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Quicktime 6 Becoming Mobile-Phone Standard?
k-hell writes "It seems like Apple's QuickTime 6 is becoming standard on some 44 million Japanese mobile phones. Apple and many other companies are pressuring hard to make MPEG-4 the industry standard for video-on-demand services in 3G cellular networks, and to keep Microsoft and its proprietary Windows Media out of the mobile phones market."
See this link.
MPEG-4 is the open standard that they're adopting. That Quicktime 6 has support for MPEG-4 is incidental, and not at all the core issue. After all, if the mobile phones actually supported Quicktime, they'd be able to play a lot more than just MPEG-4.
So how is QuickTime any less of a proprietary format than Windows Media? Is it just because QT happens to play MPEG-4 video as well QT video? QT does not "happen to play MPEG4", it uses MPEG4 as its "main" format. In fact, I believe the Quicktime file format (the wrappers, not the codec) was choosen by whatever consortium is in charge of MPEG4 as the official file format. Don't get it wrong... the adoption of MPEG4 by mobile phones is a victory for Open Standards - and only secondarily for QT, which now relies on them as well.
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Don't act like apple is some kind champion of open standards or something, they've been trying to cram QuickTime down everyone throats for years... and while the format itself may be open, some of the codecs are not (Sorensen Anyone?).
A lot of my dislike of QuickTime has to do with their shitty, buggy, windows viewer program (after all this time it still can't do full screen, wtf!?). But in all seriousness I know my life would be a lot nicer if everyone used truly open, independent file formats and codecs.
Apple is just as guilty of playing the proprietary crap game in terms of video as Microsoft, if not more so.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You know - once you install QuickTime, you don't have to use the player Apple provides.
They have full documentation available on the file format, and programming applications that use it for both MacOS as well as windows.
Heck - when I visited developer.apple.com to pick up the links, their ad was for a 5 volume set of books on writing programs that use QuickTime.
So, if you don't like it, download the docs, and write your own.
The headline should be "3GPP Becoming Mobile-Phone Standard", and it's not all that surprising, but it's very good news for everyone (including RealNetworks, where I'm from). We've been doing a lot of work in the 3GPP, and it's great to see that work paying dividends. If you really want to find out what this stuff is about, look at the spec (and yes, I hate the fact that these are Word docs in zipfiles as much as anyone).
.mov, .mp4, and .3gp. DoCoMo's announcement was good news for 3GPP, and given the support throughout the Helix platform for 3GPP formats, codecs, and protocols, we view it as great news for the Helix Community.
Much of the confusion around this subject comes from a lack of understanding of the difference between
As another poster pointed out, only a piece of 3GPP is based on Quicktime is the container file format itself (the bit that says "here's a 3000 byte chunk of data with this 32bit codec identifier"). Another piece (the protocol) is based on work RealNetworks pioneered (RTSP). Moreover, the Helix DNA Client supports the 3GPP specification today.
RealNetworks added MPEG-4 and 3GPP support 10 months ago with the RealSystem Mobile Server (see press release),
and MPEG-4 support will be included in the Helix DNA Server when it is released in the near future.
As for the speculation about Apple releasing 3GPP encoding support, we would welcome them to the party. In early November we announced that a version of our Producer product for creating 3GPP content will ship in Q1 of 03. (see press release) Moreover, we offer our encoding framework as open source (and naturally open APIs) so that you can add support for whatever format you want to. We've given you a head start by implementing Ogg Vorbis support.
Again, the new phones sound great. Lots of new devices for Helix encoders and servers to work with.
You might want to check your facts...
1) As has already been pointed out, they didn't choose Quicktime, they chose MPEG-4.
2) Windows load times are utterly irrelevant to this discussion since we're talking about mobile phones here.
3) The latest version of MPlayer for Linux will play Quicktime (or more accurately, the Sorenson 3 codec), as well as RealVideo9 and WMA9.
Regarding Ogg + MPEG-4 video. The licensing terms for MPEG-4 Video are pretty gnarly. How about Ogg and H.263+ (which, incidently, is what the 3GPP standardized on). That combination nearly works today in Helix DNA Client. We're already committed to making this available in our mainline products like RealOne Player and Helix Universal Server.
sure you can if you're logged in
(after all this time it still can't do full screen, wtf!?).
They make you upgrade to Quicktime Pro. The free player doesn't play full screen.
Hate to disappoint, but I didn't. Ogg Vorbis is the invention of Christopher Montgomery, our technical director. I'm just the paperwork monkey, gadabout and bon-vivant that runs the company. Xiph produces Ogg Vorbis (and a laundry list of other cool stuff), though.
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.Org Foundation
I advised a colleague in Hong Kong to buy a digital camera with Mpeg4 video.
I said, "Yes, Mpeg4 is good. It's a standard supported by Real & QT, and is meant to be a standard format like MP3. Although MS WMP will not play them, as they have their own proprietary version of something similar."
So he bought the camera. It says Mpeg4 on it. And nothing will play the files except WMP. The file name extension isn't mp4. QT couldn't play it or import it. Real - which apparently will now play all the formats - won't play it either.
Looks like it's going to be a successful format - 2 incompatible formats using the same product moniker.
Since there seems to be so much confusion about Quicktime 6 and MPEG4.
.mov or .qt) is just a container. It has preferred codec. Think of it as the equivalent of .avi in Windows. In the past, it was common that the codec was some variant of Sorenson. Since Quicktime 6, the standard is ISO MPEG4.
.mp4 and be a Quicktime container file with AAC audio and ISO MPEG4 compatible video. These are all open, documented standards (even the Quicktime file format) that anyone can use assuming they're willing to license the patents, just like for MPEG1 and MPEG2.
Quicktime is not a codec, it's a framework. Much like DirectShow in Windows, it's the video conduit of MacOS.
Quicktime is also a file format. This file format (usually
"Quicktime files" can contain and of a myriad of codecs just like AVIs can. One of these is MPEG4, of which there are a plethora of partially compatible codecs, like DIVX, MS MPEG4, Xvid and ISO MPEG4.
The MPEG people have decided that the universal MPEG4 format should be called
Hope this clears this all up for those of you unwilling to do two seconds of research.