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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!
It's out for MacOS, MacOS X (BSD), and Windows. Remind me again why we can't have a native Linux version of it?
Is your browser retarded?
No, it stands for MPEG-1 Layer 3.
Is your browser retarded?
No. MP3 is for "MPEG Layer 3", not "MPEG-3".
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
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?
You drank my drink, you drunk!
noda132 said:
Uh, no. It's short for MPEG1 Layer 3. Honest! Truly!
:-)
I also wonder why MPEG-4 is ".mp4". ".mp3" isn't for MPEG-3, after all. Flummory!
Obviously they are trying to get MPEG-4 off the ground by riding on the popularity of the widly known ".mp3" file extention.
They are using a familiar "brand name" name, and mp3 is the "Coca Cola" of computers.
Just another marketing trick...
...not supposed to make any sense, just to give people that warm fuzzy feeling inside and get the royalties flowin.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Quote from the site:
Wow, Apple's coming out with some cool stuff lately! :)
- Steve
Ok I know we are all the tech people of the world (us slashdot readers that is) but geesh why do these companies continue to name things in order to confuse. You won't convince me that Apple isn't trying to ride the coat-tails of popularity and press that .mp3 gets. These poor computer users that don't live the life like we do, how on earth can they expect to keep up???? If anyone has an answer i would love to hear it And if you think I am full of it you have never worked a day in the life of a tech support person we (the all knowing are definately in the minority)
***I GOT NUTHIN***
Oh boy. Prepare to get reamed, luddite.
.mp3 to hijack and "embrace and extend" the .mp4 extension. But I'm too lazy to cite examples. Anyone?
Interesting to note, this isn't the first time people have attempted to use the popularity of
m00.
In other words, this has the ability to kill all the crap about "you need FOO player to see this video".
I also wonder why MPEG-4 is ".mp4". ".mp3" isn't for MPEG-3, after all.
.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?)
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
"And like that
[Extremely relevant multimedia reply - Requires Slashdot Pro to read. Please submit your Visa number....]
"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly"
Time to rid my site of Micro$oft asf files!
Hmm, come to think of it, they did mention Windows where the file type is determined from its 3-character suffix... :-/
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
Now Qt 6 is released, the KDE team can start working on KDE 6 !
Yea, but I'm a vi kind of guy...
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.
Hey Pudge, did you mean flummery?
flummery (flm-r) n. pl. flummeries
I'm pretty sure you did...
As a mac user, i'm glad they FINALLY let this thing out the door.. however, i am saddened they appear to be backing down on their claim they would not release MPEG-4 support until the per-play licensing bullshit was dropped.
.mp4s all over those file sharing services, and divx will continue to slowly take over as the average man's codec of choice..
Too bad, since apple is one of maybe two groups in the entire world capable of putting pressure on the ivory tower of the MPEG-4 patent holders.. and i was *REALLY, REALLY* looking forward to using MPEG-4, since i really hate divx. But, it looks now like we won't get to see
Why the hell did the MPEG4 people have to go and kill their own format this way??
Hey! It appears to work fine with CodeWeaver's CrossOver Plugin for Linux.
I just installed and ran it.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
This is great. Quicktime should now be able to play XviD and DivX video. XviD especially. That's nice.
I was really hoping Apple would move more towards Free formats, however. AAC has good quality, but it's a nightmare of licensing restrictions. It looks like I'll still have to go to the QuickTime Components Project for Ogg Vorbis and exa-mozilla MNG support. All of my music is in Vorbis, and my movies convereted to OGM from AVI and MOV containers. OGM is a really nice container. No sync or seek problems at all. You can embed XML streams, for whatever purpose you'd like.
Even more importantly, QuickTime still doesn't have a lossless audio compression codec. Some FLAC would be nice. It really looks like FLAC might be moving closer to the Ogg project.
I mean, hey, unless Apple is going to make a car stereo system, this is probably the best component to plug into an OS X "digital hub." It does FLAC, with the new firmware.
Still, the ability to play XviD (valid MPEG-4 video) is a great step in the right direction. Kudos.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
so I figured that I would try to see if we could get Divx 5 to work in QuickTime now, as both claim to be ISO compliant.
well, first I had to use virtual dub to remove the audio from my Shawshank rip (Divx 5's avi->mp4 convertor doesn't seem to like files with audio) then I was able to convert it to mp4. However, when "run" in quicktime it gets the timing correct, but doesn't display anything (much like audio playing) it doesn't even display a blank window of correct size like it does with avi's it doesn't know the codec for.
oh well.
that comercially mass-marketed consumer-level software, by and large, has yet to really succeed in Linux. Loki Games just recent went belly up, and Quake III for Linux was a giant sucking hole on id's cash flow statement.
