QuickTime 7 Released, HD Movie Trailers Available

mmarlett writes "The long-anticipated release of Tiger has brought with it QuickTime 7, which was available on Thursday separately from Tiger, but not yet available for anything other than Mac OS X. That's to be expected, but as I was checking out the recent trailers for Batman Begins and Serenity, I realized that they (along with many other things) were also available as giant H.264 HD Quicktime files that require QuickTime 7. Makes me wish I had that 30" display."

Comments

30" Display?

[darkov]

Makes me wish I had a Mac fast enough to play the bloody things. See http://trailers.apple.com/quicktime/hdgallery/reco mmendations.html

fp?

Re:30" Display?

[stereotree]

Here are the stats from that page on what you need for HD to run smoothly thru Quicktime 7: (NOTE that you pretty much need a G5)

Recommended Hardware Configurations for H.264 High Definition (HD) Playback

To play high definition video, a large amount of data must be processed by your computer. A powerful system will deliver the best playback experience.

For 1280x720 (720p) video at 24-30 frames per second:

* 1.8 GHz PowerMac G5 or faster Macintosh computer

* At least 256 MB of RAM

* 64 MB or greater video card

For 1920x1080 (1080p) video at 24-30 frames per second:

* Dual 2.0 GHz PowerMac G5 or faster Macintosh computer

* At least 512 MB of RAM

* 128 MB or greater video card

Re:30" Display?

[MBCook]

For what it's worth, I tried the Batman trailer on my 1.7 GHz PowerBook G4 15" (with 1 gig of RAM) and it looked great. That said, it did drop a few frames here and there. But the fact that the video was 1280x526 and my screen is 1280x768 (or something like that) meant that it was running basically full screen at native resolution and it looked AMAZING. I would LOVE to see one of those on a 30" screen attached to a dual G5 (I'll have to try that next time I go to a computer store :).

But they play on my laptop pretty well. There is no reason Apple couldn't start releasing trailers in 480p (720x480) that would play on most recent Macs without a problem.

Re:30" Display?

[hna]

I'm able to play most of the 720p's on my mac mini (G4 1.25GHz w/ 512M), there are however some small jerkiness in some scene changes.

1080p opens and the resolution is wider than what my monitor likes (1280x1024) and resizing to fit the screen helps a little, but not even close of being viewable. A couple of frames from here and there. Sound works fine though ;)

I think the faster mac mini will play the 720p's ok, but 1080p requires much more power...
Oh well, I didn't buy the computer to watch some trailers.

Couple x86-friends of mine tested these on their machines:
- 2200+ just barely played some of the ones with lower bitrate like the wildlife.
- a64 3000+ played 720p's with about 75% cpu load, and 1080p failed b/c mplayer (he thinks).

Re:30" Display?

[oscarmv]

The 1280x544 Batman one worked fine in my 15" 1GH Titanium Powerbook (maybe lost a frame here and there but it was barely noticeable). I have 1GB RAM on it but I doubt that makes much of a difference.

So in this case recommended is really recommended rather than minimal (a la Windows requirements ;o)

Re:30" Display?

[John Harrison]

I have the faster mini, with OS X 10.3.9 and a gig of ram. The Batman trailer plays well. I noticed some very slight skipping, but I was looking for it. I am sure that if I showed it to someone without mentioning it they wouldn't notice it. In any case the picture quality is amazing.

Re:30" Display?

[adrew]

Yeah, they definitely don't work on QuickTime on even relatively new iBooks.

I dumped one of the 1080p ones into iMovie HD on a 1 GHz 12" iBook with 512MB of RAM. It worked fine. I used the 16:9 widescreen DV format. Granted, it lost a some detail, but it still looked beautiful at full screen (and at least it played).

It took about 15 minutes to convert the H.264 into a format that iMovie could use. Also, it was the first time that I've ever heard this iBook's fan come on. :)

Re:30" Display?

[mjs]

Are you sure you're getting 24fps? I get about 12 on a similar machine.

Re:30" Display?

