QuickTime To Get Boost From "More Accurate" Statistics

Justen writes "Nielsen is expected to release a new set of ratings for media players on July 1. Apple lobbied the firm to use new methods to form usage statistics. The new methods are expected to dramatically increase the reported market share of QuickTime. Nielsen says it doesn't reflect a dramatic jump in actual installations, just a more accurate picture of what's been there all along. The article also mentions the new beta of QuickTime 6 and its support for MPEG-4, ahead of Real and Microsoft."

Comments

Get rid of the ad

[hackwrench]

Now if only they'd get rid of the ad that pops up for QuickTime Pro almost everytime it launches.

Re:Get rid of the ad

[PythonOrRuby]

You can actually do that yourself. Just pay the $29 for Quicktime Pro and it goes away. ;-)

Re:Get rid of the ad

[andya16]

to get rid of the ad, move up your system time a few years, start quicktime, click the 'later' button [for the last time], and reset your clock. you may need a restart in there.

Re:Get rid of the ad

[PythonOrRuby]

Yes, that darn proprietary Apple! Not like the standards-compliant folks at Real or Microsoft. And their Quicktime Streaming Server is so expensive.

I mean, why should I be forced to stream out high-quality content for free when I can pay for something inferior? This is America and we're capitalists, damn it!. We don't do things that way.

Re:MPEG-4 support

[Megane]

It won't play most DivX AVI files without conversion, because VBR MP3 audio is not in the AVI spec, and apparently Apple refuses to break the spec to play them.

Re:MPEG-4 support

[pi radians]

Straight from Apple's QT6 FAQ

Will Apple MPEG-4 interoperate with other MPEG-4 technologies?
The MPEG-4 specification is large and contains provisions for many technologies. However, any .mp4 file containing compliant MPEG-4 video and AAC audio should interoperate with QuickTime 6. If you find any interoperability issues please let us know. Other technologies that report to be MPEG-4 compliant, yet are not contained in an .mp4 file, will not interoperate with QuickTime 6 or other MPEG-4 players. Divx and MPEG-4 from Microsoft are common examples.

Well, there you kinda of have it, no. Although I heard that DivX5 will be completely compatible. But I don't know for sure.

Apple decided to actually follow standards, and not just jump on the "buzzword bandwagon" and do their own thing. Only time will tell if it pays off.

What Quicktime Needs

[Sentry21]

Apple doesn't need statistics re-worked to get better market share. They have to do very few things.

First, make the player on Windows not suck ass. As in, re-code the app. Right now it's too bloated. Make it more responsive. Optimize optimize optimize. Even MP7 isn't as slow, and that's saying a lot.

Second, use native codecs when possible. MPEG-2, for example. If you're not going to optimize your codecs for x86/pentium (and that would take a lot of work, I'm sure) then use the work of those who have. In addition to quicktime formats, use the native windows CODECs. They're all registered already, all you have to do is hook in.

Third, fix the plugin/associations. For people who know what's what, Quicktime isn't a problem (anymore), but for the average user, taking over PNG from the browser is stupid, especially since it doesn't add better handling anyway. Likewise for most other formats. Make all non-Windows non-Mac file formats open in or plugin with Quicktime by default, UNLESS there are other associations for them. Mac file formats open with QT. Windows file formats don't get touched unless the user requests it.

Basically, QT does three things. Lags my system down, wastes clock cycles doing decoding poorly, and trashes my associations unless I'm careful. Fix these three things, and more people will install it.

You can't get market share if your product sucks. Just ask Steve Case. Er, wait..

--Dan

Re:What Quicktime Needs

[feldsteins]

Apple doesn't need statistics re-worked to get better market share. They have to do very few things.
First, make the player on Windows not suck ass.

Point taken - using it on Windows isn't what it could be. I only wish Microsoft had to do such things in order to gain marketshare. Alas.

Re:What Quicktime Needs

[benwaggoner]

First off, Apple isn't trying to manipulate statistics - they were badly, badly undercounted before. In one study, only application launches were counted for playback, so any QuickTime viewed in-line inside a web browser didn't count. Since QuickTime by default works in-browser, while WM and Real go to the player by default, this erroneously hurt QuickTIme's ranking.

