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QuickTime 6 Public Beta Available

Posted by pudge on from the i-got-yer-royalty-fee-right-here dept.

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!

10 of 366 comments (clear)

  1. So... by Clue4All · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's out for MacOS, MacOS X (BSD), and Windows. Remind me again why we can't have a native Linux version of it?

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    1. Re:So... by bsartist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      had a stupid business model.

      Couldn't have said it better myself. Trying to sell software to a community that expects everything to be given away for free is a pretty stupid business model.

      they won't pay for things they already own - would you?

      As a matter of fact, I did. I bought Civ:CTP from Loki, even though I already owned the Windows version.

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  2. No-Wait Streaming by shmert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the coolest things they demoed for Quicktime 6 was no-wait streaming, where there's no pause while the frames get buffered. You can even scrub back and forth over the timeline, streaming. Combined with an Xserve dishing out >500 simultaneous DVD-quality quicktime streams, Quicktime is looking pretty sweet. Now why don't more sites start using it?

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    1. Re:No-Wait Streaming by schwatoo · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Huh? All streaming players support this to some extent, you just switch the buffering time to be very low, or zero. Are you sure you're not getting confused with very fast streaming, over a LAN?

      No. I've been playing around with QT6's "Instant On" streaming all morning. It's very impressive. It isn't just a case of having a low buffer time. Try it, you might be impressed too.

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  3. It's simple, really. by tswinzig · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I also wonder why MPEG-4 is ".mp4". ".mp3" isn't for MPEG-3, after all.

    That's because geeks at some hoighty-toighty European institute created the MPEG-2 Layer 3 format and file extension, while Steve Jobs wrote Quicktime 6 and it's file extension, all by himself, "out of one, solid block of wood."

    Or it could be because .mp4 for MPEG-4 makes much more sense than .mp3 for MPEG-2 Layer 3, in hindsight. (How many .mp2 files do you have laying around?)

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  4. mp4 by yawnmoth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I also wonder why MPEG-4 is ".mp4". ".mp3" isn't for MPEG-3, after all.

    this is nothing new. The people over at DivXNetworks have been using the mp4 extionsion for mpeg-4 for just about as long as they've been around. it has less restrictions than the avi file format does.

    I just wonder if they are as "ISO compliant" as Apple's gonna be, heh.

  5. Re:Not flummory, marketing... wait... by Coyote · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Quoting the MPEG site,on MPEG-4 at http://mpeg.telecomitalialab.com/standards/mpeg-4/ mpeg-4.htm

    "MPEG-4, with formal as its ISO/IEC designation 'ISO/IEC 14496', was finalized in October 1998 and became an International Standard in the first months of 1999. The fully backward compatible extensions under the title of MPEG-4 Version 2 were frozen at the end of 1999, to acquire the formal International Standard Status early in 2000."

    So MPEG is trying to capitalize on themselves?

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  6. mpeg-4 by simpl3x · · Score: 2, Interesting

    i believe that this is in reference to the compression quality of mpeg-4. the licensing issues have made apple quite frustrated, since qt6 will be the first mpeg-4 capable media player available. i am not sure of the number of "dvd quality" streams that qt6 can handle, but the rumors are that it will be a great media server. we'll all believe 500 streams when we see it though.

  7. Re:How much better is AAC, anyway? by nguyenhm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apparently, AAC is the Cadillac of lossy encoding, with the highest quality for a given bitrate you can get. Developed by Bell Labs or something like that.

  8. Show me one reason to use it. by Jacek+Poplawski · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not open source (DivX _is_ - libavcodec). There is no Linux version. Why should I care?