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QuickTime To Move To MPEG-4
spav writes: "Looks like Apple will be embracing MPEG-4 for its new versions of QuickTime according to C|Net News.com. That could mean quicktime for Linux, but would we need it?" This sounds like a start toward OS-neutral video, but until companies decide not to add proprietary layers making otherwise widely-available formats unavailable, it won't be the end. The first half of this article dwells on QuickTime's 10th birthday, but then gives slightly more detail on the MPEG4 transition.
"That could mean quicktime for Linux, but would we need it?"...
Uhh, I dunno, I mean, all those pr0^W game trailers would be available for watching..
MPEG 4 allows you to put lots of things inside the stream, all of them can be platform specific, or hardware specific or whatever. MPEG2 was a rendering of video standard. MPEG4 is a bundling of multimedia content standard. HTML, MPEG2, whatever can be bundled.
So maybe they'll just bundle QuickTime movies inside the MPEG4 stream but allow a "Flash" style overlay in another content stream.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Ok, label me as naive here, but how does the inclusion of MPEG-4 video have anything to do with Quicktime being available for Linux? (Which it already is by the way, in a manner of speaking.)
It isn't like the Sorenson codec couldn't run under Linux. It runs just find under BSD/Darwin with Quartz (read as OS X). Apple just has absolutely no interest in making a streaming video client for Linux.
The standard and original Quicktime libraries have been available on Linux for a while, check out http://www.heroinewarrior.com/quicktime.php3 but all of the "cool movie trailers" available on Apple's website are in Sorenson, and it's Sorenson that isn't available under Linux. Chances are, if they *do* embrace MPEG-4 it will probably be an Apple / Quicktime specific version so that we still won't see it under Linux.
However, I've read that their streaming video server runs just fine.
Just my 2 cents worth of nothing
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
MPEG-4 standard, as defined by the ISO, is already based on Quicktime format. Don't be fooled just because Microsoft and DivX has created their own proprietary formats before the standards has been put down.
t de vdocs/QTFF/qtff.html
http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/quicktime/q
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If MPEG4 is the CODEC then the data will be displayable assuming there are MPEG4 decoders, which I think there are.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
MPEG-4 is actually based on work done in QuickTime back in 1998. Here is a link to a story from 1998: http://www.internetwk.com/news/news0211-15.htm (and another from Wired) :0 25 5.html
m l
http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/1
Here is the Apple press release: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1998/feb/11iso.ht
I'm sure there is some ranting to be done about Apple here, but let's not get to reactionary about this.
This is good news for Apple, but there is a snippet of this article that raises an interesting issue:
Analysts predict that rather than pursue an "embrace and extend" strategy, Microsoft and RealNetworks will stick to their guns and continue marketing their own formats. Although those products will not have MPEG-4's interoperability, the companies say advantages include smaller file size, better image and sound quality, and more advanced digital rights management software. Both RealNetworks and Microsoft have invested heavily in creating anti-copying technology that would make it safe for record labels and other content owners to sell their products online.
Steve Jobs' stance has always been that stealing music is a problem of the "community" and not "technology". I wonder if Apple will stand behind this philosophy with MPEG4 or join Microsoft and Real Networks in their security schemes. Just a thought.
"Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
- Bwana
You *do* know there are various different kinds of things that are labeled "MPEG 4", right? Up until recently, we couldn't play "DiVX ;-)" files, for example, on Linux, and that was a hacked-up version of Microsoft's MPEG-4 implementation (which we also couldn't play). The only reason they play on Linux at all is because someone swiped the libraries from a Microsoft player and figured out how to hook into them. Do you really think, once Apple figures out how to make their own, proprietary version of MPEG 4, that Linux will stand a chance in Hades of playing any more movie trailers than it can today?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
"In order for (MPEG-4) to succeed as a standard, it has to be used," said Susan Kevorkian, an analyst with IDC.
Excel files are a standard for most business.
But this don't makes Excel files a standard but only a common used format.
While industry didn't understand this difference, standards aren't going to success.
-= If you fight Dragons long enough, you will become a Dragon =-
As pointed out ad nauseum by people on the last story, QUICKTIME IS A CONTAINER FORMAT. It WRAPS different streams of audio and video.
The supported audio formats include WAV, AIFF, AU, mp3 and half a dozen others.
The video standards used have included CinePack, 3 different versions of Sorenson and even Intel's Indeo video (used for years in Microsoft AVIs).
The container format is supported on Linux Open Quicktime
The problem is Sorenson is exclusively licensed to Apple and they do not release it for Unix/Linux.
The other layer of ignorance is that MPEG-4 is also a container method for compressed audio and video streams. In fact its very similar to Quicktime (the packaging standard) indeed because it is actually _based on_ Quicktime!
That's not going to help Linux if they keep using Sorenson. It might help Mac users watch 3ivx, Divx and whatever other encoding formats are sometimes refered to as MPEG-4. You're not going to find this out from the CNET article though. Actually, since Quicktime is a container format, it supports pluggable codecs, so I watch MPEG4/{X}ivx video in Quicktime already - but it sure would be nice if Apple shipped those codecs out of the box.