Considering that Apple's marketing plan for QT is to give away the base player for free and hope that a small percentage of those users will pay for registration, is there really any hope that they can recover their investment on the Linux side?
You know, I wonder if this really matters. I've recently discovered mencoder (part of mplayer) and it's libavcodec. It's absolutely amazing. I can compress ~5G mpeg to about 1.5G without really any loss in quality. Does QT add anything except compatibility with a popular format? If you're encoding on your own, try mencoder
Please excuse my ignorance in advance, but why bother with 3 character extensions - would it kill anyone to call it .mpeg4? Are there even browsers out there that only support 3CE's? I'm sure that nobody's writing any 16 bit editors/players for this format, so why worry about backwards compatibility to Win3.1?
-BbT
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.
My first reaction to this is, MPEG-4 will probably also come and go, unless it is the holy grail of video compression - we'll be able to improve it in the future. Secondly, it looks like they're quietly mentioning some DRM stuff being thrown in, which may or may not be a good thing.
The Internet Media Streaming Alliance, which is apparently located in Tuvalu, has a decent, fairly trustworthy collection of "Sponsor Members," including Apple, Cisco, IBM, Philips, and Sun Microsystems. I'd much rather trust DRM technology to these companies than Microsoft, Real, the RIAA, the MPAA, Fritz Hollings, or AOL-Time-Warner-Netscape-HBO-CNN (even though that last one is a "Participant Member"). It looks as if this latest scheme will focus on quality, while quietly adding in DRM - which is the only way it's going to work in the current climate. And I think it would be acceptable to the public: If you put out a product that is superior enough in quality, consumers are willing to sacrifice some of their time-shifting and space-shifting rights. If the balance isn't quite right, then the technology will have to be adjusted. The same thing happened with DVDs and the DivX format (the Circuit City thing) - Quality was higher, and even though the average user couldn't record DVDs and retain the same quality, consumers are increasily accepting the new techology. DivX didn't balance our fair use rights properly and failed.
I hope MPEG4 gets the balance right, so we can finally get a popularly-accepted standard for digital video. It's nice to have free video files available on P2P networks but the quality isn't there, and most of us would be willing to pay the right price to get a high-quality video file. If not, there's still regular old TV.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Real sells their servers while Apple gives QT Server away. Real's business model probably has the Linux server income subsidizing most or all of the expense of porting the player.
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.
So apple, deciding they cannot make money on it, does not realease anything for Linux. Then codeweavers releases the crossover plugin and does :). Anybody who says money can't be made selling to Linux users should take a look at how they are going about it.
I'll admit to the fact that one of the reasons I use Linux is because I dont have to pay for it. Having said that, I have paid for a copy of the crossover plugin, and I have also paid for RedHat's little subscription up2date service. The thing that's nice about Linux, is that to get into the game, you can do it for free. If you are willing to pay you can get enhancements, increased convenience, etc. I'm not forced into it like I would be if I ran Windows.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Before I install anything Quicktime related again, Apple is going to have to win me back with a much better interface and functionality. I used to enjoy Quicktime, back when you could fullscreen videos without registering, back when the controls were usable and ergonomic, back when there wasn't a constant nag screen, back when there wasn't some overpaid designer's faux brushed metal skin cluttering up the window.
To anyone who's installed the new beta: Have these issues been fixed at all? Since OSX, Apple has been getting things right again, and I'd love to see them make Quicktime function like it did in the past. As it is now, I even choose (gack!) RealMedia before Quicktime.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Why the hell did the MPEG4 people have to go and kill their own format this way??
They probably don't care so much about computer playback of video. I think the MPEG video codecs were mostly aimed at television sets. They think of the television model where the $5 for the decoding patents pales in comparison to the cost of the hardware. The computer market is a jucy secondary market, but they don't want to canabalize the TV market. This assumes HDTV in most countries will adopt MPEG4. They are also looking at the cost of developing the technology and thinking, we don't have a plan for profiting here...
MPEG4 is chock full of computer file formats too so if it takes off at all there will be a lot of partial MPEG4 support, and no single player that supports everything. Some will use patented tech, some not, at least with MPEG4 the competitor can pay the patent holder a royalty and try to compete.
