Apple releases QuickTime 7.0 for Panther

[AppleInsider]

Apple today released QuickTime 7 for Mac OS X "Panther," which was developed under the code-name "Gibson." The update provides a vast array of new features, including: H.264 video support, live player resize, zero-configuration streaming, surround sound, new and improved playback controls and an all-new content guide. Users who pay a $30 upgrade fee to QuickTime 7.0 Pro will gain access to advanced features such as: audio and video recording, simplified movie sharing, full-screen floating controls, H.264 video creation, surround audio creation, concurrent exports, improved movie authoring, AAC constant-quality encoding and 3G streaming content creation. Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther" users can access the update from the Software Update mechanism located in the Apple menu.[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ] (http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1041)

[ipodandimac]

i can't wait for some "professional" to upgrade to quicktime7, then all of a sudden realize he or she has to pay $30 unless Final Cut Studio is on its way. call me mean, but i know it's gonna happen and it serves them right. 8)

[sunilraman]

Test Clips Here... Short clips from Matrix Revolutions (see important disclaimer below)

(edit: links fixed now)

CLIP 01
5.4mb, (right-click and save as/download)
http://www.phatcraft.com/matrix_revolutions_chapter5_clip.h264.mov
(encoded with Quicktime 7 Pro h.264, single pass,
video rate limited to 1000kbits/sec,
640x272 pixels)

CLIP 02
4.5mb (right-click and save as/download)
http://www.phatcraft.com/matrix_revolutions_chapter5_clip.h264.02.mov
(encoded with Quicktime 7 Pro h.264, multi-pass,
video rate limited to 800kbits/sec,
640x272 pixels)

CLIP 03
8.7mb (right-click and save as/download)
http://www.phatcraft.com/matrix_revolutions_chapter5_clip.h264.04.mov
(encoded with Quicktime 7 Pro h.264, multi-pass,
video rate target was ~ 1800kbits/sec,
640x272 pixels)

CLIP 03 is NICE at 2kbits/sec man... remember that these clips are re-encoded from a DVD MPEG-2 compressed approx 816x336 clip

quality would be great if you had a high-def uncompressed source, no? and something like Sorenson Pro AVC h.264 codec to give you that 'encoding edge'. but for $30 bucks, this is pretty sweet cutting edge h.264 :D :D

and they play back well on quicktime7 for panther 10.3.9 even fullscreen, even on my iBook G4 933mhz 256mb ram. well done apple.

....
disclaimer: the above clip is (c) respective owners. this clip is only used for testing, non-commercial educational purposes
....

[macfly]

heres a question for those in the know. if you upgrade to pro do you have to wait to get the box in the mail? why cant apple just send you an email with the key code? seems like a simple enough thing that would save a few days time once your $30 gets processed...

[sunilraman]

Originally posted by macfly
heres a question for those in the know. if you upgrade to pro do you have to wait to get the box in the mail? why cant apple just send you an email with the key code? seems like a simple enough thing that would save a few days time once your $30 gets processed...

methinks that's what they do... you only get a receipt in the mail IIRC :D

[macfly]

is that for sure? no one out there has upgraded to pro?
i would imagine thats what would happen but u never know...

[TednDi]

Originally posted by macfly
heres a question for those in the know. if you upgrade to pro do you have to wait to get the box in the mail? why cant apple just send you an email with the key code? seems like a simple enough thing that would save a few days time once your $30 gets processed...


You can, they do, and it's instant.

