Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
What do you know about World Politic? Find out in this quiz
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
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
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.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thats a very US-centric view.
Try using a mobile phone in a country where everyone doesn't drive, like the Far East.
Or even here in the UK. Enough of us spend enough god-foresaken hours on trains and in brain-dead jobs, so the simple pleasure of a whizzy mobile phone is immeasurable.
It's this attitude (well, along with geographical spread) which makes the US the least-developed for mobile services.
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.