Whatever happened to QuickTime?
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Hassling with it on Windows was always a big pain, with the versions being incompatible to one another. Also it left so much bloat and changed so many settings it looked like malware. But to be fair most of those crude media applications did that at this time. (Looking at you, Realplayer!)
Also you needed the browser (Internet Explorer) plugin, because HTML5 video wasn't a thing, but everyone wanted to display their media.
In a sidenote QuickTime also was part of other installers, too. One big CAD application needed QT on the system for displaying their help files (and I guess some media im-/export). It wouldn't even install without it. To make things worse, the installer itself – not the app, mind you – was in Java. To uninstall now you both need an old Java and an old QuickTime to be installed first...
Thank you.
I wonder if I still have that CD somewhere in my basement, and if I could port it to a modern platform...
Before it (thankfully) disappeared altogether, we used the tiny and much faster "QuickTime alternative" player, to avoid needing to install the original.
I'm at least 15 years out of date, so this may be a much less serious issue nowadays (although also codec issues seem less serious, windows will just open most formats I try).
Most players will not even touch an mkv file, whatever the codec.
Software patents aren't valid in europe.
The ffmpeg project does not distribute binaries with unlicensed or illegal code. E.g. if you want ffmpeg to use libdvdcss for decrypting DVDs or use libfdk-aac to encode aac/m4a without paying license royalties to Fraunhofer, the end user has to download those components and build a custom ffmpeg on their own. No legitimate website will host ffmpeg built with the "illegal/unlicensed" libraries. E.g. When the popular Zeranoe website hosted ffmpeg executables for download, it was only built with the free GNU components.
The vlc project says they can include libdvdcss because they are a French company instead of American. E.g. Microsoft removes DVD playback from Windows 8 but VLC does not: https://www.zdnet.com/article/if-vlc-can-ship-a-free-dvd-pla...
thats why tech ppl use vlc (or mpv nowadays)
I don't think many people will pay $0.80 for a HEVC codec just to play the video they just recorded on their phone. There used to be so many codecs out there in use that you'd probably need to raise the price of the OS by between $5 and $10 if you wanted decent codec support.
You'd also be stuck paying for those codecs, or convince customers to pay the codecs on demand later, giving their "free upgrade" a price, even if it's a small price to pay.
VLC and other players exist because the jurisdictions they are made in or are hosted in aren't as strict as, for example, the American patent system, which is silly enough to actually allow patents on algorithms. Microsoft could never distribute a free player with Windows in many markets without paying for those patents. If you use or resell ffmpeg to places that enforce software patents, you actually need to check if you've paid off your patent bribe or you're opening yourself to potential lawsuits.
- Some people thought it was ‘video’! qtvr was that impressive at that time…
I just restored a DAT backup tape last month with the result (it was labeled ‘chicken backup 1996…’) and had to find an old Mac in order to watch it…!
After Effects still does not support exporting to the MKV container and so it doesn't fit into my typical rendering workflow. Hence I've stuck with MOV using HAP-alpha.
As a experiment, I rendered out a PNG frame sequence (with alpha) and then used FFMPEG to render out both an MOV and MKV using the hap_alpha codec.
--- When I tried importing both videos into Resolume then the MOV was successful but the MKV was rejected. Doesn't seem to be a supported.
--- VLC could not playback the MKV.
--- MPC-HC successfully played back the MKV and reported it was an rgba video.
So it was interesting experiment, but not something that my necessary software pipeline supports.
Here is some of my 3D animations for context. https://www.jasonfletcher.info/vjloops/
Is there a Win utility that is as easy? I’ve tried 3-4 but have struggle to make short recordings of portions of the screen without a struggle.
I don't know about recording part of your screen, though, I haven't tried it so I don't know if it's possible with the built in functionality. I'd probably go for OBS but that's far from easy to work with.
Instead, I opened up a Windows VM in Parallels on my MBA and did a quick screen recording with Quicktime. No Microsoft (or other) logins needed.
Its settings are in the Xbox app somewhere, but you don't need to sign in for that part: you can simply close the popup, or accept the defaults (like storing the videos in your user folder instead of somewhere else).
To use it, hit Win+G to open up the game bar and hit the record button. Alternatively, you can start/stop recording immediately with Win+alt+R.
