Sorry, I should have been a little more clear about that.
QuickTime is a media architecture. Its native file format is the QuickTime file,.mov. However it can read lots of other formats, and even embed other formats inside of a QuickTime file. For example, QuickTime can directly work with DV files, GIF, MPEG-1 (Mac only), 3DMF models, animated GIF files, some AVI, etc. For the purposes of this discussion, QuickTime is mainly important as the only playback mechanism that fully supports the.mov file format, although many players can handle many older 2.0 era files.
But QuickTime does a huge number of other incredible things as well, and a full Apple-supported QuickTime would be definite win for Linux. QuickTime is a complete digital media architecture, complete with video capture, compression, editing, and effects services. And Apple has to do a UNIX port for OS X anyway...
Ben Waggoner here, digital video writer for DV magazine. I'm seeing a bit of confusion here in the distinction between file formats and codecs.
AVI, MOV, and MPG are all file formats, which describe how audio and video data are organized in a file. All of the above formats are publically documented.
The data itself in these is created and decoded by codecs (compressor/decompressor). Some of these are well documented and supported on many platforms (MPEG, MP2, Cinepak, Indeo 3.2), and some of these are highly proprietary (Indeo 4 and above, Sorenson, TrueMotion, Bink, etc.). Generally, open-source players only support older, primative codecs, and so are unable to play an increasing amount of video availible on the web.
Windows Media Player (native support for AVI and NetShow) is Win32 only, discounting some unusable betas for other platforms. QuickTime 3.0 is well supported for Win32 and Mac. Older AVI and QuickTime 2.x support is pretty standard with all these players.
From an issue of platform advocacy, it's not Apple and Microsoft's responsibility for not making all the codecs availible for other platforms' players. The cool codecs are generally created by third parties these days, like Sorenson Vision, QDesign, Duck, and RAD Game Tools. It is up to those vendors to make software availible for Linux et al.
Of course, if Apple or Microsoft decided to create a full UNIX implementation, they would certainly encourage their codec vendors to port as well. A full QuickTime implementation under Linux would be a major win, and preferable to Windows Media Player. Microsoft's digital video efforts have ranged from the laughable to the infuriating, and have always lacked the elegance of QuickTime.
In the mean time, the best file format to use for multi-platform delivery is probably MPEG-1. It's widely availible and provides quite good quality. Die-hard FSF folks may have trouble with some of the patent confusion surrounding MPEG, but there are similar problems with ALL of these technologies.
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Sorry, I should have been a little more clear about that.
.mov. However it can read lots of other formats, and even embed other formats inside of a QuickTime file. For example, QuickTime can directly work with DV files, GIF, MPEG-1 (Mac only), 3DMF models, animated GIF files, some AVI, etc. For the purposes of this discussion, QuickTime is mainly important as the only playback mechanism that fully supports the .mov file format, although many players can handle many older 2.0 era files.
QuickTime is a media architecture. Its native file format is the QuickTime file,
But QuickTime does a huge number of other incredible things as well, and a full Apple-supported QuickTime would be definite win for Linux. QuickTime is a complete digital media architecture, complete with video capture, compression, editing, and effects services. And Apple has to do a UNIX port for OS X anyway...
Ben Waggoner
Hello all,
Ben Waggoner here, digital video writer for DV magazine. I'm seeing a bit of confusion here in the distinction between file formats and codecs.
AVI, MOV, and MPG are all file formats, which describe how audio and video data are organized in a file. All of the above formats are publically documented.
The data itself in these is created and decoded by codecs (compressor/decompressor). Some of these are well documented and supported on many platforms (MPEG, MP2, Cinepak, Indeo 3.2), and some of these are highly proprietary (Indeo 4 and above, Sorenson, TrueMotion, Bink, etc.). Generally, open-source players only support older, primative codecs, and so are unable to play an increasing amount of video availible on the web.
Windows Media Player (native support for AVI and NetShow) is Win32 only, discounting some unusable betas for other platforms. QuickTime 3.0 is well supported for Win32 and Mac. Older AVI and QuickTime 2.x support is pretty standard with all these players.
From an issue of platform advocacy, it's not Apple and Microsoft's responsibility for not making all the codecs availible for other platforms' players. The cool codecs are generally created by third parties these days, like Sorenson Vision, QDesign, Duck, and RAD Game Tools. It is up to those vendors to make software availible for Linux et al.
Of course, if Apple or Microsoft decided to create a full UNIX implementation, they would certainly encourage their codec vendors to port as well. A full QuickTime implementation under Linux would be a major win, and preferable to Windows Media Player. Microsoft's digital video efforts have ranged from the laughable to the infuriating, and have always lacked the elegance of QuickTime.
In the mean time, the best file format to use for multi-platform delivery is probably MPEG-1. It's widely availible and provides quite good quality. Die-hard FSF folks may have trouble with some of the patent confusion surrounding MPEG, but there are similar problems with ALL of these technologies.