Do you have any evidence to back up these claims, or are they just paranoid conspiracy theories?
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
> In other words, this has the ability to kill
> all the crap about "you need FOO player to
> see this video".
Actually, this makes the situation a lot worse.
Welcome to codec hell. MPEG4 is the Tower of
Babel - it guarantees that unless you use
Windows, you will never have support for the
latest codecs. MPEG4 is a complete
ANTI-standard.
The only way to make something a standard is
to limit the codecs in use. Downloadable
codecs are a nightmare.
Curious if Linux users can get it to work! Post here if you do.
-M
today is spelling optional day.
You can download the source code here:
b eta-framework-1.0.tgz b eta-codecsbase-1.7.tgz b eta-sysdep-win32-3.0.tgz b eta-sysdep-macos-old-6.0.tgz b eta-sysdep-macos-x-1.1.tgz
http://developers.apple.com/downloads/qt6beta/qt6
http://developers.apple.com/downloads/qt6beta/qt6
http://developers.apple.com/downloads/qt6beta/qt6
http://developers.apple.com/downloads/qt6beta/qt6
http://developers.apple.com/downloads/qt6beta/qt6
Unfortunately the Sorrosen codec is not part of the download.
M$ formats are so %#@ing proprietary and obscure.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I am fairly certain that Microsoft is the
reason - one part of their support of Apple,
financially and by producine IE and Office,
is that Apple must do whatever they can to
not support Linux.
This doesn't sound right. Microsoft entered into their agreement with Apple years ago, before Linux was even on anybody's radar. Doesn't sound to me like such a clause is very likely to exist.
Even if this were true, Microsoft's agreement with Apple has expired. The field is wide open now.
I work for a company that's had an end-to-end MP4 solution on the market for over a year. Check Google.
Get with it, Apple. Sheesh.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
While this is great news, also note that a Public Preview of Quicktime Broadcaster is out.
t er
This allows you to encode video (for free) for delivery to a streaming server.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/preview/broadcas
Fantastic, so by "support for other technologies, such as JPEG2000, and Flash 5" I presume you mean "Quicktime will take over other formats on your computer like JPEG2000 and Flash 5 wether you like it or not". Quicktime is notorious for aggressively taking over associations, I'm dreading seeing it take over even more.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
"Instant-on" is not quite the same thing as setting your buffer size to zero. Typically, setting the buffer size to zero in a player means that there is no buffering for the entire duration of the program. This means that if you want to watch without interruptions, the available bandwidth between the server and you must exceed the bit rate of the stream at all times; since the encoding is at a variable bit rate, you will often see peaks in the bit rate which need really high bandwidth to sustain the stream.
However with "instant-on", the playback begins immediately, but the buffer continues to build. This means that you need a fairly high bandwidth initially in order to start the playback and build up the buffer, but--after that initial period--the buffer prevents interruptions which would otherwise have been caused by the peak rate of the stream going beyond the available bandwidth. So "instant-on" is not the same as setting your buffer to a fixed size of zero. Now this isn't really revolutionary; to researchers in the field the question is why everyone hasn't been doing this all along.
As an aside, the "skip protection" feature of Quicktime streaming is simply over-buffering; i.e. using the available bandwidth to build up the client buffer as much as possible instead of maintaining a fixed size buffer.
QuickTime doesn't really have any major advantages over other technologies as far as I can tell, other than it being made by Apple and therefore given lots of marketing. Why should I choose QuickTime over Real, or Windows Media, or hell even standard MPEG?
Quicktime streaming has an advantage to broadcasters: the server is open-source and free as in beer. You can download the latest snapshot via CVS, and contributions to the source from the public are welcome. The streaming protocols are all standards based (RTP/RTSP). Of course, you could always encode the data with a proprietary codec, but if you used an open codec, then the streams could be played back by any standards compliant player, not just Quicktime Player.
Finally, although ideas like "skip-protection" and "instant-on" are fairly obvious to anyone who spends some time thinking about these issues, the fact remains that only Apple seems to be taking the initiative to incorporate these into its servers and clients. What new features (from a streaming perspective) have Real and Microsoft offered in the new releases of their products? While Apple does have a big marketing push, that does not take away from the fact that there is solid work going on behind the scenes.
Oh, how long will I have to wait for MPEG-2 video support from Quicktime? Please tell me it'll be there come "late summer."
