Streaming media formats: Quick Time
Apple Computer's QuickTime enables the delivery and playback of video, audio, animation, 3-D, and panoramic images for Macintosh and Windows. QuickTime is also the leading video production platform for both Windows and Macintosh. Most multimedia on computers begins with or involves QuickTime. Accordingly, the QuickTime technology is a natural for high-quality audio and video playback over the Web. Similar to Windows Media, QuickTime does not charge licensing fees for the number of simultaneous streams served. QuickTime can be streamed from the Mac OS X Server, the Darwin Streaming Media Server, and RealNetworks' RealServer 8.0.
The latest version, QuickTime 4, features many enhancements including:
- Smaller "component" codec
architecture so that the initial download is as low as 1.7 MB. Additional
codecs are transparently downloaded in the background when required for a
specific media element on a page.
- Support for an increased number of
formats, including MP3, Flash, MIDI, and almost every audio, video, animation,
3-D, and virtual reality format available.
- Improved codecs.
- True RTSP streaming when used in
conjunction with the Mac OS X Server.
One of the keys to the success of the QuickTime technology and plug-in is that it can handle all types of media elements. For those of you trying to design for the greatest number of users and the least number of plug-ins, this can be a significant benefit.
In addition to playing MP3 content, QuickTime supports Timecode tracks as well as MIDI standards, including the Roland Sound Canvas and GS format extensions. QuickTime also supports key standards for web streaming, including HTTP, RTP, and RTSP. Plus, QuickTime supports every major file format for images, including JPEG, BMP, PICT, PNG, and GIF. QuickTime also features built-in support for digital video, including MiniDV, DVCPro, and DVCam camcorder formats, as well as support for AVI, AVR, MPEG-1, and OpenDML.
Finally, the newly designed interface is attractive and user friendly. In addition to the traditional controls you'd expect to find on a television--like volume controls and pause and play buttons--the QuickTime Player gives you enhanced controls for online movie playback. The QuickTime Player's LCD section includes a time display, a time slider that shows you the length of the file being played, and a chapter marker. You can switch chapters on the fly even at the beginning of a video stream.
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