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.

Re:quicktime?

[blakestah]

I know there are some people out there who are annoyed that Linux is unable to read some Quicktime files out there. That's not Apple's fault at all, rather it is the fault of the compression format used. Most of the Quicktime files are compressed using the Sorenson codec, because of the superior quality and great compression it offers. The problem is that Sorenson holds the patent on the codec and they have only produced a decoder for Windows and MacOS. In order for Linux users to play those Quicktime movies which use the Sorenson codec, Sorenson would have to produce a Linux version of the decoder. There are a few programs out there that can play Quicktime movies, but only the movies that use codecs supported by Linux.

Sorenson has nothing to do with it. Apple has exclusive licensing rights for the codec. Steve Jobs would rather lose his left testicle than see a Sorenson codec for linux. Honestly - that is all there is to it. People from Apple have posted as much to Slashdot if you care to search the archives. Sorenson has responded as such to queries from the xanim developer.

The patent will not expire for more than a decade, so this one is going to stick. The only tractable solution is to bug every single person that uses the Sorenson codec to please use another codec - like Cinepak or Radius. Sorenson is a really nice codec, but the web was founded on open formats.

Confucious says ...

[kimihia]

I found this great quote two days ago (thank you fortune()!).

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

-- Confucius

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.)

Quicktime is about time, not media

[mveloso]

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.

you don't quite understand

[vscjoe]

Hold Apple responsible? Yeah, nice idea. How about we hold Microsoft responsible for the forking of the GUI world? Or Linus for the forking of the Unix world?

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.

Re:Yeah right!

[scottgfx]

I saw something really neat at an AmiExpo back in `89 or `90. IVS was playing back the movie Star Wars in full motion, full screen, directly from a hard drive. Because the motion was pretty fluid, you didn't notice the HAM artifacting too much. A pretty amazing feat on an Amiga at the time. I later owned a DCTV. (Not to be confused with CDTV) A device that would take a 768x480 (or close to it) 16 color display, and turn it into a fairly high quality true color TV image. At a TV station I worked at, we used it's output, single frame edited it to a broadcast tape format where it was used in commercial production.

I would say that the Amiga invented "Multimedia" on computers, but Apple took it to the next level. Something Commodore probably could never have done because of their mismanagement. They never knew what they had. Commodore started out marketing the Amiga 1000 as a business computer with PC compatibility. Back then, a computer with pretty graphics couldn't possibly be a serious machine!

I use Quicktime every day in my work. I don't think I would want to be in the business of motion graphic design if I had to use something else.

Re:Ergh.

[chartreuse]

You seem to have missed the point, since that's what he's saying. Yow!

Re:Amiga invented Multimedia

[scottgfx]

Well, so much for an intelligent conversation. I've noticed that a lot of those old Amiga users are now PC users... So they are in YOUR camp now.

You can still get an Amiga emulator and see what you missed all those years ago. :)

http://cloanto.com/amiga/forever/

Join us.

maybe this is off-topic...

[Cinematique]

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.

Re:quicktime?

[WWWWolf]

mpg is dead, AVI and Quicktime killed it in the streaming format, try finding streaming mpg's anywhere.

Well, I didn't need to look too far!...

MPEG is far from death at this time. Sure, it may not be a perfect streaming solution (lack of streaming framework and high CPU use if no encoder hardware is used), but for video storage it's great.

I mean, it's not like my DVD player would suddently play Sorenson QT. Or Windows Media. Nay, they play MPEG and AAC data.

Re:Let me get this straight

[sfgoth]

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.

It's too bad someone modded that as flamebait, because you are correct.

That's why I'm sad. Linux developers shun QuickTime, because Sorenson is not available on Linux. They shun the very mechanism that could free them.

Attention Linux codec authors:
QuickTime is not the codecs! QuickTime is a standard way for software to USE codecs. Write your codec for QuickTime, and all the software out there that understands QuickTime can use your codec.

-pmb