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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."
OK, so on Micrsoft phones windows media will be the standard and on the other phones quicktime will be? Don't you just love standards?
Martin
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.
If anybody present knows of any currently issued or applied for patent that may be applied to the use of MPEG4 video over a mobile data link, speak NOW - or forever hold your peace.
I believe both Windows Media Player and Quicktime 6 are perfectly able to play MPEG4, which is kindof the point of this story.
When will more hardware venders start waking up to the idea, that working with standard and open protocols will be the most profitable in the long term. Why pay someone like Microsoft millions when you can own your own or share instruction set for far less?
Who owns your data?
Not sure which is better, Quicktime player that crashes my phone half the time and nags me to pay to upgrade it everytime I make a phone call, or a Windows Media Player on my phone that updates itself with pyschedelic screen patterns, making it slower and slower each time...
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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This way we could have OGG for audio and MPEG4 for video. Current MEDIA processors are very advanced and low cost. So computation power wont be a bottleneck if a standard is evolved which uses both OGG and MPEG-4. M$ may be king in OS domain, but in the Chip and Digital entertainment industry its the likes of TI/Intel/ST etc which rule the roost... and they are going to push for all its worth.
In fact it is a very good thing. Normally hardware guys are not so touchy about software rights(most of the times) they are concerned with mostly selling hardware and if you buy hardware you get most software goodies for free.My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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Interesting thing about that MPEG4 'standard.' There isn't one. MPEG4 for mobile devices is a lot different than MPEG4 for desktop computers, which is a lot different than MPEG4 for the professional video market. With every new iteration of MPEG, there's some company trying to shoehorn their proprietary standard into it so they can collect money on their intellectual property in licensing fees.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, while these companies fight tooth-and-nail with each other to get every little piece of tech they can into each 'standard,' they're all hoping that Philips doesn't come along and price the technology out of a reasonable profit margin.
I'm biased in that I work for Xiph, but selling a technology based on 'If you don't buy our crap, Microsoft will own your asses' is not exactly a proper technical evaluation criterion. It's like saying, 'Please buy Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, or TWIX WILL RULE THE WORLD!'
This is technology, not a run for Student Council. Whatever happened to releasing better technology and pimping the hell out of it? Sigh.
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.Org Foundation
Go get yourself some free music.
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.
Simple - Because QuickTime is the basis for the Mpeg-4 file format.
Why is QuickTime the basis for Mpeg-4?
Because it provides a far far richer way to describe a media file.
Personally, I like being able to keep subtitles as a text track embedded in a file, or make simple edits on gigs of source data, and send a 900k file containing the edits to a friend (who already has the source data) rather than have to render the whole sequence out to a flat file.
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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.
I'm wondering.
...
The I-Motion service mentioned in the second article is a video on demand service. What videos would users demand ?
The next paragraph tells us that 100K was the maximum size until now, which results to about 15 seconds of video. The new MP4 standard would allow around 400K or 45 seconds.
You might be able to download a weather report as a video, or the finish of an important car race or something, but I don't see the point of 45 seconds moveis. It's not like you can watch the newest movei on your cellphone (not that I want to) or the news (since that's a little to long)
Linux hosting for $2.50/mo
For OSX? Sure - there was the ascii QuickTime player posted about a month ago.
For Windows? Grab Apple's windows Quicktime sample code and take a look.
There is source for a player in there, compression programs, effects frameworks, - everything you need to build your own player.
Heh, I don't think that's what the poster had in mind when he said he wanted to make Quicktime take up the full screen.
Real Networks has open sourced some of its code, creating the Helix Community. Also, the Helix Server is able to stream RealVideo, Quicktime, Windows Media and MPEG-4 from a single server running on a Linux box! Try that with any other server.
sure you can if you're logged in
Can't you imagine the horrors that await you if RealNetworks gets placed on cell phones? Unless the phone comes with a Registry Editor, you couldn't pay me to use it.
The key part being - once you install QuickTime.