[dalek_killer]

At work I loaded QT7 on the 17" G5 iMca with 768 MB of RAM and you could visable see the frame rate drop a lot. If I wasn't now out of a job for the Summer I would try and get a G5 tower just to get the faster processer.

my poor ibook

[Bootle]

just can't handle 'em. They play but the framerate just isn't satisfactory. I've got 1.25 Ghz G4 and 512mb ram, it is probably the lower G4 that isn't able to keep up

It's a shame, for they are GORGEOUS!

Re:my poor ibook

[hna]

Yes, it [QT7 Pro] resizes it to fit the screen.

At least the 1080p ones were over the edges in 100%/default setting and fullscreen resized it to fit the screen, not that I have fast enough computer to watch those though :(

Re:my poor ibook

[voisine]

Had the same problem on a 1Ghz powerbook under 10.3. Then I loaded 10.4. If the video is completely pre-downloaded, you've got nothing else eating cpu cycles in the backgound, I got the 720p version under 10.4 to view without noticable frame dropping and skipping. All the trailers were quite watchable, even Kingdom of Heaven at the beginning where they flash a quick sequence of different secenes. Must be because of core video.

Good...progressive.

[NotoriousQ]

Well....given that I do not have quicktime7, nor does it seem that my linux libquicktime implementation handles this new modified quicktime format (or perhaps it has streaming problems?), I did not actually see the trailers.

For the rest of the conversation I will assume that Apple changed the qt format, as I never had any problems playing quicktimes before.

However, due to description that the videos are 1280x768 (720p), I would like to thank the people at Apple who did not do the idiotic thing and run this at 1960x1080 (1040i) interlaced, which looks damn awful on most computer screens.

Also I would like to point out to the author of the article that one does not need a 30" cinema screen to see this in all its glory, as even my 10.4" laptop can handle 1280x768, and I have seen a 7.6" screen that handles the same resolution.

Lastly I would like to ask the Mac experts about H.264. It seems that this codec is nothing new, and ffmpeg has supported it for a couple of years now. Why could this not be placed into an older qt version? Or is it just that it was not? Why H.264 is such big news?

Re:Good...progressive.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I would like to thank the people at Apple who did not do the idiotic thing and run this at 1960x1080 (1040i) interlaced, which looks damn awful on most computer screens.

If the original source is film (which it almost always is), then it is a relatively trivial operation to turn 1080i into 1080p which looks fantastic on most computer screens. I do it every day watching brodacast HDTV from NBC and CBS which are always 1080i.

Re:Good...progressive.

[molnarcs]

hmmmm... mplayer plays it, it is only that the bottom part of the screen has some artifects (mplayer: latest version, on an athlon xp 2200+ with 512MB ram, FreeBSD) - and of course it is slow! As to the big news part: it is not big news, except that it is APPLE. Some info mplayer displays:

MOV track #1: 858 chunks, 6765 samples
Audio bits: 16 chans: 2 rate: 48000
Audio extra header: len=91 fcc=0x77617665
MOV: Found MPEG4 audio Elementary Stream Descriptor atom (51)!
Fourcc: mp4a

and

Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm:ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)

So the news part is that Quicktime7 is here, and that's it: there is nothing progressive in making high resolution movies or using h.264 (ffmpeg had it for some time).

Re:Good...progressive.

[dr.badass]

For the rest of the conversation I will assume that Apple changed the qt format, as I never had any problems playing quicktimes before.

QuickTime is a container format, that can, er contain many different codecs. In this case, the codec in question is H.264, which is currently only available in QuickTime 7. Same format, new codec.

Lastly I would like to ask the Mac experts about H.264. It seems that this codec is nothing new, and ffmpeg has supported it for a couple of years now.

ffmpeg might have had H.264 decoding support for a while, but definitely not " a few years", and encoding is till pretty fresh. As in : BIG FAT WARNING: x264 is still in early development stage. (Also, many of the other existing H.264 implementations don't follow the spec, and do stupid things like use AVI containers.)

Why could this not be placed into an older qt version? Or is it just that it was not?

A little of both, with a dose of marketing. QuickTime was showing it's age -- QuickTime 6's MPEG-4 implementation was a joke, mostly because of assumptions made with QuickTime 1 that no longer hold true.