Kudos to Neilson for recognizing their bad statistics, and trying to correct them.

As for your other points, have you tried a recent version of QT Player for WIndows? While QT4 had an ugly UI, QT5 is quite nice, and QT6 is better yet. Also, QuickTime has a smaller installer download than either WM or Real now, when you run the web installer. How's that bloated?

There is plenty of optimization for Intel processors in QuickTime. Sorenson Video 3, the main video codec, had a lot of hand tuning in it for Intel (bear in mind Apple didn't create it).

It sounds to me like you haven't installed QuickTime since 2000 or so. Give it a whirl today and see if you like it better.

Re:What Quicktime Needs

[bruckie]

And one other thing—get rid of the purposefully annoying features.

Remove the "Do you want to upgrade to QuickTime Pro?" window that appears each time you start the program. Most people want to use QuickTime to view a movie; the free version does this fine, so there's no reason for most people to upgrade to the Pro version. All the nag screen does is annoy people.

And while they're at it, make it not put the "Upgrade to QuickTime Pro" icon on my desktop each time I launch QuickTime. If I wanted an icon there, I'd put it there. I certainly don't want an Apple ad there. It even comes back after I delete it!

These two annoyance features make me avoid QuickTime if I possibly can.

--Bruce

Re:What Quicktime Needs

[Alan Partridge]

I'd second all of that. Bear in mind that QuickTime cannot just offer blanket support for MPEG2 without attracting a licensing fee from MPEG LA, and bear in mind too that QY OPlayer is an infinitely more capable application than Media Player or Real player.

Re:What Quicktime Needs

[Sentry21]

It sounds to me like you haven't installed QuickTime since 2000 or so. Give it a whirl today and see if you like it better.

In fact, I've used every version of QT for Windows since 2.0, up to and including the latest 6.0 beta.

For comparison, my P120 can play MPEG-2 encoded music videos at what I would consider entirely an reasonable playback rate (our G4 is not much smoother) in Windows Media Player. In Quicktime (any version), it is literally unwatchable. I get most of the audio track, and the occasional frame. Usually, I get one frame and it stays like that until I get sick of it and stop the playback.

This is what I'm talking about. I don't expect to be able to play movies on a P120, but WMP handles it fine and QT chokes badly.

As for the installer, that means nothing, it's a web installer. It downloads stuff later. The UI (again, on a P120) is almost unusable, it's so laggy, while Media Player 6.4 is fine, perfectly responsive, and functional without trying to be pretty. QT is beautiful, sure, but unusable because of it on my baseline system. Again, I don't expect it to run perfectly on a measly P120, but WMP does, because it's ugly, it's boring, and it works fine.

I'm not saying the statistics weren't flawed, I'm saying to hell with the statistics, basically. Still, it's nice to see Apple with a great showing. QT is beautiful on Macs, it just sucks on Windows.

It sounds to me like you have the money for good hardware. Not everyone does. I can't expect Apple to work on shitty computers, but WMP does, so I'll keep using it until something better (hardware- or software-wise) comes along.

--Dan

For you Windows users here...

[inkswamp]

... who are compaining about the annoyances with QT for Windows, you have two simple options.

1. Send your suggestions/compaints to Apple. The current Apple isn't the same as the circa-1995 Apple that wouldn't listen to its users. Apple seems strangely eager to cater to users nowadays. Go to their site and make your thoughts known.

2. Get a Mac. I'm not being a smart-ass or a nutball Mac advocate, but Apple specializes in Mac software. Their Windows version of QT is so-so, but the Mac version is beautiful. I've used WMP, Real and QT on both platforms, and QT on Mac is light-years ahead of any other combination (with the possible footnote that Real's audio streaming seems to have a *very slight* edge, although QT's audio stream doesn't litter your drive with those annoying .rm files.)

I have a feeling that Apple will likely never make Windows QT better or equal to QT on the Mac and I can't say I totally fault them for it (not justifying it, but I can't see the rationale.)

--Rick

Re:For you Windows users here...