QuickTime would be okayish (still controlled by Apple) if it always used open codecs, but in practice, it never does. Maybe that'll change now with v6, but their behaviour so far indicates that perhaps not. So you still need to license it from them if you want to build an independant implementation.
no shit sherlock?
which is EXACTLY why quicktime sucks on pc's.
it's the SAME GODDAMN CRAP as why realplayer sucks.
realone lets me at least fullscreen.. and the nasa tv servers that feed in real don't go down everytime there's something intresting..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A lot of people seem to dislike Quicktime, bashing it as slow, buggy or just not feeling right on the Windows platform... like it's kind of not meant to be there or something...
I fully understand these comments, QT on Windows is not too good (although I still prefer it to WMP). So it's so much more of a shame that on OSX QT is a totally different app - it works pretty damn well, and QT6 is fairly remarkably good. I have all three main media players on my Mac, WMP, RealOne, and QT, and you really do notice the difference when you are forced to use WMP or RO, buggy choppy playback now and then, nasty interfaces, streaming doesn't work as well, no instant on streaming etc.
Apparently QT is the number 1 downloaded media player, and this is great, but Apple should get the Windows port up to scratch, and show the Windows guys a little something about Apple's quality.
As for mobile phone related media - I think Apple saw this coming all along, I mean look at their recent courting of Sony Ericsson (sp?) at the Macworld expo, they had the CEO of the group up to talk, and exclusively showed off the T68i. I think Apple wants a piece of this market, and we'll be seeing them diversify more and more (as they have been doing very well recently at both ends of the scale, with the iPod and XServe, both new products in new areas for the company.).
This sig has been deprecated.
I dont know about the windows player, but on the Mac you only get to do full screen when you purchase Quicktime Pro. Where you also unlock a plethera of other goodies.
chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
Incredibly off-topic, bot:
just have your cake and eat it
mplayer plays quicktime( even sorensen ), wma, mpeg4, realaudio, just about everything I've tried.. (Fink support missing) Fullscreen, scaled, whatever you wish. And no annoying startcenters, spyware, "register this", "buy the pro version", DRM or any other shit realplayer/quicktime/ms media player player try to stuff in our throat.
Still missing the fink support...
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
Quicktime 6 is a container format defined by Apple that might be used with a huge number of proprietary codecs, as well as a software infrastructure implementing multimedia encoding, decoding, and transport using that format; saying that something uses "Quicktime 6" doesn't tell you much about whether you can read it or not; it's like knowing that you can plug into a wall socket without knowing that the voltage is right.
MPEG4 generally refers to a specific bitstream based on a specific, standard set of codecs. Apple's Quicktime 6 happens to be able to represent MPEG4, but that's where the relationship ends. The difference between Quicktime 6 and MPEG4 is the difference between being able to encode and decode streams or not.
If phone manufacturers are actually using Quicktime 6, with multiple codecs and all, then that's a major victory for Apple and a major loss for open source and interoperability. If phone manufacturers are actually using MPEG4 but Apple calls it "Quicktime 6" for PR reasons, then that's a major PR victory for Apple, but it is hard to see what that kind of usage of MPEG4 has to do with Apple. In fact, a lot of video-based devices are already using MPEG4.
In fact, the NetworkWorldFusion article suggests that the latter is the case: NTT is switching specifically to MPEG4, not to Quicktime 6. And that's actually good.
Apple has been quite aggressive with its quicktime technology. By choosing to host all major motion picture trailers, it has made a good move. I always go for the quicktime trailer rather than windows media trailer. I get to play (ffw and rwd) with my quicktime trailers, whereas for the windows media trailer, once it's looped it has to start from the beginning.
All players play mp3z these days. The why choose winamp over sonique? That's why, I think this article makes sense. I would be happier to see quicktime on my mobile, rather than MS.
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
Real.
I currently have the Mobile Real One on my Nokia phone (why no cry on slashdot to keep and to keep Real and its proprietary Real Media out of the mobile phones market?).
Unfortunately, none of the UK networks allow UDP in or out on their GPRS connections, so I can't actually stream.
Really? Then what does Ctrl+F do?
Not a thing.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
C'mon - I'd have to say that 80% of the time I download a QT piece I need yet another upgrade of QT itself. Currently I have 4 different versions of QT on my machine and each one has been upgraded or patched numerous times. This is unacceptable for a computer let alone a phone.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's because you're forced to subsidize the entire cost of Windows Media Player through buying Windows. I suppose Quicktime is at least partially subsidized through buying OS X, but Quicktime Pro's cost is porbably there for a reason...