The marketing comes in when you consider that the installed base of QuickTime users is more likely to upgrade if you go on about HD and pristine quality and fast downloads than APIs and architectures. It's a lot easier to get people to upgrade when you have a carrot to dangle in front of them.

Why H.264 is such big news?

The news is that it is now supported natively by a popular content creation platform, with an installed content delivery platform that is (IIRC), second only to Flash. This means that you can create H.264 content and have the reasonable expectation that people will be able to view it.

Re:Good...progressive.

[molnarcs]

Then I was wrong in my previous post (above yours). Thanks for the info. Screenshot of jerkiness of bottom part of screen - playing the 1920x816 batman trailer (using -vo gl2 to be able to capture the screen).

Re:Good...progressive.

[NotoriousQ]

Playing <a href="http://images.apple.com/movies/us/hd_gallery /gl1800/wildlife_ctp_328x185.mov">http://images.ap ple.com/movies/us/hd_gallery/gl1800/wildlife_ctp_3 28x185.mov</a>.
Resolving images.apple.com for AF_INET...
Connecting to server images.apple.com[199.232.159.253]:80 ...
Cache size set to 8192 KBytes
Connected to server: images.apple.com
Cache fill: 0,14% (11725 bytes) QuickTime/MOV file format detected.
Compressed header uses zlib algo!
Compressed header size: 434 / 970
--------------
MOV track #0: 1 chunks, 0 samples
Generic track - not completely understood! (id: 0)
--------------
MOV: longest streams: A: #-1 (0 samples) V: #-1 (0 samples)
No stream found.

Hmm I wonder why. Perhaps my version of libquicktime is outdated (0.9.4)?

Re:Good...progressive.

[NotoriousQ]

Even after conversion of 1080i into 1080p, the 720p looks better. I notice the fuzz, even after all the blendings and corrections. I am actually disappointed to hear that there are channels broadcasting interlaced HDTV, as I hoped that interlacing will go away as inferior technology.

Re:Good...progressive.

[molnarcs]

I didn't make that clear, sorry. I downloaded the batman trailer (the 1920x816 big one).

Re:Good...progressive.

[NotoriousQ]

second only to Flash. This means that you can create H.264 content and have the reasonable expectation that people will be able to view it.

I will have to disagree there. The number of people viewing avi's and wmv's are much larger than the number of people who are ready to view qt's. In the nom-mac world it is more likely that a person can view realvideo than quicktime. And in that sense, wmv is the second most installed content delivery platform, with realplayer the third, putting quicktime in the fourth place.

It is a shame actually. Quicktime is a much better format than avi. Heck, the only thing worse than avi are separate streams. However, mkv and ogg seem to be at or above the level of quicktime, but obviously they are non-commercial container formats, and thus are not really platforms, but just formats.

Anyway, that was just a flame back.

I am more interested in discussing this line:
QuickTime was showing it's age -- QuickTime 6's MPEG-4 implementation was a joke, mostly because of assumptions made with QuickTime 1 that no longer hold true.

So is quicktime7 a new format or not? Your response seems to imply that it is not. But then in that case if they had released these trailers before qt7, the only people who would not be able to play them are the people with Quicktime players, while people with mplayer will have had no problems.

Also I am beginning to doubt my own understanding of MPEG-4. As I understand MPEG-4 specifies a bunch of codecs that can be wrapped in an MPEG-4 header. This basically allows for seeking inside the mpeg-4 track. Then Qt/Ogg/mkv sit on top and handle multiple mpeg-4 streams, and use the mpeg4 information for seeking multiple streams. Is my understanding correct?

Thus did I understand your overall conclusion correctly: Quicktime7 is the same old qt format, but the program now has a better MPEG-4 stream handling plus an AVC handler?

Re:Good...progressive.

[NotoriousQ]

Yeah. That works without trouble. Apparently libquicktime does not do streams.

Re:Good...progressive.

