QuickTime 6 Public Beta Available

krugdm writes "Apple has announced that a public beta of QuickTime 6 is now available. MPEG-4 support is there, as well as support for other technologies, such as JPEG2000, and Flash 5. The beta expires in October. An interesting in the FAQ's says that, '... because QuickTime 6 will include royalty-bearing technologies, a new QuickTime Pro key will be required to unlock pro functionality in the final release.'" It is available for Mac OS, Mac OS X, and Windows, and supports AAC audio too. I also wonder why MPEG-4 is ".mp4". ".mp3" isn't for MPEG-3, after all. Flummery!

Comments

BROADCASTER is the cool part...

[Steve Cowan]

In my opinion even more exciting: check out QuickTime Broadcaster at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/preview/broadcaster / (only for Mac OS X)...

Quote from the site:

Welcome to the Public Preview of QuickTime Broadcaster, Apple's live encoding software that lets you produce professional-quality live events for online delivery--quickly, easily and affordably.

QuickTime Broadcaster takes full advantage of QuickTime, the most powerful digital media technology on the Internet. The combination QuickTime Broadcaster, QuickTime Streaming Server 4 and QuickTime 6 provides the industry's first end-to-end MPEG-4-based Internet broadcasting system. Whether you are a novice or a professional, QuickTime Broadcaster is designed to meet your needs.

Wow, Apple's coming out with some cool stuff lately! :)

- Steve

Why this matters, especially to *nix folks

[frankie]

Quoted blatantly from Apple's site:

MPEG-4 File Format (.mp4): Since the QuickTime file format is at the foundation of MPEG-4, QuickTime 6 supports .mp4 files as first-class citizens. So with QuickTime 6, you can author professional-quality, ISO-compliant MPEG-4 audio and video files that can be played back not only by QuickTime 6, but by any other MPEG-4-compliant player. Learn more about MPEG-4.

In other words, this has the ability to kill all the crap about "you need FOO player to see this video".

CrossOver

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Hey! It appears to work fine with CodeWeaver's CrossOver Plugin for Linux.

I just installed and ran it.

Re:So...

[Dephex Twin]

why do you think they charge for the player, something unheard of in other media formats.

That's funny, I didn't pay for mine. Yes, there is an upgrade to the pro version, which gives you video editing skills, importing features and the ability to watch the exclusive previews of Episode III when they come out.

Real has a pro version also that you would pay for, so... unheard of? I think not.

Why should I buy a copy of Pro when I won't need its features?

I don't know. Who is making you?

mark

Still no AVI with vbr audio support

[cryptochrome]

Contrary to popular perception, the primary problem with DivX support on macs is not lack of the proper codecs. There are actually three different DivX codecs for mac (the 3ivx, DivX, and ffmpeg projects - however windows media audio, which some files use, is only indirectly supported via DivX doctor). The real problem is quicktime's inability to read AVI files with variable bitrate audio encoded into them (vbr support was not part of the original official spec, and microsoft has since declared the format "obsolete" in favor of windows media). This has been a problem with quicktime for years, and they STILL haven't fixed it in QT6 preview, despite rumors to the contrary. The only solution is to extract the audio and video tracks and stick them together in quicktime format, using one of a variety of tools (see the sites above). DivX.com claims to have come up with an elegant hack around the issue, but they have yet to release it. Video LAN client claims to be able to play back DivX avis without doctoring, but doesn't work well at all yet.

The good news is you can play back just about any DivX file out there. The bad news is you're going to have to do a little more work than just downloading Quicktime and expecting it to play - You have to go get and install the DivX codecs yourself, and turn all your DivX AVIs into MOVs with the proper tools. I can only assume the Quicktime crew could have fixed this vbr AVI problem if they wanted to a long time ago, and possibly did - but for undisclosed reasons, they choose not to or aren't allowed to release or work on it.