:D

[a_greer]

Originally posted by sunilraman
Test Clips Here... Short clips from Matrix Revolutions (see important disclaimer below)

(edit: links fixed now)

CLIP 01
5.4mb, (right-click and save as/download)
http://www.phatcraft.com/matrix_revolutions_chapter5_clip.h264.mov
(encoded with Quicktime 7 Pro h.264, single pass,
video rate limited to 1000kbits/sec,
640x272 pixels)

CLIP 02
4.5mb (right-click and save as/download)
http://www.phatcraft.com/matrix_revolutions_chapter5_clip.h264.02.mov
(encoded with Quicktime 7 Pro h.264, multi-pass,
video rate limited to 800kbits/sec,
640x272 pixels)

CLIP 03
8.7mb (right-click and save as/download)
http://www.phatcraft.com/matrix_revolutions_chapter5_clip.h264.04.mov
(encoded with Quicktime 7 Pro h.264, multi-pass,
video rate target was ~ 1800kbits/sec,
640x272 pixels)

CLIP 03 is NICE at 2kbits/sec man... remember that these clips are re-encoded from a DVD MPEG-2 compressed approx 816x336 clip

quality would be great if you had a high-def uncompressed source, no? and something like Sorenson Pro AVC h.264 codec to give you that 'encoding edge'. but for $30 bucks, this is pretty sweet cutting edge h.264 :D :D

and they play back well on quicktime7 for panther 10.3.9 even fullscreen, even on my iBook G4 933mhz 256mb ram. well done apple.

....
disclaimer: the above clip is (c) respective owners. this clip is only used for testing, non-commercial educational purposes
.... Looks stunning - cant wait to see what a 300-400k stream looks like

[aplnub]

I have FCP HD but would glady pay the $30 for QT Pro 7.0.

:D Now upgrading to the new FCP won't exactly be as easy for me. I will probably hold off on that. :embarrass

[Not Unlike Myself]

So how long until QT7 is available as a standard download for everyone?

[zenatek]

Originally posted by Not Unlike Myself
So how long until QT7 is available as a standard download for everyone?

ahhh, isnt that what this thread is about? That its available for everyone...I am downloading it right now.

[graf]

Presumably, it's a bad idea to install this update if you have bought quicktime 6 pro (and quicktime 6 mpeg-2 plugin)? Or can the two run side by side?

[Not Unlike Myself]

Originally posted by zenatek
ahhh, isnt that what this thread is about? That its available for everyone...I am downloading it right now. Sorry.. what I meant was Windows. (everyone *else*)

[aplnub]

Originally posted by graf
Presumably, it's a bad idea to install this update if you have bought quicktime 6 pro (and quicktime 6 mpeg-2 plugin)? Or can the two run side by side?

I have Pro and just installed 7.0.

If Pro is there, I can't find it. So I guess you can't if you do a basic software update.

But that is ok because I had planned on buying Pro as soon as I get Tiger loaded (this weekend). :)

[zenatek]

Originally posted by Not Unlike Myself
Sorry.. what I meant was Windows. (everyone *else*)

Oh yah, sorry forgot there was other people besides us mac users.

[Thinine]

Backup your old QT player so it doesn't get over written during the upgrade. It should work afterward, with full pro features if you have it.

[Minguez]

Just tried to encode a 3 minute 720x575 clip in h.264 from final cut.

Estimated time left 60 minutes on a dual 2.0 with 1500mb RAM, with fans going up and down...

[Kickaha]

Originally posted by Minguez
Just tried to encode a 3 minute 720x575 clip in h.264 from final cut.

Estimated time left 60 minutes on a dual 2.0 with 1500mb RAM, with fans going up and down...

What are your quality settings like?

[CrunchinJelly]

I hope there's an update released soonish to sort out performance issues.

Movies are close to unplayable on my G3 800 w/ 640MB RAM.

[jasenj1]

Originally posted by CrunchinJelly
I hope there's an update released soonish to sort out performance issues.

Movies are close to unplayable on my G3 800 w/ 640MB RAM.

"Movies", like ALL movies, even ones that used to play fine? Or "movies", like the new H.264 stuff?

- Jasen.

[CrunchinJelly]

All movies.

Just regular .mov's are now close to unplayable.

Edit: I'm really annoyed, actually. Safari 1.3 is a massive improvement over 1.2, but QuickTime is simply awful. I don't dare buy Tiger now!