Anyways, I don't really have problems with Quicktime in Windows. It hasn't crashed on me or exhibited weird bugs (at least, not as of yet). The only thing that bugs me about it is the inability to keep the player window on top of other apps while it's running.
The QuickTime file format is open. Which means nothing because AVI and ASF are documented as well, and at least for AVI Microsoft doesn't want royalties.
MPEG-4 is covered by more patents than the International Space Station. How anyone can call this "open" is beyond me. Maybe it's "open" as in "open your wallet any pay up, damnit!!!"?
But then, I don't get how anyone would want to watch movies on one of those tiny displays knowing that the CPU will drain the batteries within minutes.
if the camera in question was that JVC abomination he shouldn't have been surprised - the whole thing is an MS stitch-up. I was fairly intrigued about it until I read the brochure. I just shook my head at another missed opportunity as I deleted the .pdf.
That was classic intercourse!
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.
If you really want people like Texas Instruments to do something that would make a lot more sense, you would push for them to release an expanded line of DSP's and hardware that is container and codec agnostic. Demand more from your chips. Don't tell TI 'design a chip for MPEG-4,' tell them to stop making chips that require hideously expensive compilers and NDA's.
That looks sensible, but then you say:
I don't want TI to make chips that just support Ogg. I want TI to make chips that support stuff today, and give me at least a fighting chance on supporting tomorrow's Codec du Jour. People freak out if they buy a home computer that won't last them for a year.
I'm floored. Why don't you want TI to build Ogg chips? There's little in the electronics industry more general than a home computer, and you know that the reason most won't last for more than a year is a matter of abusive prorgraming by certian software vendors. Would'nt a little hardware support for patent free technology help fix things? While stuff like this is nice, would'nt it be great to have $2.00 OGG players hanging out in the toy section at Wal Mart? Is there something I don't know about those $2.00 MP3 players?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
QuickTime would be okayish (still controlled by Apple) if it always used open codecs, but in practice, it never does.
.1% of their visitors running linux couldn't see it. In fact I doubt those linux users are as concerned about the politics as about the simple fact that they can't view the content.
Two points - 1) Quicktime 6 uses MPEG 4 as the default/preferred codec rather than Sorensen (the proprietary codec everyone loves to hate)
And 2) While it's Apples fault that Sorensen *was* the former default codec it's not *entirely* Apples fault that everybody used it rather than the open alternatives that were available. Using something else was just a matter of selecting it from the pulldown or in the worst case scenario installing the codec and then selecting it from the pulldown. Unfortunately Sorensen was for the most part just plain better. Content creators are interested in file size and image quality, very few are interested in the politics of open source or the fact that the
I believe you are mistaken on this "fact" 1) As has already been pointed out, they didn't choose Quicktime, they chose MPEG-4.
They chose *both* they chose Quicktime as the player software. Apple is actually working with them to write the mobile phone version of the software - AND they are going to be using MPEG-4 as the codec.
Just because it uses an open standard in it's back end, it doesn't mean that the whole thing is open standard. We all have QuickTime installed on any Windows boxes we have, because no other player can use it's formats. That ain't an "open standard".
If it was, I'd have a player that was capable of playing full screen instead, and allowed me to zoom 200% if I wanted, instead of embedding a tiny image on a webpage. Certainly not the extremely limited nagware that is "QuickTime Player".
>but bikini girls on a 1.2 inch screen???
The technology is more compelling once you add the hands-free headset.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Since when is quicktime non-proprietary?
You say this and a lot of other negative stuff about Apple:
A lot of my dislike of QuickTime has to do with their shitty, buggy, windows viewer program
What do you expect? It's windows, right? Try getting Media Player to behave. I'll spare you, it looks something like this. Broken OLE, poorly implemented file system, non implemented portable net graphics rendering, look at my advert, download my crap, ad nauseum (that's latin for party till you puke).