The various releases of Windows 10 aren't different licenses, they're similar to Apple's OS X releases: iterative improvements within the same code base, with new features and such.
like realtek audio drivers taking more time to install than windows itself, or realme phones ...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
>MPEG-4 Part 14 is an instance of the more general ISO/IEC 14496-12:2004 (MPEG-4 Part 12: ISO base media file format) which is directly based upon the QuickTime File Format which was published in 2001.
What Apple has managed to do is a disgustingly closed ecosystem and a genius racket of a marketing and has built an aura around itself. It’s so obscene that when it brings a feature on its phone that was available on Android for years, and was released on Android without any fanfare - merely as an essential feature, Apple pushes it, and the media, bloggers, and many users lap it up, as if Apple just figured out perpetual energy.
I seriously doubt the scene will be any different if Apple tomorrow announces a mechanical trolley for $9989 and says it runs on Apple exclusive TrueWheel™.
It feels such journalists and bloggers live in a different universe and no I’m not even talking about Apple shills (some of them have become “critic” of late; jg et al), I am talking about the ones who are probably not shills.
> QuickTime was bigger than Apple itself, so widely known that many who used it on their PCs weren’t even aware that it was an Apple product
Alright, definitely an alternate universe.
Later I used TotallyHip's LiveStage to create some all-in-a-QuickTime-movie interactive gizmos.
It's weird to see cutting-edge things fade into obscurity.
Peter Hoddie. Now that is a name I haven't heard in a long time. Some of the more ... eccentric engineers I met worked on the Quicktime team, ha ha.
Some of us were of the opinion at the time that one of Quicktime's failings was the lack of codecs that shipped with the OS (Mac's System 7, 8, 9). Mention this around engineers on the QT team and the response was something like, "Codecs are for 3rd parties, Apple is not in the Codec business." Too bad.
There was, perhaps undeserved, a sense that the Quicktime team were a bit haughty, maybe thought they were bigger than Apple. I say this regarding the time when Apple was circling the drain, so they may well have been correct.
But I think Jobs return to Apple must have been another nail in the coffin for Quicktime. NeXT was still his baby and you suspect that Quicktime's not-invented-here status (and, quixotically, "here" in this case means "NeXT") might have meant Jobs had it in for the technology.
Aside: Did Jobs shut down ATG? (I know he shut down Apple's technical library. Given, as I say, Apple circling the drain at the time, shutting down ATG might have seemed an act of financial prudence.)
The NeXt app, Preview, was handed to me when Mac OS X was just getting going: Preview being wholly built upon the image offerings of AppKit (NSImage). Someone though had grafted a bit of Quicktime code that would add a handful of additional image types that AppKit did not support so Preview could also open BMP files, maybe Targa files, etc. It was just a sort of "image pre-processing" though to get the pixels from Quicktime — go straight to NSImage at that point. It looked to me that Quicktime was not going to be a First-Class Citizen in this new Mac OS X.
Quicktime stuck around for quite a while longer though. I vaguely recall that the QT team had the cross-platform code that iTunes would need in order to serve iPod playlists for owners of Windows PC's. Basically Quicktime had something like the old Mac Toolbox (yes, Quickdraw included) that also ran under Windows.
I came to like OS X though. It showed its UNIX pedigree by leaning more on open libraries like JPEGLib, TiffLib, PNGLib and other industry image frameworks. For a while there Apple was not trying to set the tone with proprietary formats (and just now FireWire comes to mind), but rather happy to follow where the "industry" was going. It seems only when Apple had regained a healthy market share again (about a decade later?) would it begin to resume introducing new standards and, in that regard, be more of a leader.
Much too late for Quicktime.
[Edit] Also, I just found a review of my favorite tech toy from the early 90s: The VideoSpigot card that let you actually digitize composite video on a home Mac. The quality was absolute shite and the memory and storage at the time were hardly capable of handling it, but it was the first time you could ever do something like that. It came bundled with Premiere!
- I am sad that I am not being able to demo this old qtvr work (and recording a video of is my current alternative - it shows the point, but without the interactivity)
https://blog.solidstatecode.com/converting-qtvr-panoramas-to...
https://jurnsearch.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/how-to-get-an-ol...
You don’t need to open QuickTime anymore for that, just press cmd shift 5
I love the feature, but it doesn’t record the computer audio like it does on iOS. I hope it comes eventually, I don’t want to deal with bloated third party apps.
I love that QuickTime lets you cut (not just trim) and join videos. It’s a fairly obscure feature that has helped me avoid iMovie for the past few years.