[lundy]

Originally posted by TednDi
You can, they do, and it's instant.

:D

And, the online Apple Store keeps a record of all your software download serial numbers. Just click "Your Account" under the Store, log into your account, and there is a link to all of your downloads and the activation keys.

[Telomar]

Originally posted by CrunchinJelly
All movies.

Just regular .mov's are now close to unplayable.

Edit: I'm really annoyed, actually. Safari 1.3 is a massive improvement over 1.2, but QuickTime is simply awful. I don't dare buy Tiger now! Something's wrong then because QT7 considerably outperforms QT6 on the same codecs. I can comfortably scrub through a lot of files that used to be jerky as can be. I can even play some I could never play before.

Edit: If those .movs are encoded with AVC they will tax your computer. If you have a slow computer it wouldn't surprise me if it had issues with them.

[Mac The Fork]

All movies.

Just regular .mov's are now close to unplayable.On the iMac G3 (500 MHz, 576 MB RAM, Rage 128 Pro), everything works as well as or better than it ever has. Sunil's H.264 clips are unplayable, however (between 0-3 fps).

[octane]

I JUST bought QT 6 Pro about 6 months ago and now they want me to pay ANOTHER $30 to get QT 7 Pro. $30 isn't a lot of money but I was under the impression I could buy it once. This just seems more like a micro-shaft policy than Apple. :grumble:

[scavanger]

A Good thread on the doom9 forums about some quicktime discussion with the h.264 codec.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=93366

[Gene Clean]

Any news about a Windows port? I sold my iBook, and I'm going to use Linux most of the time for the next 2 months, but I could boot into Windows to try it out...

[sunilraman]

Originally posted by Mac The Fork
On the iMac G3 (500 MHz, 576 MB RAM, Rage 128 Pro), everything works as well as or better than it ever has. Sunil's H.264 clips are unplayable, however (between 0-3 fps).

hi Fork and others with G3s, h.264 is a very very processor-intensive codec.

before Quicktime7, if you used VLC player to playback ffmpegX-encoded h.264 clips, it would run choppy on my iBook G4 933mhz 256mb ram machine.

Quicktime7-playback of h.264 is vastly improved on my iBook G4...

Unfortunately, looks like (maybe Altivec optimisations?) h.264 is geared towards G4 and above.

PS. time to get a new mac ;) :p

[Empyrean]

I am really new to the Apple environment. I first purchased a Mac Mini and two days ago purchased a Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 with Tiger loaded. Forgive me if I am overlooking something obvious...

I purchased QuickTime Pro 7.0 and the MPEG-2 codec in hopes of converting my personal SkyDiving video to a QuickTime video. I believe I can successfully conver the video VOB file but have no idea how to integrate the audio from DVD.

I'm hoping one of you QuickTime experts will give me some guidance. In short, how do I convert a (non-encrypted) DVD to a H.264 QuickTime video with audio?

Thanks in advance,
AJ

[sunilraman]

Originally posted by Empyrean
I am really new to the Apple environment. I first purchased a Mac Mini and two days ago purchased a Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 with Tiger loaded. Forgive me if I am overlooking something obvious...

I purchased QuickTime Pro 7.0 and the MPEG-2 codec in hopes of converting my personal SkyDiving video to a QuickTime video. I believe I can successfully conver the video VOB file but have no idea how to integrate the audio from DVD.

I'm hoping one of you QuickTime experts will give me some guidance. In short, how do I convert a (non-encrypted) DVD to a H.264 QuickTime video with audio?

Thanks in advance,
AJ

hi and welcome... you can use Genius Bar part of AppleInsider forum if you like the next time... there really are geniuses just waiting to help you :D well hopefully.... ;)

actually, the weird part about the MPEG-2 deal is that you convert the video out of VOB into a certain format you like. The sound has to be added via the "add to movie" menu separatedly... that is, you convert the video out, then you convert the audio out, then you join the two. then after you join the two you can export to h.264 video with aac-encoded audio in your final QuickTime clip.

hmm i am real tired now and probably not making sense so better start a thread in Genius Bar part of this forums, so we'll help you out there.