[benwaggoner]

QuickTime 7 is required for H.264 playback in order to support B-frames. QuickTime's original architecture back in 1991 required that frames only reference previous frames, not future frames - a feature that is a basic requirement of H.264. Apple has been working on a major rewrite for years to get this working.

The good news is that out of order playback means better MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 Part 2 implementations are also now technically possible within QuickTime.

Re:Good...progressive.

[dr.badass]

The number of people viewing avi's and wmv's are much larger than the number of people who are ready to view qt's.

True, of course. I guess I blocked WMV from my mind because it isn't suitable for my own stuff. As for Real vs. QuickTime, I recall seeing numbers that put them very, very, close -- and as a creator, I would choose QT over Real any day -- I don't think I'm alone in that. In any event, the point was that QT7/H.264 is news because it's gone mainstream.

Also I am beginning to doubt my own understanding of MPEG-4.

It doesn't help that MPEG-4 is utterly bewildering.

So is quicktime7 a new format or not? ... Quicktime7 is the same old qt format, but the program now has a better MPEG-4 stream handling plus an AVC handler?

My understanding is that it is the same .mov container as before. What has changed is QuickTime-the-software, which has been significantly upgraded. In other words, the file format was capable of things the software was not.

But then in that case if they had released these trailers before qt7, the only people who would not be able to play them are the people with Quicktime players, while people with mplayer will have had no problems.

Not quite. It's more confusing than that. Players don't always support every format in every container that they support. mplayer might support .mov, and it might support H.264, but it might not support H.264 inside .mov (this example might not be true, but such things do happen). The standard specifies only two container formats: .mp4 (based on QT), and .mpg (MPEG-2/DVD style muxed streams), so it's entirely possible that there's some limitation or difference in mplayer, et al.'s .MOV support that makes it not work. Likewise, Apple may use some part or "profile" of AVC that isn't supported by mplayer yet.

So, my conclusion there is "Maybe. MPEG-4 is confusing. My head hurts."

I've read elsewhere of people using H.264 video + MP3 audio inside AVI containers, which is so incredibly non-standard that it makes me dizzy.

Re:Good...progressive.

[NotoriousQ]

I would choose QT over Real any day
QT is definitely better overall, although Real gives me an impression of being better over extremely low bandwidth links.

but it might not support H.264 inside .mov
This is probably unlikely. The container is supposed to provide locality on the streams, and seeking for really really dumb streams. Basically, the QT driver should simply unpack the stream and just forward it to any codec that it knows how to forward to. In windows, that compatibility is given by directshow, which means if you have a dshow based codec, and a dshow based container player, then you should be able to run the movie. This is highly funny as QT for windows has a dshow output, therefore if QT6 were to output the streams into dshow, the dshow filter (assuming there is one for AVC) should be able to play the video anyway. If this is not the case, then it is probably apple crippling their software again.

MPEG-4 is confusing. I agree. I keep thinking I understand it, and then I realize I do not. I think I will stay with my understanding that it is a "smart" video stream, halfway between a container and a codec.


I've read elsewhere of people using H.264 video + MP3 audio inside AVI containers, which is so incredibly non-standard that it makes me dizzy.
I will disagree with you here. AVI is a crappy container, but you can plugin any 1 video stream, and any one audio stream into it, and it will work. AVC video should not be any less standard than the a DIVX5 avi.

Now what I wonder is where is the innovation in containers. I think it was mkv that was supposed to allow "menu" streams. If they did that, they would be the king of formats.

Speaking of which, given that most bootleg anime now comes in MKV and OGM, I am beginning to suspect that these formats are quite technically superior to anything else outthere, that they will take over. Any thoughts?

Re:Good...progressive.

[NotoriousQ]

I meant to hit preview, and I meant to close the italics. DOH!

And I hate slashdot's 2 min delay!

and huh?
A user had given a moderation of Interesting (+1) to your comment, Good...progressive., attached to QuickTime 7 Released, HD Movie Trailers Available. That moderation has now been undone, probably due to the user posting in the discussion after moderating in it. Your comment is currently scored Normal (1).

Re:Good...progressive.

[.com b4 .storm]

nor does it seem that my linux libquicktime implementation handles this new modified quicktime format (or perhaps it has streaming problems?)