The only way to record the computer output is to install a kext or some other similar hack.
once you have a virtual audio interface installed, you can use the built in audio/midi editor, create an aggregate device, and use that from inside QuickTime.
it's not super straightforward to set up, but once you have it set up, you can route audio anywhere and record that easily with QuickTime.
using an extension for virtual audio, for a system designed for routing audio isn't really a "hack", and I'm kind of surprised that with the audio routing already available in macOS that it doesn't ship with a virtual audio device out of the box.
the worst part is that most Mac owners don't know about "Audio MIDI Setup.app"
> Soundflower seems to be behind by a few releases & Blackhole murdered my ability to use speakers on Zoom calls until I uninstalled it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Advanced_Technology_Grou... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Video
https://computerhistory.org/blog/quicktime-and-the-rise-of-m...
Fun facts:
1 Look up S3TC/DXTC texture compression, S3 copied Apple video codec verbatim and patented it for 3D graphics use. Somehow Apple missed that and didnt fight initial patent, resulting in losing couple iphone court cases 10 years later and purging S3TC from mobile.
2 Microsoft fucked up getting caught conspiring with Intel, paying third party contractor to steal QuickTime code https://www.theregister.com/1998/10/29/microsoft_paid_apple_... Thats the origin of the infamous "Microsoft saved Apple in the nineties" myth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5TdqfNE1QU
Saving, of course, was always an exaggeration, as reported in that Wired article from the time too: "For Apple, the cash is symbolic. While the company has been bleeding money, it has about $1.2 billion in cash, according to its last quarterly earnings report, and doesn't need Microsoft's money to fend off immediate starvation." Recommitting to Office was a much bigger thing than the cash, probably,
Such is the power of a good word.
[1]https://www.cultofmac.com/548865/apple-get-a-mac-ad-campaign...
You might consider getting an Apple II. It has color graphics and a lot of good games. You can even add a Z-80 card to it to run CP/M software.
Relevant excerpt: Microsoft Threatens QuickTime Partners In addition to providing roadblocks to QuickTime running on Windows, Microsoft also worked to stop QuickTime by threatening its partners to abandon licensing, distribution, or development of anything related to QuickTime, or else prepare to face the retribution Microsoft could deliver.
Hardware: Microsoft leaned on its Windows PC OEMs to prevent them from bundling QuickTime; trial testimony revealed specifically how Microsoft took quick steps to block Compaq's licensing of QuickTime.
While Compaq was enthusiastic about licensing QuickTime to help differentiate its PCs from those of rivals, after Microsoft heard about the plans and expressed its disapproval, the company suddenly withdrew and refused to continue any talks with Apple.
Applications: Microsoft also jumped on Avid Cinema, a new consumer video editing product based on QuickTime that long time Apple partner Avid was preparing to release.
Microsoft told Avid engineers, "You need to rip QuickTime out of your product if you want to be in this channel." Months later, Avid announced a partnership with Microsoft on its new AAF format for multimedia authoring.
Drivers: Microsoft also pounced on Truevision, a video capture card vendor. After learning that the company was developing QuickTime drivers for its video capture cards, Microsoft invested in the company with the proviso that the company could not market, brand, or refer to the drivers as a QuickTime driver, and could only bundle them with a specific application, not offer the drivers for sale separately.
Advanced Authoring Format Microsoft had backed up its threats to jump into the media authoring business to kill QuickTime entirely by developing the Advanced Authoring Format, the last missing component of Microsoft's rival offerings.
In June 1998, Microsoft advised Apple that its only remaining choice in the matter would be to agree to a broad technology sharing plan that donated its technology to Microsoft and abandoned its own competitive efforts:
•Apple had to agree to cross-license its codecs and collaborate with Microsoft on all future codec development •Apple had to adopt Microsoft's DirectX run-time platform on Windows in place of QuickTime •Apple had to adopt Microsoft's proprietary streaming technology •Apple had to adopt Microsoft's new proprietary AAF file format for media authoring
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/5F0C866C-6DD...
Basically, I find the distinction between 'computer' and 'device' (using the common parlance) troublesome. The control that manufacturers have in phones and consoles would be appalling if done in a general computer, but I find the distinction meaningless.
To me that's a meaningful distinction. It seems like there is a desire out there to turn iOS into macOS through government lobbying - I can see both sides to that discussion, but I have various arguments for why this would be a mistake for actual end users, whose experience I hold above developers' wishes for new business opportunities.