The article is BS on many other points in any case - I would estimate over 50% of the streaming video I see out there is available in Quicktime format (though often alongside one of the other two). I mean, its very much the right tool for the right job at present... have you ever seen a good looking movie trailer in Real Video? I've seen a couple of OK ones, but the filesizes were similar to better looking Quicktime packaged (ie, Sorenson encoded) trailers. On the other hand I might use Real where image quality is less important. Oh, and of course, Quicktime includes mp3 support - its not competing with it!
So what does all this mean? Obviously Apple adopting MPEG4 could mean one of two things:
If Apple stick with pushing Sorenson as the primary codex (and hey, it is *really* nice looking) and don't ship any of the typical MPEG4 codecs, well that's not much news. If they ship {X}ivx alongside Sorenson, that's great because it allows content producers to choose, and Linux users can ask them to choose the more widely available {X}ivx compressors.
If I was more naive I'd say I can't believe CNET were presenting the "move" to MPEG4 as a retreat for Quicktime. MPEG 4 is the standardization of Quicktime and a vindication of its owenership of the professional market! Are they stupid or deliberately spinning it - you decide!
So all in all the CNET article is biased, tells you very little about what's actually been announced (is it new codecs? is it more standards compliance?) and tries to spin a victory as a defeat. Oh yeah, and Timothy's comments show he has no clue in this area either...
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
I was at BSDCon Europe last month where Jordan Hubbard (now working at Apple) gave a presentation on all that was brilliant about Mac OS X for the BSD Unix crowd. At the end, in the Q&As, somebody did ask about the porting of Quicktime to other OS.
From the answer, which was pretty neutral and he didn't seem to want to rock the boat - Jordan rated the chances of it being ported as smaller than slim. Because of all the low-lovel codec code that needs to be ported and optimised for the OS, porting QT is apparently an Evil Job, and they wouldn't have ported to Windows if it wasn't for the fact Windows had such a huge market share.
In short, don't hold your breath. If it does start making it's way out as a port, expect it for the BSD Unixes first, as they are likely to be the easiest to port to from OS X/Darwin (i.e. nothing more than a recompile on another machine)
QuickTime asks you to upgrade on the first application start of each day it's used.
... change your date back at this point.
BEFORE starting QuickTime change your date to a MUCH higher year e.g. 2020.
Then start QuickTime.
When asked to "Why upgrade?" click "Later." NOTE: giggle to your self at this point.
QuickTime won't ask you to upgrade again til the first time you use it in 2020.
Oh yeah
Dirt doesn't need luck.
The first push to use those extra layers will be for licensing.
I doubt it will be for things that actually *improve* the end viewer's experience, but more for things that *limit* your allowed experience.
Why do I have this feeling? Before I moved from the US, I used to love wathing foreign films; I would watch Asian or European films with English Subtitles. (On VHS from any video store.) I naively figured that with DVD technology, I would be able to rent a French movie in Tokyo and be able to turn on English subtitles. I mean, your typical DVD movie is ~4GB- that leaves what, like 3GB for 'extras'? I guessed that multi-lingual subs would be a no-brainer.
Guess what? I over-estimated the no-brainer part...
With this bad taste already in my mouth, I have little hope that Quicktime will use these extra 'layers' in any way that I will find useful.
-- My Weblog.
This sounds like a start toward OS-neutral video, but until companies decide not to add proprietary layers making otherwise widely-available formats unavailable, it won't be the end./ fformats/fformats.htm; look in the "Animation" section.
Um, the QuickTime file format is the standard file format for MPEG-4 (at least, according to the MPEG group's standard). You can find free documentation for it at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/2160
The QuickTime codecs are proprietary, true, as is Apple's own implementation. But the QuickTime file format isn't.
it's that we need to NOT need it. What I mean is that the only movies I can't play right now are the ones with Sorensen and other proprietary codecs. Were Apple and folks to stop using these, I would be able to play pretty much anything.
:)
I use MPlayer. It supports every codec (save Sorensen et al) that I've run across. It has a gui now, or it runs from the command line (for all the people who want to script their multiple-file porn). Furthermore, it's actually better than WMP for several reasons, my favorite being that WMP requires you to have an entire AVI file on disk before it will play it, whereas with MPlayer you can start watching while you are still downloading it.
If this doesn't seem important to you, consider downloading a 200MB file only to discover its crappy quality. With MPlayer, you can check it as soon as you've downloaded enough bytes to play a few frames, thus saving tons of bandwidth, not to mention disk space or time spent unraring things.
I use MPlayer only, but I have seen other OSS players and they are just as good. Lastly I will mention that the day I got MPlayer up and running was the same day that I killed my last Win* partition. I haven't rebooted since
Something that most people forget is that ALL of the MPEG codecs are possibly non-free in the US due to software patent issues. This is because MPEG as an ISO standards body accepts patented technology when deciding on standards.. (oh yeah, and because the US has evil software patents in the first place) Contrast, for example W3C, the web standards body, which does not accept patented technology, although this was recently debated. So either way, open standard or not, MPEG4 is freely available for use on Linux.
Software patents are a threat to free software and free speech. Just say NO!