[ubernaut]

...I'm hoping one of you QuickTime experts will give me some guidance. In short, how do I convert a (non-encrypted) DVD to a H.264 QuickTime video with audio?

Thanks in advance,
AJ

Try handbrake it works really well for this kind of thing. the current 264 enabled version is beta but it should work pretty good.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21117

also regarding those new hd 264 clips they are even jerky on the new 2.7 ghz g5s! im not sure but it may have something to do with the bandwidth on those things 7mbits may be too much number crunching i guess for new macs or old.

those matrix clips are awesome thanks to sunilraman for posting those.

[Junkyard Dawg]

QT Pro: Apple's personal "FUCK YOU" to all Mac users.

Just bought a $1500 computer? Ha hah! You've got to pay another $30 if you want to save any video clips from embedded web pages, or watch internet video full screen! Oh yeah, we've got you now, SUCKER!

Because as we all know, only the "pros" watch video full screen.

If Apple charged only for the use of codecs, it would make sense, but still would be a kick in the crotch to someone who just spent $3000 on a Powermac. But crippling the standard QT is stupid and only serves to stunt any QT marketshare growth. Even worse, IMO, is the nagging. Apple has the best desktop OS in the world on their hands, sleek, profession, and cool - yet new users are greeted with nagging as soon as they try to open any internet-related media files.

John Siracusa (of Arstechnica) masterfully skewered Apple for including cripple-ware in Tiger:

There's one final unpleasantry to deal with: QuickTime Pro. Like its predecessors, the Tiger QuickTime Player is crippleware. Many of the most useful features are disabled, and can only be enabled by paying Apple $30 for a QuickTime Pro license. The menu items for these "pro-only" features are grayed out and have obnoxious little "PRO" badges next to them.

Don't misunderstand, none of the disabled features in the QuickTime Player are actually disabled in QuickTime 7 itself. They're simply disabled in the player application. Anyone can create a QuickTime player application that goes right ahead and calls the APIs that the QuickTime Player in "non-pro" mode refuses to call. Oh and by the way, the QuickTime browser plugin-suffers from the same intentional feature debilitation.

This has been the case for years with QuickTime, so why get all riled up about it now? Here's why. Mac OS X ships with a complete integrated development environment that supports C, C++, Objective-C, Java, and all of the APIs in Mac OS X (not to mention distributed compiling, a GUI design and layout tool, and a suite of performance monitoring applications). Tiger includes a free web browser, e-mail client, address book, dictionary, thesaurus, font manager, and AIM/Jabber instant message client. When you buy an iMac you get all of the above plus iLife: iPhoto, iMovie, Garage Band, and iDVD.

The total development cost of this software bundle is absolutely huge. The total retail cost of iLife alone is $80. And yet after spending $1,500 or more on a new Mac with this great software bundle, what's waiting for you when you fire it up for the first time and try to watch a QuickTime movie trailer in full-screen mode? Why, it's a nag screen asking you to pay $30 more for the "privilege" of calling the QuickTime APIs that are sitting right there in the library code on your disk.

This is just criminally stupid. It mars the otherwise exemplary out-of-box experience for buyers of consumer Macs especially. Having spent well over $4,000 on my current crop of Mac hardware (plus $80 for iLife '05 plus who knows how much for the Mac OS X Public Beta through Tiger), I find it personally insulting that I'm still not entitled to the "wonders" of QuickTime Pro.

Yeah, sure, I can download a third-party movie player application and find a third-party QuickTime browser plug-in. I can watch movie trailers in iTunes, which will go full-screen even without the magic "pro" key. Or I can google for an illegitimate QuickTime Pro key code. I can even shell out the $30. But it's not the money that bothers me, it's the principle. I'd be happy if Apple simply raised the price of its hardware by $30. On a $4,000+ bill, it's practically a rounding error.

