July 16, 2002
QuickTime 6.0 released (MPEG-4)
Just to prove I'm not just about Flash these days...
Yesterday, Apple finally released the eagerly anticipated QuickTime 6.0 for MacOS and Windows. You can download your platform's Web Installer or if you have the bandwidth, get the Standalone Full Installer (comes in at@19MB for the OS X version).
The big news here is the support of the new industry standard MPEG-4 specification, which itself is based on the QuickTime file format. The streaming wars could now get really interesting, because any MPEG-4 compliant player should play your QT 6 created .mp4 content. We'll have to wait to see if Real and Microsoft ultimately play nice with the standard (Microsoft has already released a flavor of MPEG-4 that is incompatible with the spec!), but this could signal the beginning of the end of multiple format streaming/downloads for your video and audio content.
More basic QT 6 info, a streaming MPEG-4 gallery, and a QT 6 FAQ.
FAQ entry example: Why should I care about MPEG-4?
Delivering media over the Internet has required content providers to author movies in multiple formats. And users have had to maintain multiple media players on their computers. With an interoperable standard, content providers will have a true ?author once, play anywhere? solution, allowing them to develop more high-quality content. And since the MPEG-4 standard extends off the desktop to digital devices, such as cell phones and wireless PDAs, that same content can reach new markets.
Lots of information on the MPEG-4 standard can be found at Apple's MPEG-4 and the MPEG-4 Industry Forum sites.
WARNING!!!! -- if you have are a registered QTPro user and rely on its extended functionality, then you might want to defer installing QT 6 until you get a new license key -- QT 5 and earlier keys will *not* work with QT6.
Posted by Lewis Francis at July 16, 2002 12:13 AMListed below are links to weblogs that reference 'QuickTime 6.0 released (MPEG-4)' from Information Gift.