Remember folks, although the QuickTime player does not run on Linux, Apple is still pushing very very hard for the adoption of ISO-compliant MPEG 4 media (and other types of cross platfrom media). This means you will not have to worry about which media player you have residing on your desktop. Once these royalty issues clear up (which they may have), most media players should be supporting mpeg4 by the year's end.
So, seriously, who cares if this media player can't run on Linux. Ya I guess being able to have the sorenson codec would be nice, but I think a lot of web developers are going to favor content which plays any place on anything. I know I will. It'll be nice not to save content in multiple formats or write dumb java scripts which check media players.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
It's DVD quality in the same vein that mp3 is cd quality.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
AAC is Advanced Audio Coding. it was actually created by Dolby Labs, with help from Sony, AT&T, and Fraunhofer.
And yes, it is really quite excellent. I'd say a 64 Kbps AAC is typically comparable to a 128 Kbps MP3, although it is somewhat dependent on content. I really, really hope that a future version of the iPod and other mobile devices support it.
My video compression blog
It still can't play MPEG2 files though (at least in my OSX QT6 vers). I was hoping for at least that in the new release. MPEG2 is being used more and more at work and macs are getting passed over because of this limitation. How hard could it be to implement MPEG2?? VLC and MPlayerOSX can play MPEG2. Argh!
Apple will never port QuickTime to Linux in the near future, for pure political reasons. Luckily Quicktime is a fairly open standard so to everyone interested in an open and free implementation of QuickTime I strongly recommend to visit the OpenQuickTime Site on SourceForge. There are more links available there.
So, no need to buy anything :)
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
UH it doesn't have the Sorenson codec which is the hole point of Running quicktime.
Anyway just use the Crossover Plugin from codeweavers.org. It runs quite nice and helped out watching all the bootleg trailers for star wars. =)
I was talking to a QuickTime guy at WWDC, and he said that QT6 will do MPEG2, but it will be doing it by leveraging the existing MPEG2 code in the DVD decoder. That way it can fall under the same license.
It looks like they haven't done that work for this preview release. QT6 in Jaguar does do MPEG2, though. Hopefully the final version of QT6 will do it. Or maybe Jaguar will have shipped by then.
Avi
You mean the viMac?
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
"But Apple knows that Linux users, as a rule, don't buy software. No third party would license QuickTime for Linux, because they couldn't make any money on their product. So there's zero motivation for Apple to port QuickTime to Linux."
I am a professional. If I need a tool, I evaluate the pros and cons of each solution offered; price is only a factor. Every other professional I know does this too. That is all.
I've bought a number of Linux software products and in each case it was because I felt the commercial solution matched my requirements best.
This comment is just FUD.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
It's quite rare to expect to have to pay to see an advertisement for something. High-res or not, it's an advert.
Not that it particularly matters to me, because Ep 2 was the worst yet, and the only thing I'm paying for as regards to the next one is my newsgroup access.
- Chris
Any guesses as to when .mp4 playback comes to the iPod? It seems like such a logical next step that I'm almost ashamed to post about it. Does anyone know of any reason it couldn't happen? Soon that 1000 song toting iPod could carry a lot more music. Any idea how much more?
Keep up the nice work, Apple!
---
The harder you try, the luckier you are.
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.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I remember when the Iomega Zip drive came bundled with softtware to rip CD's to .mp2's, seems like they were around 30MB for a standard lengths song.
Sir Timbly of Cannatuna, offical Knight of the Heptagonal Table
It's not open source (DivX _is_ - libavcodec). There is no Linux version. Why should I care?
mp3 is MPEG 1 Layer 3 (audio).
The ".mp3" format can be MPEG-1 audio layer 3 for 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, and 48 kHz sample rates, or MPEG-2 audio layer 3 for lower sample rates.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I took a 5 MB MP3 file encoded at 160k and exported it to MP4, which uses AAC for the audio encoding.
The file sounds the same to me and has been reduced to 3.1 MB.
[Because of MPEG audio layer 3], there is not MPEG-3, and we jumped directly to MPEG-4.
Actually, it wasn't because of the naming of the audio codec at all. The MPEG-3 committee actually found that what they wanted to accomplish could be done with MPEG-2.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You chose Win98 knowing that it is insecure and buggy.