These new features are only available in QuickTime 7, which in turn is only available for OS X at present. Anything that relies on Windows DLLs from QuickTime, such as mplayer, will not yet work with the HD trailers and such.

Re:Good...progressive.

[NotoriousQ]

Actually if you read all the posts made above, you would notice that the downloaded file in the new format is playing just fine using mplayer, and it is the streaming that is causing the problem, as apparantly libquicktime/mplayer does not handle it.

Notice no Windows DLLs were used in the running of the file. libquicktime was handling the qt wrapper, while ffmpeg was playing the movie without any trouble.

As for the Windows, I would imagine that anyone with Quicktime Alternative dshow plugin can play these files as well.

John Siracusa on Quicktime 7 in Ars Technica

[babbage]

For much more excellent detail on Quicktime 7, go read the relevant section of John Siracusa's in-depth Tiger review for Ars Technica. From his description there, Quicktime 7 seems to be a radical & long overdue redesign of Quicktime that wouldn't be possible without some of the architectural changes that OSX 10.4 has delivered, particularly Quartz 2D Extreme and CoreImage. To quote from Siracusa's Quicktime analysis:

Despite the ongoing annoyance of the "QuickTime Pro tax," QuickTime 7 is the most important upgrade to QuickTime in the Mac OS X era. It solves long-standing architectural problems, leverages several of Tiger's other new technologies to do things only dreamt of by QuickTime 6 and earlier, includes its own best-of-breed video codec, and is finally embraced by Cocoa. The new QuickTime Player is good enough to be in danger of reinforcing the (largely uninformed) folk wisdom in the Mac community that rewriting an application in Cocoa automatically makes it better. QuickTime 7 has been a long time in coming, but it has turned out to be well worth the wait.

(And if Apple feels like there's nothing left to do for QuickTime 8 except produce plug-ins for the alphabet soup of audio and video codecs, subtitle tracks, and container formats used by those inscrutable Anime fansubbers, you won't hear me complaining...)

The changes to Quicktime 7 seem to be drastic enough that I'm a little surprised that they were able to get QT7 to work at all on previous versions of OSX, not to mention Windows. Presumably, the new APIs had to be at least partially encapsulated and backported to Panther and will have to be crossported to Windows. That, in turn, has me wondering if it will be possible to use Quicktime to write software on Panther or Windows that takes advantage of these new tools -- probably not, but it's tantalizing.

Anyway, Siracusa's reviews of Panther and previous versions have been consistently excellent, going way more in depth than any other reviews of the system have done. These articles should be considered required reading for anyone that wants to really understand OSX.

Re:John Siracusa on Quicktime 7 in Ars Technica

[mjc_w]

I read the whole article, and was fascinated. There was a whole lot there that I didn't know (and most of it I understood). It was time well spent.

Re:John Siracusa on Quicktime 7 in Ars Technica

[Ilgaz]

I am tired of saying it and it will be last time..

Asking for money, from Mac users to play stuff fullscreen, especially after h264 is a great idea. :)

I better tell it that way...

Happy with Helix based Realplayer 10 for mac here. Yes, it plays h264 fullscreen, outperforms quicktime on fps too. It uses quicktime framework you know...

Just lets hope nobody will code a "quicktime 133t all key generator" trojan/malware. If it happens and becomes a scandal, look no place else than Apple. No, I don't need editing (!)

Re:John Siracusa on Quicktime 7 in Ars Technica

[.com b4 .storm]

Quicktime 7 seems to be a radical & long overdue redesign of Quicktime that wouldn't be possible without some of the architectural changes that OSX 10.4 has delivered

Hmm, well... I'm using QuickTime 7 on 10.3, and the QuickTime web site has a little bit that says... "Use QuickTime Player in Mac OS X Tiger or get QuickTime 7 for Panther to see for yourself. :)

Re:John Siracusa on Quicktime 7 in Ars Technica

[babbage]

Hmm, well... I'm using QuickTime 7 on 10.3, and the QuickTime web site has a little bit that says... "Use QuickTime Player in Mac OS X Tiger or get QuickTime 7 for Panther to see for yourself. :)