[feldsteins]

I have a feeling that Apple will likely never make Windows QT better or equal to QT on the Mac and I can't say I totally fault them for it

I don't agree. I believe Apple would love to make their own player the best one for the Windows platform. If they fail at that it's either because the apple developers messed up, or because the MS engineers put them at a disadvantage with "secret API calls" and the like which the MS player technology gets to have but nobody else does. I understand that some people will put zero credence in that last point while others will be sure it's true automatically. But one thing I think is obvious - Apple has no dis-incentive to making QT the best Windows media player there is.

Re:For you Windows users here...

[feldsteins]

We have a disagreement of emphasis, I think. Or, put another way, we see the "bottleneck" in different places. On the goal of making Windows QT the best it can be I see the bottleneck in their ability to do so, largely the fault of microsoft, not themselves. You see the bottleneck in their willingness to put forth sufficient effort.

Windows Media Player

[Anonymous Coward]

Have any of you who are whining about QT on windows ever used WMP on a Mac? I think not, it's bloated, only supports the WMP native format, and not responsive at all. Yet, I never hear any one on the mac side complaining, that's because we know it's there just so Microsoft can say it is.

Alternate Title Large Corp Lobbies To Change Stats

[hotsauce]

When companies can lobby to change stats in their favour, what stats am I supposed to believe? Very interesting coming on the heels of "Macs Now Found To Be Cheaper Than PCs".

Re:MPEG-4 support

[benwaggoner]

Indeed. .divx is NOT a MPEG-4 compatible file format. It is MPEG-4 video and MP3 audio in a .AVI file. Now, QuickTIme knows how to play MPEG-4 video, and MP3 audio, and AVI files, so it might work, but it won't work because of QuickTime's .mp4 compatibility.

QuickTime's MPEG-4 playback doesn't do B-frames (so that only every other frame of a B-frame encoded file will be shown). Folks targeing QT playback with .divx shouldn't use those (GMC and quarter pel motion estimation are just fine, and quarter pel especially has a good quality boost).

Re:Alternate Title Large Corp Lobbies To Change St

[2nd Post!]

Read the article.

Apple got them to recalculate the stats in their favor because their earlier algorithms were, um, erroneous.

Then think about this quote, from Mark Twain I believe. "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics."

Statistics is all about taking raw data and making predictive or explanatory statements from them.

How can you count Quicktime usage?

How about downloads per month?
How about upgrades per release?
How about hits to Apple.com/quicktime per month?
How about number of .movs downloaded per month?

All of them are reasonable.

Would you believe, that until now, Quicktime .movs streamed to web browsers weren't counted? That's what Apple convinced Nielson to do. Count embedded .movs.

Re:Alternate Title Large Corp Lobbies To Change St

[benwaggoner]

You do what you always do: read the fine print about how the study was run, and what it measured.

Apple lobbied Neilson because their methadology was really, really, bad, and way overcounted Real and way undercounted QuickTime. The linked article shares some details about what went wrong before, and what they changed.

Draw your own conclusions from that about how the final numbers are relevant to what you're trying to do.

Honestly, it's hard to say what decisions these kinds of studies help us understand. They tell us how many individual users watched what file types. That doesn't really tell us all that much.

Re:MPEG-4 support

[Aram Fingal]

I have been able to play all MPEG-4 and DivX versions of AVI except for DivX 5.0.2 with Quictime 6 beta and a few components downloaded free from Versiontracker.

For DivX 5.0.2, you can use the free (GPL) program VirtualDub (www.virtualdub.org) on Windows to convert the file to a codec which QuickTime can understand and then transfer the file back to a Mac. Be warned, it took hours for Windows to convert a file I had from DivX 5.0.2 to Cinepak. Fortunately, it only took minutes for QuickTime Pro on the Mac to convert the file back from Cinepak to standard MPEG-4.

Statistics have already been released.

[finnatic]

There are two *newer* stories on cnet than the one referenced:

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-938423.html

and

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-938827.html.

The result? Apple is closer to it's competitors, but Real still leads, and is losing it's lead to MSFT.

A better link for Nielsen/Net Ratings (or whatever they're called - at least it's not "monday"):
http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/