I chose Windows ME (also called Win98 Third Edition) because my computer vendor didn't have Windows 2000 available at a price I could justify to the purchasing department (i.e. my parents). Not everybody is physically old enough to have graduated from college and found a job yet.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Both Windows and OS X use 3 character file extensions
Sure, Mac OS X has ".app" extensions on programs (compare Windows's ".exe"), but instead of ".dll" for libraries, Mac OS X uses ".framework", a nine-character extension.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Except .m3v refers to MPEG-2 Layer 3 audio (sample rate 11 kHz, encoding frequencies to 8 kHz) with high-frequency information in the PlusV encoding based on a mostly-noise model of the frequencies between 8 kHz and 16 kHz.
Will I retire or break 10K?
However, I don't think it knows how to make MPEG-4 audio (either AAC or CELP).
Both AAC (MPEG-2 advanced audio codec) and MP3 (MPEG-1 layer 3 audio codec) worked in MPEG-2; I can't see why MP3 wouldn't work within the MPEG-4 framework.
But then, I haven't read the standard.
Will I retire or break 10K?
These links don't work. I doubt it very much that apple would publish their sources and even if they did they'd make you sign up for their "developer connection" site first before they'd let you have them. Oh and it's developer.apple.com, not developers.apple.com.
Finaly someone who knows his stuff, there is also MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2 which are used by many MPEG-1 video files for audio, it was also common to distribute music in the "mp2" before the mp3 encoding technology was invented by Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.
Some use Mac OS X. (I'm one.) We're pleased to hear about this. It was posted in the Apple section, which you can opt not to view. No-one's forcing you to read this story, to use the software, or even to care about it.
This site isn't just for things you personally care about. (Thank goodness!)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
You mean "less" than just another unix.
No: more. Why would the choice of more APIs mean less than another UNIX?
Choice is good:
Fink
GNU-Darwin
Cocoa(AKA NeXTStep 5.0)
Carbon
Java
alternatives like Tcl/Tk, Qt, raw X11R6...
Nobody "forced" you to do anything. Your v4 keys aren't worthless if you stayed with v4 of Quicktime under OS9. Why do you seem to believe that considerable upgrades to software should be free? Your QtPro v4 under OS9 works just fine if you didn't upgrade to v5 for OS9. What exactly are you complaining about? Because you don't really make any sense. Unless your point is that you feel that you somehow deserve free upgrades to existing software. Sort of like demanding a 2003 BMW for free to replace your 2002 BMW because you already paid for it once. If you're going to complain why not make a valid complaint, at least.
Wrong: as posted elsewhere, QuickTime relies on much more than the UNIX APIs of Mac OS X.
There's even QuickTime for Java, but that does not mean that you can use QuickTime on any platform which runs Java...
The Quicktime 6 Apple released is not a Beta...but rather a PREVIEW...it might seem like semantics if we weren't aware that Apple completing the software in February, and has been unable to fully release it, due to licensing issues. Being a Beta would imply that it is less stable than and not tested enough to be general release...if anything, its been tested more than a GM.
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
I just bought a TiBook, and was pissed that there was no way to play full-screen video. I have been urged to "Go Pro!" but I am NOT paying 29.99 extra just to have full-screen!
So, I got Cellulo (available from versiontracker) which is a superb Free Quicktime player, and watch video fullscreen - without paying Apple MORE money!
P.S. To those who say that it's my duty to "Support Apple!" I urge you to look on my desk - a new Powerbook is certainly support enough in my opinion.
P.P.S. To get rid of those annoying Quicktime Pro nag screens, use this trick:
1. Before you ever launch Quicktime, set your clock to some point in the distant future (I used 2020).
2. Run Quicktime, and when you are asked if you want to "Go Pro!" hit the "Later" button.
3. Set your clock back to the correct time and date.
4. Enjoy no more nag screens until after the date you set in the control panel!
quicktime 6 is now in beta? windows, too?
when did quicktime 5 ever leave beta? i never did get quicktime 5 in windows to work without being crashy/buggy.
quicktime on the mac is a really decent product. i wish they would completely overhaul the windows version from the ground up though...(oh, and a linux version too, please!)
Yea, but I'm a vi kind of guy...
Then QuickTime VI is player for you!
!rimshot
It's funny, when I download an mp3 using Mozilla on MacOS X, the default file extension is always ".mp3.mp2", and the file format popup says "MPEG 2", so someone obviously agrees with you!
[ReidNews]
How about every single thing Apple develops that Linux folk appropriate or use?
.mp4 format.
.mpg videos for you to watch? A world of *only* Quicktime or AVI files?
I'm not saying it's right or wrong...
But Aqua widgets and Platinum themes and the modern WiMP paradigm and, gee, laser printers, TrueType fonts, PostScript fonts, multi-monitor setups, sound on PCs, wysiwyg, etc.