Yes, and if you'd read the entire post that you're replying to, you'd see the following:

The changes to Quicktime 7 seem to be drastic enough that I'm a little surprised that they were able to get QT7 to work at all on previous versions of OSX, not to mention Windows

Yes, obviously, QT7 has been made available for Panther. The interesting bit is that QT7 seems to depend on APIs that were developed for Tiger -- specifically, CoreVideo (which in turn builds on CoreAudio and CoreImage) and Quartz2d Extreme. With that in mind, getting QT7 to work on Panther must have involved backporting those APIs to the previous version of the operating system.

That, in turn, has me curious if Panther developers can use the QT7 SDK to develop software for Panther that takes advantage of these new libraries, so that people who don't make the jump to Tiger can still use some of the new software that it is going to enable. Chances are, it'll probably be more trouble than it's worth, but the fact will remain that the basic tools were brought back to Panther with QT7, so if someone really wanted to, they could take advantage of them.

Re:John Siracusa on Quicktime 7 in Ars Technica

[Pope]

(And if Apple feels like there's nothing left to do for QuickTime 8 except produce plug-ins for the alphabet soup of audio and video codecs, subtitle tracks, and container formats used by those inscrutable Anime fansubbers, you won't hear me complaining...)

Ha, all mine are self-contained AVI files. I wish they'd use external subs, some of the "Hey, let's change text colour for every character/on-screen/off-screen moment!" subs are horrendous.

Oh well, whaddya want for free? :)

Please?

[Reorax]

So, who wants to encode the HD Serenity trailer into DivX or something and then send it to me? Please?

Re:Please?

[/dev/trash]

Dude. It's just a trailer.

iBooks and HD.

[David Rolfe]

Here's a funny work around for G4's and the QTHD Theatre ... :-D While the movie is downloading, go into the A/V controls (cmd-k) and set the play speed to 1/2x -- In QT7, if the format permits, it will time stretch the audio instead of frequency stretch it.

With the movie playing at half the speed, your G4 will be able to spit out more of the frames :) The Audio will sound a little funny because of the time-stretch. It's a fun little experiment.

my Powerbook

[Lord Floppy]

Im running 10.3.9 and downloaded QT7 and have been enjoying the HD videos. Ive had very few frame rate problems, it might help to set my processor to highest setting. The QT window has been changed slightly and the menu has been cleaned up more, but Apple really wants people to buy Pro and they leave the pro features greyed out in the menus so you can see what your missing out on. Ill buy Pro after I update to Tiger when I get back home from school.

Re:H.264 is not new

[dmarcoot]

yes, but content that is actually produced in it is.
taking a 720x540 dvd a applying the codec to it does not give you hi def quality video. hi def comes from actually re-mastering the video at HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 with all the increased pixel detail.

what you are doing is the almost the equivalent like taking at 72 dpi image into photoshop, making it 300 dpi. in neither case is quality improved.

Re:H.264 is not new

[NanoGator]

"what you are doing is the almost the equivalent like taking at 72 dpi image into photoshop, making it 300 dpi. in neither case is quality improved."

Fair enough. There is a little improvement, though. The artifacts caused by encoding are smaller. (Though the data rate is higher...)

I hope MPlayer and QuickTime Alternative...

[antdude]

... can get QT7 codecs fast. I really don't like using QuickTime's players to play movies. :(

Re:Quicktime USED to be nice, but...

[jo_ham]

I assume from your post that you use Windows (since the Mac Quicktime installer doesn't have iTunes included).

You /can/ turn off the iTunes install y'know. You can instal Quicktime on its own in Windows.

Apple overestimates H.264 HD hardware requirements

[Eug Wanker]

I get half the frame rate (12 fps) on my 1 GHz PowerBook Titanium (133 MHz bus). It's pretty smooth for 12 fps. Interestingly, my 1.7 GHz Cube (100 MHz bus) is more jerky, despite the 700 MHz clock speed advantage.