But please, Apple, give up on the QuickTime Pro thing. It's always been annoying, but when viewed alongside today's suite of bundled Apple software, it's downright ridiculous. Worse, it makes the Mac platform look bad when the bundled QuickTime Player application can't do all of the things that make QuickTime so cool: cut, copy, and paste together different kinds of media into a single file, extract and recombine tracks, import and export a huge number of formats, and yes, view video in full-screen mode.

Yeesh. Rant over.

[Kickaha]

Yeah, Siracusa rocks.

To save (non-streaming) movies on the web though:

View source. 'Find' for '.mov'. Once you've found the URL for the movie, cut and paste it directly into the address field of your browser, it will load. Save it. Annoying, but takes all of 5 extra seconds.

[hmurchison]

Originally posted by Kickaha
Yeah, Siracusa rocks.

To save (non-streaming) movies on the web though:

View source. 'Find' for '.mov'. Once you've found the URL for the movie, cut and paste it directly into the address field of your browser, it will load. Save it. Annoying, but takes all of 5 extra seconds.


Thank your for that Kickaha. I'm wondering if you can simply set up a smart folder that will track what pops into your internet cache when you download so that you can find it and save it. However your way is easier.

a bit of a pet peeve. Are we really helping new people on AI if we have vetrans bitching about the same thing. Folks we have to evolve. Hitting your head on the wall is only a problem if you do it more than once. IE learn from your past pain. Quicktime 6 came with the same stipulations the QT5 Pro licenses didn't work. Quicktime 6 was delivered more than two years ago. So this isn't a $30 a year tax. It's more like $10 a year.

Another tip for newbies,previous version of QT nag screens could be rid by setting your clock forward a year or more. Opening up a QT file and clicking the "Later". This sets the next follow-up nag screen but in 2007 catch my drift. Close the file and reset your clock back.

There's no way to secure the license fees in any other way other than just packing the costs into the OS. Apple has to resort to artificially limiting other areas as an incentive.

[Kickaha]

I thought the nag screen was gone in QT7? At least on Tiger?

The new nag is the greyed out menu items with (PRO) next to them to remind you of what you're missing... ;)

Yup, no nag here on 10.3.9, just checked.

[hmurchison]

Oh cool. I hadn't checked on the Mac at work to see the preferences.

[ubernaut]

no nag in 10.4 either. btw there are a list some where on apples website of quicktime applescripts (not sure yet how they work with 7) that allow you create presentation files with the pro player that will allow anyone pro or not to view your movies fullscreen.

uber

[Telomar]

Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg
Just bought a $1500 computer? Ha hah! You've got to pay another $30 if you want to save any video clips from embedded web pages, or watch internet video full screen! Oh yeah, we've got you now, SUCKER! Ever been able to save windows media clips straight from the browser?

[ipodandimac]

i'll throw in my 2 cents in this thread. though it is kinda dumb that an upgrade is required for full screen video, there are easy alternatives to quicktime pro that are free.

For full screen video and many other quicktime functionalities, get VLC. It's free.

For saving cached movies in Safari and the iTunes Music Store, use iGetMovies (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21533)

There is absolutely no excuse for whining about Quicktime (and Pro) when you have free alternatives.

[sunilraman]

Originally posted by ipodandimac
i'll throw in my 2 cents in this thread. though it is kinda dumb that an upgrade is required for full screen video, there are easy alternatives to quicktime pro that are free.

For full screen video and many other quicktime functionalities, get VLC. It's free.

For saving cached movies in Safari and the iTunes Music Store, use iGetMovies (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21533)

There is absolutely no excuse for whining about Quicktime (and Pro) when you have free alternatives.

don't forget MacMpeg2Decoder
http://mm2d.sourceforge.net/

saves you the $20 you might spend on the QuicktimeMpeg2 component...