To put it another way, Apple is going to popularize MPEG4 where Microsoft would as soon abandon it in favor of WMF, an in popularizing MPEG4 increase the number of files you can view in
Imagine if there were no
And now you ask, "Why should I care?"
GPL Deconstructed
Funny, QT6 is free. You can download it now from www.apple.com/quicktime.
Oh, and before you start calling other people slaves, you might look at the ideology you are advocating, and that of the people you support. RMS's communism made more slaves than capitalism ever had.
People say those who work for companies are "slaves" to them, but they ignore the fact that those employees could leave any time they wanted- but in the socialist paradises they advocate, leaving your job means death.
Lets stop with the doublespeak. If you want QT then help make such technology for Linux.
Or buy it. IF you don't then stop complaining.
Or do you think you have the right to something for nothing? Thats you're business model? Historically, it never works.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
Listening to that on one of those teenie Mac speakers, of COURSE it's not going to sound any different. ;) While I can't entirely vouch for the quality of AAC, from what I've heard, it's really fitting to be alongside MPEG-4 video -- MPEG-4 video was designed for Internet viewing, and IIRC, AAC was designed for the same purpose.
Really, it comes down to this:
In the beginning, there was MPEG-1 and MPEG-1 Layer 1,2,3 audio. Big deal, koz they were all more-or-less firsts in semi-quality video compression.
Then came (in no particular order) MPEG-2 and MPEG-4. MPEG-2 was a format designed for DVDs and other high-resolution media, and AC3, its companion, designed for high-quality audio. MPEG-4 was designed for Internet viewing, and, as I said, AAC was (is) its companion.
That said, there is a lot of crossing over within the formats. Personally, I encode DivX video with MPEG-1 Layer 3 audio (VBR, which is against the AVI standard, bad me, but oh well).
I don't mean to get off on a rant here, but the largest problem I see with MP3 is that people aren't using VBR. It's an EXCELLENT thing: take bits from places where they aren't needed and put them where more bandwidth is needed. You can have a "CD-quality" MP3 file using VBR -- at lower filesizes -- that you would need 320Kbps CBR to achieve.
Well, that, and people are still using Xing. stop it! Use LAME + EAC to rip and encode your CDs. Honestly.
And now, the obligatory plug. For more information on MP3 encoding, visit r3mix.net. Of course, these are facts, not opinions; I couldn't be wrong.
[insert witty comment here]
I also wonder why MPEG-4 is ".mp4". ".mp3" isn't for MPEG-3, after all. Flummery!
.mp2 is for mpeg2 (though .m2v and .m2a more common for elementary streams)
.mp2, and is also called "Musicam" for historical reasons) works better for many encoders at high bitrates.
Umm, because
.mp3 is a mutant. It stands for MPEG-[1|2] Layer III. MPEG-1 defined the standard, and MPEG-2 allowed a wider range of bitrates, so MPEG-2 Layer III is pedantically correct, but MPEG-1 Layer III is probably not incorrect. Further, Layer II (which you sometimes also see as
But the real confusion here is that MPEG-3 doesn't exist. It was reserved for an HDTV standard, but ATSC and friends decided that MP@HL MPEG-2 works just fine. ATSC, like NTSC DVD's use AC3 audio. (Even though most players are perfectly happy with it, MPEG-2 audio is not legal for NTSC DVDs, only PAL).
Now, as to what MPEG is thinking with the next standards (-7 and -21), who knows...
-Z
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
I downloaded and installed the Quicktime 6 Preview for OS X last night. My main reason for doing so was to preview the AAC audio codec (which is of course placed into an MP4 (MPEG4) file format. I had read that 64kbps AAC files were comparable to uncompressed CD audio. I created test audio files at three different bitrates: 16, 64, and 96.
The 16kbps file was created just so I could hear what AAC artifacting sounded like. Yes, it sounded bad but the good news was that there was no ONE thing you could point to as an obvious red flag. That and the entire 2:45 song totaled up to less than 350 KB!
The 64kbps was decent I will admit. However, the compression was too obvious for my tastes. I would compare it to a 128 kbps MP3 file. I discarded it as being unacceptable.
The 96kbps version was pretty heavenly. It sounds just as good as my 192kbps MP3...if not BETTER.
Bottom line, if this codec is supported by the iPod, I'll be able to get 1600 songs on it at a good quality, instead of my current 800+.
"War makes me sad." - Me