Reports are that a 1.6 GHz G5 iMac has no problem with 720p24, and plays back 1080p24 at about 15 fps. A dual 1.8 GHz G5 is needed for 1080p24. (Apple recommends a 1.8 GHz G5 and a dual 2.0 GHz G5 respectively.)

To my surprise, one report also has it that a dual 1 GHz G4 will also play back 720p24 at the full 24 fps. A single 1.67 GHz G4 PowerBook is close to being able to play back 720p24 @ 24 fps too.

Additional HD H.264 fps reports are listed in this table

Great looking but FAR TOO DEMANDING.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about the rest of you but on my G4 733 with 1 GB of RAM and a Radeon 9000 Pro it is a joke.

I turned off all programs except Quicktime even turned off dashboard widgets (Running Tiger) and I sized the QT window to 1/2 native resolution and the informaiton window told me it was running between 3 and 9 FPS .... with a few stops at 0.

DAMN that is insane.

Reinstall Quicktime 6

[objekt]

haven't installed OS X 10.4 (Tiger) yet, and the new Quicktime update is causing some hiccups on systems running 10.3.9. here's a re-installer for Quicktime 6.5.2 for those of you need it.
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/quicktime65 2reinstallerformac.html

Quicktime 7 obliterates software I paid for...

[mgbaron]

I often times find myself annoyed by software that comes attached to operatings systems (read my review of Mac OS X 10.4 to see why Safari 2.0 is really raising my ire). The most recent culprit is Quicktime 7.

I happen to be one of many people who shelled out the necessary bones for the Pro version of Quicktime 6. So what does apple do to us loyal customers when we upgrade our operating system? Poof, no more Quicktime Pro.

But wait a sec, what if I was satisfied with Quicktime 6? What if the features of having the Pro version outweight the features of upgrading to 7 (which they certainly do for my purposes)? It would seem that Apple is not concerned with any of this.

At some point, I'll probably shell out again for Quicktime 7 Pro, but I would really prefer to make this choice myself.

You can read the permanent version of this post here.

Re:Quicktime 7 obliterates software I paid for...

[gellenburg]

And for those who are interested in getting QuickTime 6 back, I submit to you an Email I submitted to MacInTouch late last evening:

From: george@ellenburg.org
Subject: tip|QuickTime 7, 6, and Tiger [George Ellenburg]
Date: April 30, 2005 8:57:42 PM EDT
To: sub2005@macintouch.com

personname=George Ellenburg
other=QuickTime 7, 6, and Tiger
TopicType=tip

This is the follow-up to your hint about having both QuickTime 6 & 7 installed at the same time.

If readers want to re-install QuickTime 6, and they've done a clean install (like I did), you can do it but it's a pain.

First, you'll need to download the QuickTime 6.5.2 reinstaller for Panther, then you'll need to drag the .pkg file out of the .dmg file and onto your hard drive because you'll need to edit it. ;-)

Next, expand the package contents and go to:
QuickTime_6.5.2_ReInstaller.pkg/Contents/Resources

In it is a file called "InstallationCheck". It's actually a Perl script.

Edit this file, and look for the following:
if(CheckVersion("$SYSTEM_VERS", "10.4", "ProductVersion", ">=")) {

Replace the 10.4 and make it 10.5, as so:
if(CheckVersion("$SYSTEM_VERS", "10.5", "ProductVersion", ">=")) {

This will allow you to install QuickTime 6.5.2 but....

DANGER WILL ROBINSON! Doing so will render both QuickTime and Spotlight DEAD on your system (temporarily).

You MUST restart after re-installing.

Ignore the myriad of warnings and crashes reporter windows that will pop up when your system comes back up. It's just Spotlight crashing because the QuickTime Spotlight Plugin is crashing, and don't even try to open QuickTime just yet (it will crash, too.)

Rename "QuickTime Player" to something else (as in your previous hint). I called mine "QuickTime (6) Player" and then get out your Mac OS X Tiger Installation DVD or CDs.

Yes....

You WILL need to re-install Tiger, but at this point you can simply do an Archive & Reinstall, and tell OS X to preserve your Users and Network Settings.

