QuickTime

For other uses, see Quick time (disambiguation).

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QuickTime is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats.[1][2] The term QuickTime also refers to the QuickTime Player front-end media player application,[1] which is built-into macOS, and was formerly available for Windows.[3]

QuickTime was created in 1991, when the concept of playing digital video directly on computers was "groundbreaking."[1][2] QuickTime could embed a number of advanced media types, including panoramic images (called QuickTime VR) and Adobe Flash. Over the 1990s, QuickTime became a dominant standard for digital multimedia, as it was integrated into many websites, applications, and video games, and adopted by professional filmmakers. The QuickTime File Format became the basis for the MPEG-4 standard.[4][5][1][2][6] During its heyday, QuickTime was notably used to create the innovative Myst and Xplora1 video games, and to exclusively distribute movie trailers for several Star Wars movies.[7][1] QuickTime could support additional codecs through plug-ins, for example with Perian.[8]

As operating systems and browsers gained support for MPEG-4 and subsequent standards like H.264, the need for a cross-platform version of QuickTime diminished, and Apple discontinued the Windows version of QuickTime in 2016.[9][10][11][12] In Mac OS X Snow Leopard, QuickTime 7 was discontinued in favor of QuickTime Player X, which abandoned the aging QuickTime framework in favor of the AVFoundation framework. QuickTime Player X does not support video editing (beyond trimming clips) or plug-ins for additional codec support.[12][13] macOS Catalina dropped support for all 32-bit applications, including the QTKit framework and the old QuickTime 7.[10]

  1. ^ a b c d e Ferncase 2003, pp. 1–2.
  2. ^ a b c Monroe 2004, p. xv.
  3. ^ Goodin, Dan (April 14, 2016). "Apple stops patching QuickTime for Windows despite 2 active vulnerabilities". Ars Technica. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
  4. ^ "QuickTime and the Rise of Multimedia". CHM. March 30, 2018. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
  5. ^ "Happy birthday, Apple QuickTime". The Register. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
  6. ^ "Apple QuickTime Software 1991 - A Technical Description". Museums Victoria Collections. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
  7. ^ Hansen, Evan. "QuickTime prepared to make its comeback". CNET. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
  8. ^ "Promising prospect: Perian". Macworld. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
  9. ^ "Technical Note TN2300: Transitioning QTKit Code to AV Foundation". May 28, 2013. Archived from the original on September 2, 2016.
  10. ^ a b Thornton, Mike (December 4, 2018). "Apple Announce End Of Native Support For Avid DNx Codecs - Avid Respond. Why This Matters For Pro Tools Users | Pro Tools - The leading website for Pro Tools users". ProToolsExpert. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
  11. ^ Oakley, Howard (March 26, 2022). "Explainer: Whatever happened to QuickTime?". The Eclectic Light Company. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
  12. ^ a b Siracusa, John (September 1, 2009). "Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review". Ars Technica. Retrieved January 6, 2023.
  13. ^ "Getting started with QuickTime Player X". Macworld. Retrieved January 6, 2023.