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Quicktime on the windows side

Christopher

Well-known member
So now that OS X has Quicktime X, will the Quicktime 7 still be updated for windows? This has been making me wonder for a long time.

 

macgeek417

Well-known member
I know, but isn't QuickTime X just a dumbed-down version of QT7?

IIRC, QuickTIme Player was just moved to Utilities.

 

MrMacPlus

Well-known member
I know, but isn't QuickTime X just a dumbed-down version of QT7?IIRC, QuickTIme Player was just moved to Utilities.
My point is that if Apple intends updating iTunes they're going to also be updating Quicktime.

 

macgeek417

Well-known member
No... I was saying that isn't QTX just a dumbed-down QT Player 7? Like... it doesn't support new formats or anything?

 

Cory5412

Daring Pioneer of the Future
Staff member
Based on the Apple page, http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/

It looks like Quicktime X is a refinement (like all things in Snow Leopard) of the existing quicktime technologies, it's likely that Quicktime on Windows will get similar refinements, but will keep the Quicktime 7 player, or maybe Quicktime on Windows will gain the Quicktime X player as well.

The player itself has never been what supports the formats, it has always been the underlying quicktime system components, and in the era of system 7/8/9, a popular thing was to use quicktime player 2.5.1 or so on system 9 with quicktime 4/5/6 installed, which gave you all of the format support of the most modern quicktime, but with cool things like looping and very simple editing.

As far as Quicktime X supporting new formats -- it might, it definitely adds such things as GPU-acceleration, a few new http streaming things, and more integration with OS X technologies like CoreVideo, CoreAudio, CoreAnimation, and Grand Central Dispatch.

 

~Coxy

Leader, Tactical Ops Unit
QuickTime X is a completely new framework, think of it as a modern, Cocoa version of QuickTime. It's not a cut-down version of 7 at all. Personally I think it's unlikely that it will be ported to Windows.

It does have a severely cut-down featureset in comparison though.

 
QuickTime X actually supports very few codecs when compared to QuickTime 7, and as such, Snow Leopard includes a full copy of QuickTime 7 (the underlying components) alongside QuickTime X. (What QTX does support though, are the codecs that 95% of people are going to need to play.)

For example, if you play an old Cinepak movie using the new QuickTime X player, it will actually launch a helper process in the background which is really just QuickTime 7. The helper process decodes the video.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely the old codecs like Cinepak, etc. will be ported to QuickTime X - and it's extremely likely Apple will have some reason to remove QuickTime 7 from a future release of OS X.

 
I'm on my Snow Leopard MBP right now.

QuickTime X does not even support WAV files. That's how limited it is. If you play a WAV file in Safari, it invokes the old 32-bit QuickTime 7 Plugin.

However, if you play an AU file, it invokes the new QuickTime X plugin, which then invokes the old 32-bit QuickTime 7 helper process.

An older-style MPEG-4 Part 2 movie is supported natively. MP3 also plays natively. A MOV file containing uncompressed audio plays natively.

 
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