QuickTime 5's long gestation is finally over. Its first public appearance was at Apple's World Wide Developer Conference in San Jose on May 15, 2000, where Apple treated developers to a sneak peek at QuickTime 5. The software was subsequently delivered as a Preview Release at the QuickTime Live! conference, on October 10, 2000 in Beverly Hills, CA. Additional preview releases followed as Apple worked out the inevitable bugs. Then, the final version of QuickTime 5 for Mac OS and Windows was released at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas on April 23, 2001.
Along the way, developers and users got to see the capabilities of the QuickTime 5 Updater application. Features delivered as downloadable updates during the beta phase included a new version 3 of the Sorenson Basic codec, an automatic update check and the ability to show additional sound controls by clicking on the equalizer.
Notable features of QuickTime 5 include cross-platform compatibility with MPEG-1 (long-promised MPEG-2 support is still forthcoming and was shown, along with MPEG-4 support, in an Apple technology demonstration at NAB on April 23rd), support for Flash 4 web animations and an enhanced QuickTime VR playback function providing unlimited "cubical" views of virtual-reality scenes (a long-awaited feature that had been delayed until Apple engineers came up with a way to do it without infringing on IPIX's patents in this area). The new version of QuickTime also features an updated compressor/decompressor ("codec") from QDesign that has been optimized to take advantage of the G4’s Velocity Engine to encode music up to three times faster.
In fact, QT5 significantly improves the method by which new codecs are installed. Now, the player can download and install a required codec on demand, provided that the developer has registered it with Apple. Another interesting "install on demand" feature is the player's support for Skins. These can be embedded into the movie, allowing the potential for "branding" we're sure the big movie studios will exploit. An Ars Technica review provides additional details.
Although the version of QuickTime 5 QuickTime 5 available for free download at www.apple.com/quicktime/download lacks support for MPEG-4, this important standard is available as a third-party QuickTime add-on from Sorenson. Announced at the Macworld Expo in Tokyo, Japan, in Feb. 2001, the Sorenson MPEG-4 product, says the company, is fully compliant with the ISO MPEG-4 specification.
QuickTime 5.0 was to include another Sorenson codec, known as "Video 3," but some compatibility glitches kept it out of the initial release, according to Sorenson Media. (Details....)
Apple subsequently released QuickTime 5.0.2 (Classic) in June 2001. The 5.0.2 release is a minor update of QuickTime 5.0 notable primarily for the return of the missing-in-action Sorenson 3 codec originally delivered in beta versions of QT5, but pulled from the final 5.0 release. The update can be obtained by running the QuickTime Updater included with QuickTime 5. A standalone updater is also available. Elsewhere, a June 29 report at MacInTouch.com details a workaround necessary to obtain a similar update for the OS X version of QuickTime.
MPEG-4 is also a key feature of Microsoft Media Player 7.0 for Mac, announced on Oct. 11, at the Streaming Media Europe conference in London. The Microsoft variant of the high-quality MPEG-4 video format, based on the QuickTime file structure, is the basis of Microsoft's latest ASF compression format and the underground favorite, DivX. (For more info on MPEG-4, see http://www.cselt.stet.it/mpeg/standards/mpeg-4/mpeg-4.htm)
The interface of the new release has changed somewhat from the previous 4.1.x release, and the results are a bit of a mixed bag. The often-criticized "brushed metal" interface is still there; however, the slide-out drawer for the TV content is gone completely. Now, when you click the "TV" button, the main interface is completely replaced with the list of channels.
You can change this interface, too, by designing new skins for the QuickTime Player. In an article entitled "Gimme Some Skin," Creative Mac desrcibes how to use Adobe GoLive to create QuickTime skins.
Unfortunately, the single-step controls appear to have been eliminated from the interface - an apparent "dumbing down" of the feature set for which we can see no good reason.
Gone as well (and good riddance!) is the hard-to-handle volume "dial," replaced with a slider that's much easier to manipulate. The PR2 release also eliminates the "Aqua-look" minimize/maximize/close tools on the player, replacing them with standard window controls. Also fixed is the "minimize" button that, under PR1, did absolutely nothing under Mac OS 9. (The minimize button works properly, however, in the version of QT5 installed as part of the Mac OS X Public Beta. OS X, incidentally, wasn't supported by the PR2 beta code.)
As was the case with version 4.x, supplying a registration code (US$29.95 from Apple) enabled several additional features of the player, including full-screen playback, looping and save options. (The Mac version continues to be better at full-screen mode than the Windows release, however.)
Although "Pro" codes from QT3 no longer enable the "Pro" features of QT5, codes from QuickTime 4.x work and the new player will preserve QuickTime Pro owners' existing registration settings. You should still write these settings down, however, in case you want to return to QT4.1.
Apple's website features several examples of the innovative capabilities of QuickTime. For example, the Mac OS X interface provides built-in Finder support for QuickTime VR objects.
Apple has also being showing off hardware from Matrox and Pinnacle, designed to deliver real-time audio and video editing. At the Vancouver Effects and Animation Festival, held in April 2001, for example, the company demonstrated the Matrox RTMac and PCI cards capable of importing DV content at speeds in excess of 130 MBps
In related news, Apple has updated the Open Source versions of its QuickTime streaming server software for Windows NT/2000, FreeBSD 3.4 (server and proxy), Red Hat Linux 6.2 (server and proxy) and Solaris 7 (server and proxy).
Apple's QuickTime Streaming Server 3 includes Skip Protection, a patented collection of features that protects the quality of streams from disruptions on the Internet, and a new easy-to-use web-based interface that can be administered locally or remotely to configure server settings. Coupled with Mac OS X Server on a Power Mac G4, QuickTime Streaming Server 3 lets users start up a streaming digital video channel with support for more than 3,000 concurrent streams to QuickTime users. Darwin Streaming Server, the Open Source version of QuickTime Streaming Server 3, offers support for FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows NT and Windows 2000.
QuickTime Streaming Server 3 was released in May 2001. For more information on QuickTime Streaming Server 3 and Darwin Streaming Server 3, visit www.apple.com/quicktime.
Source code for beta versions of these efforts, as well as source and binary releases for Apple's own Mac OS X are already available. Apple on Jan. 24, 2001 posted QuickTime Streaming Server 3 Preview, which boasted streaming capabilities, Web-based administration tools and support for Mac OS X.
As we noted in our QuickTime 4 report, Apple has changed the requirements that developers must meet in order to qualify as a QuickTime developer. The company now says that any developer, regardless of level, can register online to become a QuickTime developer for free.
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