Your applications will be okay (you will lose any preference panes however and those will need to be re-installed). Your dashboard widgets will be safe, too.

Once you've reinstalled OS X using the Archive & Reinstall Option, you'll need to reinstall your fonts if you've got some custom one's installed. I recommend doing this through FontBook and pointing FontBook to your Previous System/.../Library/Fonts folder and turning on the option in FontBook to have it verify fonts before installing. With some 500 odd fonts installed previously, I had about 30 that had problems (errors not warnings) so I opted to not re-install those.

But, there's some quirks with this.

QuickTime 6 seems to lose part of it's user-window when running this way (resizing the window brings everything back).

I just confirmed that it will even play the new HD Movie Trailers (by copying the URL from QT7 and pasting it into a new URL window in QT6).

Enjoy!

Re:Quicktime 7 obliterates software I paid for...

[mgbaron]

Wow. Impressive fix. I knew there was a reason I posted this stuff on slashdot. I might actually try this...

Re:Quicktime 7 obliterates software I paid for...

[yabos]

You shouldn't be too surprised about this. It does say you will need to purchase QT7 Pro again in the agreement and it's right at the top so you can see it.

Re:Quicktime 7 obliterates software I paid for...

[Goldfinger7400]

Not only that, when you bought Quicktime Pro it tells you you're getting a license for Quicktime 5/6. I was expecting to have to pony up again. I hope the new qt is worth it though.

Re:Quicktime 7 obliterates software I paid for...

[mehgul]

After reading your blurb on your website, I was thinking that if you are planning to reinstall Tiger, you really should do a personalized install, where you can chose which languages and printer drivers you want or not.

Re:Quicktime 7 obliterates software I paid for...

[Gulthek]

After reading your review I thought you'd be interested to know that In Safari 2.0 the RSS feeds can be integreated with bookmarks. Just drag the feeds to a bookmarks directory and they are auto-updated with notification.

Re:Quicktime USED to be nice, but...

[Jafafa Hots]

I downloaded it and I specifically looked for an option to NOT install itunes, since I knew it would be installed.

The installation not only didn't give a way to not install itunes, it didnt even mention that itunes would be installed or that it was included... so I felt like "good!"

Then afterward I found that it had installed itunes.
They may have changed this in later versions, but I was given no way to opt out. I am the go-to guy for getting rid of viruses and spyware, etc... in my area, so I would NOT miss a way to opt out if it were given to me.

Re:Quicktime USED to be nice, but...

[dangitman]

I downloaded it and I specifically looked for an option to NOT install itunes, since I knew it would be installed.

Are you blind, or just trolling? There's a link from the main Quicktime download page to this page, which has a standalone installer.

I guess you were just looking for something to bitch about. Maybe you can ask Apple for a refund of the money you paid for the download.

Re:qt7 sucks

[dangitman]

) I am glad I am not the only one who felt this was pigware. 800mhz powerbook running 10.3.9

That's not because Quicktime is bloated, it's because your system does not meet the specs for playing HD video. Didn't you read the recommended system specs for playing these back?

Re:Quicktime USED to be nice, but...

[Jafafa Hots]

There was no option on the page I went to to download it. Part of the problem may have been that I downloaded it through firefox's "get plugin" prompt.

Be careful if you have QT Pro!

[harlows_monkeys]

When QT7 shows up in "Software Update", be careful if you have QT6 Pro. If you let it update, you will now have QT7 non-Pro. QT7 replaces QT6, and QT6 license keys do not work with QT7.

This strikes me as an extremely obnoxious thing for Apple to have done. It seems to me that anything that shows up in "Software Update" should be just that: an update that will fix bugs and add new functionality, rather than replace your paid version of the software with the crippled free version of the next major release.

Re:Great looking but FAR TOO DEMANDING.

[phil1984]

On the HD Gallery website it does indicate that you require at least a G5 to play back H.264 content although I have heard reports that it can run on the highest end G4's.

QT 7 and AppleScript

[swid27]

QuickTime 7 seems to break the AppleScript full screen hacks floating about the internet. Does anyone know of an AppleScript that restores this functionality for QT 7?