You don't work on libpr0n, do you? Nah, no one running win2k has a real clue, though you do seem to be catching on (if that's you) how painful sounding. Wait, this is you, "But in all seriousness I know my life would be a lot nicer if everyone used truly open, independent file formats and codecs." Bing, bing, bing, Gold Star for you.
Oh well, thanks for crapping on Apple. It's always nice to see a postive post, full of insight on how to make things work right. It's almost as good as a porn meta site that crams banner adverts accross real porn sites. To be fair, the ratings system is value added, but some people might get the impression you are simply pimping pimps. That's much better, however, than pimping M$ especially by simply crapping on everyone else.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
QuickTime IS an open standard. It is the Sorenson codec that isn't. Quicktime also adheres to RFCs for all sorts of relevant streaming standards, hence the reason CMU's peer to peer streaming software used it.
.movs on your Linux box doesn't mean it isn't an open standard.
Just because you can't play Sorenson encoded
I don't have any Sorenson ones anyway, so I keep the QuickTime player installed for the occasional small .mov file that gets e-mailed around etc,
This applies to a lot of formats actually, including many of the windows media ones (I have used some of the AVI variants, and some ASF ones too though they tend to suck). Once you've updated the CODEC, you can play your file on most players.
So why do all QuickTime videos on Apples site (the only place I ever see them anyway) come in Sorensen? It's not so hard to pick another option from the box is it?
Yep, you're right. What they definitely didn't choose, though, was the Quicktime player, which the original comment implied...
The Sorenson CODEC is not open because Sorenson doesn't want it to be. Once MPEG-4 is more established, I think we can expect to see a shift away from Sorenson in QT files.
As for full-screen, you can get it if you pay (I know, I know, paying for software is worse than eating babies, but suck it up).
Apple's 'proprietary crap' game is horrible, I agree. Everything they do, from opening the QT file specs up to releasing their streaming server as open-source has been totally anti-consumer. Even their support of MP3 (a very established file format, though not 'open') in the iPod has to be evil somehow, because, well, it just is, right? That ties in somehow with their anticompetetive use of MP3 in iTunes too. They've got to be up to SOMETHING!
Let's face it, Apple is a corporation trying to make money, but as corporations go, I think it's a pretty good one. They're not anti-competetive or anti-consumer. Of COURSE they want people to use their stuff instead of MS's, but that doesn't mean they're evil. If we have to have a dictator, let's have one that likes us, not one that regards us with contempt like Microsoft does.
--Dan
As is just about every major manufacturer of media player software, OSes, DVD players, cellular phones, and video cameras.
So... they've left themselves an escape route, at the very least. Or perhaps they're just prepared to "embrace, extend, and extinguish" yet another industry standard.
Sure... and if you don't like the laws, become a congressmen or better yet a president and change them. Or, if you don't like the games in store -- just write your own that's better
This is not a very constructive stance. Very few people will seriously write their own media player. I suspect large percentage of slashdot readers is capable of this, but still few would be willing/able to dedicate the neccesary resources, time and effort. So your suggestion is not very helpful, is it?
I don't like Quicktime. However, I don't like it less than I don't like Windows Media Player, so go Quicktime!
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
FYI, AVI is a horrible container and only ASF v2 is openly documented by Microsoft. MS uses ASF v1 everywhere and to date I have not seen a ASF v2 file. Did you ever try to make a ASF v1 encoder? I doupt it as VirtualDub once allowed the export of ASF v1 files but they got a nasty letter from MS and had to discontinue the support.
I do support the Quicktme container (Apple got it right the first time) but (unfortunally) I also support MPEG-4. There is no way to get around the patents for video as they extend way too far. VP3 stinks compared to MPEG-4 and other codecs like WMV9 and RealVideo9 either suck and/or are closed tighter than the RIAA's fist on congress. I am giving lots of hope to Tarkin cause just maybe they might pull through with a codec that can compete. Best of luck to them.
As to your last point, people might want to watch a newscast or some other simple video service (a review of a game prehaps?) on thier phones. These services is where video on phones make sense.
For more information on QuickTime and its connection to MPEG4 follow these links.
Why QuickTime?
MPEG4
I have a website. It's about Macs.
If that was supposed to slip in right before the story was archived, you need to fix your script - way too early...