The targeting of a popular platform this way is killing the golden goose. Certain greedy types are spearheading initiatives that will harm small developers and the platform for the sole benefit of bigger players.
Consumers don't want to fuss with stores or hand their payment details over to an unknown 3rd party, we've seen it with digital magazine/news/music/content subscriptions, we've seen it with premium SMS, we've seen it with an endless parade of scam apps and services online. We even see it offline with gym memberships, scam-charities and again magazine/newspaper subscriptions. The escrow-model of the AppStore and Google Play lets consumers ignore the trust issues in handing over their banking/CC details. If suddenly the only way you can get non-Apple or non-Google services is to give your bank or credit card details to an unknown, that is going to result in trust problems eventually turning away consumers from online purchasing, plus obvious fraud issues at the credit-card or bank level, and a shift in developers having to rely on ad-supported "free" apps, because consumers are wary of purchasing directly.
"But a developer could just use IAP?!!?11" - sure they could, but now they can't compete with incumbents like Spotify who would have an unfair margin advantage, since they're well known and considered trustworthy. The likes of Spotify are then able to use their better margins to undercut smaller players who would need to use IAP for trust reasons, plus smaller operators will not be able to attain comparable rates with a payment processor. I.E. Start-ups or small operators get screwed by this.
All up, this is the tip of the iceberg. Going for iOS is easy because one can frame a bunch of "open competition" arguments since the platform takes on the appearance of a general computing platform. However once the laws are in, you can bet it'll be used to crack open every kind of closed model (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Kindle, etc) to the sole benefit of large incumbents that wish to exist as parasites to popular platforms.
Meanwhile the consumer doesn't get anything new out of this, they don't get better competition nor cheaper prices, but they now have to watch out for fraud and malware.
If you mean QuickTime as a framework, ffmpeg.
We also fought a lot when it came to the early days of torrenting anime and movies. I don't think Streaming and QuickTime really ever cross paths. It just didn't support as many fancy features that VLC and Media Player with the various Codec packs did, and later on players like MPV absolutely overwhelmed QuickTime in terms of playback and feature sets.
I have vague memories that QuickTime used to come with the iTunes package for Windows, but I may be wrong on this so don't quote me on it. I do distinctly remember a period of time when many people who had Windows would ask how QuickTime got on their system.
From the Mac side of things, QuickTime always felt like it didn't know what it should be. It was aways a sort-of media player without all the library features and playback features the other players had, along with a very basic media editor, media converter/exporter, and a few other bells and whistles that were neat but no one used and very few people wanted to pay for.
Eventually I think Apple just realized there was no sense in maintaining it as a priority. As I wrote this post, I realized that on Big Sur, the dictionary no longer corrects QuickTime like it corrects iTunes or iMac or many other Apple products. (amusingly, apple seems to have had the self restraint not to assume you mean the company and not the fruit when writing apple, just a neat little fact ;))
Ultimately though, I don't think streaming and QuickTime really were enemies at all. I don't think streaming was even really a thing by the time QuickTime was really relegated to "that app you accidentally open movies in sometimes." Now it just is a media player that sticks around because you have to have a media player with your OS or the other OSes will make fun of you.
It did, because QuickTime is/was a media handling framework. The article isn't talking about the QuickTime Player application except incidentally. When you were using the Mac on OS 7 up until about 2011 (with the introduction of AVFoundation), just about everything that was playing media using Carbon or Cocoa API calls was using QuickTime under the hood.
When Apple ported QuickTime Player to Windows, they ported the QuickTime framework, too -- and iTunes for Windows was built to use that. So QTP basically came along for the ride whether you wanted it to or not. I don't know if this is still the case, though.
This would be odd since the video player in the very latest macOS is still called "QuickTime Player" even though QuickTime is no longer involved. Indeed on Monterey it's autocorrecting completely for me
(Also, the current version of the QuickTime Player -- and, of course, AVFoundation -- handles streaming perfectly well, although I doubt many people use QTP for that.)
Haven’t tried DeaDBeeF to my knowledge, but it seems vaguely familiar, so maybe I did way back in the day.
I haven’t really used local music much since I started streaming music. I never would have guessed that shift would occur. I’m finding the value in local media lately, though. I know that remote streaming assets can disappear anytime, and now plan for that eventuality. Building a local media library feels sustainable and fun again, and discovery has a companion goal of collecting.