What’s New in QuickTime 6.5?
3GPP and 3GPP2 Support
QuickTime 6.5 now delivers extensive support for both 3GPP and 3GPP2, including video, audio, text, and native .3gp and .3g2 file format support. Because 3GPP and 3GPP2 are now a part of the core architecture of QuickTime, you can import, export, and play back .3gp and .3g2 files just as you do .mp4 and .mov files. The technologies in QuickTime 6.5 that provide these capabilities are MPEG-4 and H.263 video codecs, AAC (Advanced Audio Coding), AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate), and QCELP (Qualcomm Code Excited Linear Predictive) audio codecs, a 3G Text importer and exporter, support for Movie Fragments, and a user-friendly 3G export dialog to aid in the creation of 3GPP- and 3GPP2-compliant files. Learn more about 3GPP and 3GPP2.
AMC Support
QuickTime 6.5 also includes authoring and playback support for AMC, a popular mobile multimedia format used by KDDI subscribers in Japan. AMC includes MPEG-4 video, QCELP audio, and STML text.
Unicode Text
Content creators can now take advantage of QuickTime 6.5's cross-platform Unicode text support, with improved authoring and playback of text tracks on the Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and Windows XP operating systems.
Enhanced DV Playback
QuickTime 6.5 provides the option to deinterlace fields during DV playback for a more smooth video image, particularly when text is part of that image.
Apple Lossless Encoder
With QuickTime 6.5.1 and later, you can create and play back Apple Lossless audio. This new lossless audio codec retains the full quality of uncompressed CD audio while requiring only about half the storage space. Apple Lossless Encoder can be used for importing music from CDs in iTunes.
Other Key Features of QuickTime 6:
MPEG-4 File Format (.mp4)
MPEG-4 Video
The high-performance MPEG-4 video codec included in QuickTime 6 provides the highest quality results across a wide spectrum of data rates — from narrowband to broadband and beyond. This revolutionary codec offers compression times and video quality that rival those of the best proprietary codecs, yet it provides interoperability with other MPEG-4 players and devices. Tour the MPEG-4 Video Gallery.
AAC Audio
AAC is the new standard in professional audio. It provides more efficient compression than older formats such as MP3, yet delivers quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio. The enhanced QuickTime AAC codec builds upon state-of-the-art signal processing technology from Dolby Laboratories, and brings true variable bit rate (VBR) encoding to QuickTime. Learn more about MPEG-4 AAC audio.
Pixlet
Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Tuned for use with high-definition source, it allows digital film frames to play back in real time on any 1GHz G4. For Mac OS X v.10.3 only. Learn more.
Instant-On
Instant-On means instant gratification for broadband users. Instant-On gives you an immediate and smooth playback experience for streams — and instant access as you jump or “scrub” through a movie using the time slider. Tour the Instant-On Gallery.
MPEG-2 Playback
QuickTime 6 delivers playback of MPEG-2 content via the QuickTime 6 MPEG-2 Playback Component, sold separately in the Apple Store online. Support for MPEG-2 is the perfect addition for professional content creators who wish to preview and share work throughout their production processes.
Skip Protection
Apple’s patent-pending technology for preventing interruptions or skips in streaming media just got better. QuickTime 6 and QuickTime Streaming Server 5 iron out the bandwidth bumps on the Internet.
Full Screen
QuickTime 6 delivers enhancements in full screen playback, including keyboard shortcuts for movie control, faster entry to and exit from full screen, and improved playback performance.
Simple User Interface
QuickTime 6 includes up-to-date access to the best in QuickTime content as well as an easy-to-use “Favorites” interface.
Enhanced integration with Keynote
QuickTime and Keynote work together to deliver rich multimedia presentations. You can import QuickTime movies into Keynote to include video and audio in your presentation. Keynote also serves as an authoring platform for QuickTime movies — you can export Keynote files to QuickTime and view your Keynote presentation as a self-playing or interactive movie. By doing so, you maintain Keynote’s stunning animation effects such as 3D cube and flip transitions. Exporting to QuickTime also makes it convenient to post Keynote files to the Internet or view a Keynote presentation on a Windows PC. QuickTime Pro users can even show a presentation in full screen mode for a truly impressive presentation experience.
Support for Java 1.4.1
Developers can now create media-rich applications by accessing the QuickTime APIs with Java 1.4.1. Learn more.
And Much More
QuickTime 6 also delivers continued support for Apple applications, performance enhancements for DV encode and decode and playback of SD and HD streams, authentication support for access of streams behind proxy servers (Mac OS X only), improved MIME type handling, improved automatic detection of streaming transport (Mac OS X only), playback of .amr and .sdv files, support for Macromedia Flash 5, DVC Pro PAL, JPEG 2000 for Mac OS X, Applescript (Mac only), more than 100 other media types such as DV, MP3, and JPEG, and a host of developer APIs.