Apple unlocks full-screen QuickTime playback, releases iTunes 7.3.1

[AppleInsider]

In addition to a minor iTunes fix, Apple on Wednesday unleashed an update to its QuickTime media player software that lets users view videos in full-screen mode without a purchase upgrade.

QuickTime 7.2

The Cupertino-based company said QuickTime 7.2 includes a new version of QuickTime Player that unlocks support for viewing videos in full-screen -- a feature which was previously available only through a $30 QuickTime Pro license.

QuickTime 7.2 also bundles "updates to the H.264 codec" and numerous bug fixes, Apple said. It's available as 51.4MB download for Mac users and a 19.3MB download for Windows users.

iTunes 7.3.1

Meanwhile, Apple also released iTunes 7.3.1, which "addresses a minor problem with iTunes 7.3 accessing the iTunes Library."

iTunes 7.3.1 is available as a 33.8MB download for Mac users and a 47.6MB download for Windows users.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[emig647]

Hopefully iTunes 7.3.1 will fix the 1 second pauses I've been experiencing on songs not played before in the beginning. Once they play that pause goes away.

It's about time they unlocked the full-screen. Every other movie player does it.

[Kolchak]

It's about time. It took way too long for Apple to realize that VLC can do everything QT Player can do (and more, like adjust audio sync), play fullscreen, play more media formats, and is completely free.

[BlackSummerNight]

RIGHT ON!

Originally Posted by Kolchak

It's about time. It took way too long for Apple to realize that VLC can do everything QT Player can do (and more, like adjust audio sync), play fullscreen, play more media formats, and is completely free.

[G_Warren]

Woo. QuickTime Pro makes sense again - the Pro licence lets you make files, the normal version gives you all of the playback features. Why did it take them so long to sort this back to the way it was before?!

[Marvin]

Now the wait until all the Pro features just come free with Quicktime. You'd think that Apple would do these things so that it's more beneficial to be on the Mac side. Let Windows users pay for Quicktime Pro but give us Mac users it for nothing.

I wonder if the H264 update improves encoding performance. It is soooo slow.

There is also a couple of other issues. I find a lot of movies come out desaturated. Also if I use Quicktime's movie to mp4 with H264 instead of movie to quicktime with H264, the movie turns out worse (very blocky at points). Sometimes I actually encode to mpeg-1 instead and that's not right, I shouldn't have to resort to using an older codec to get rid of blockiness but I actually get better results.

It seems to me that it's because of the Quicktime with H264 slider, which looks like it does some sort of variable bitrate. The mp4 option doesn't have a slider. What I end up having to do is encode to Quicktime H264, then I open it again and export as MP4 but with a video passthrough - it's such a pain to do this on a lot of clips. I don't see why the MP4 option doesn't just have the same encoder options that the quicktime container uses.

[reallynotnick]

Ha, I was just playing with Leopard the other day and noticed the free quicktime (7.2) had full screen and was wondering when Apple would bring it to the rest of us. I even tried to use the leopard quicktime to no avail.

[ThinkExpensive]

That's too bad...I really thought it was a great revenue tool for Apple to get consumers to buy QuickTime Pro...now there's really no need to sell it (this is probably the most common reason for users to upgrade). The only other good feature in my opinion is the ability to download quicktime/wmv (with flip4mac) movies or clips.

[trevorlsciact]

About Fucking Time!

[emig647]

Originally Posted by trevorlsciact

About Fucking Time!

lawl... preach on brotha

[Toyin]

Originally Posted by trevorlsciact

About Fucking Time!

No honestly tell us how you really feel

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by ThinkExpensive

That's too bad...I really thought it was a great revenue tool for Apple to get consumers to buy QuickTime Pro...now there's really no need to sell it (this is probably the most common reason for users to upgrade).

No, you let "pro" really be pro features. It has a lightweight audio and video recording feature, a lightweight clip editor, as well as an encoder.

Pretending that full screen is a pro feature was stupid, greedy and arrogant.

[Slewis]

Null.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

The Cupertino-based company said QuickTime 7.2 includes a new version of QuickTime Player that unlocks support for viewing videos in full-screen

At last! Someone at Apple grew a brain!

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by trevorlsciact

About Fucking Time!

OMG... I WAS JUST GOING TO DO THAT 'EXACT' SAME THING!!!

[Twisted]

It has never been necessary to purchase QuickTime Pro to use fullscreen mode. AppleScript can direct QuickTime Player to present any movie in fullscreen. There are instructions on how to do this and example scripts on numerous Mac tip sites, and probably a dozen or more scripts compiled as applications on Mac software download sites.

This makes it more convenient, and should have been done long ago, but anyone who paid $30 for QuickTime Pro solely to get full screen playback is just Steve Jobs' bitch.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by Twisted

It has never been necessary to purchase QuickTime Pro to use fullscreen mode. AppleScript can direct QuickTime Player to present any movie in fullscreen. There are instructions on how to do this and example scripts on numerous Mac tip sites, and probably a dozen or more scripts compiled as applications on Mac software download sites.

This makes it more convenient, and should have been done long ago, but anyone who paid $30 for QuickTime Pro solely to get full screen playback is just Steve Jobs' bitch.

Whilst the first paragraph and first bit of the second is all true, I don't agree with the last bit. We're all geeks here so we know about AppleScript and all that. But the fact is that most people don't know about that stuff and wouldn't think to themselves "there must be some way of using scripting to make QuickTime do full screen without me having to pay". They'd think "wow, Apple really are a bunch of penny-pinching bastards, aren't they?"

[ecking]

Originally Posted by trevorlsciact

About Fucking Time!

Post of the month right there. Truer words have not been spoken.

[mstone]

I know this isn't exactly on topic but what I hope gets fixed is the strange superimposed pixillation garbled effect that I see all the time when watching the Apple TV commercials using QT plugin in Safari.

It's some weird streaming cache thing at the beginning of the playback usually, but has nothing to do with any lack of bandwidth or computing power on my part because I have the ultimate in both cases, and it happens on all my other macs as well.

Does anyone know what causes this problem?

example image

[aegisdesign]

Originally Posted by Kolchak

It's about time. It took way too long for Apple to realize that VLC can do everything QT Player can do (and more, like adjust audio sync), play fullscreen, play more media formats, and is completely free.

Really? Which formats?

I can't remember the last time I had to use VLC to play anything. There's a lot of decent quicktime codecs now, especially after the Perian 1.0 release which has brought together most of the weird non standard proprietary crap like DivX and AC3.

[Galley]

Originally Posted by trevorlsciact

About Fucking Time!

Ban Comic Sans

[auxio]

Originally Posted by aegisdesign

Really? Which formats?

Streaming AAC for one. It's amazing how many media players have AAC, but not streaming AAC.

I can't remember the last time I had to use VLC to play anything.

VLC crashes for me more often than not.

[allblue]

Does this mean that you can now download a movie through Safari? Without the Pro plug-in the only way to do that is open the activity window, find the file as it downloads to the cache and double click it. As much as I like and admire Apple, crippling their own browser to try squeeze a few extra quid out of the user is taking the piss I reckon. If I want to download a movie I keep Camino to hand so I can just command-s rather than faffing about in the activity window. As regards the player, that is irrelevant to me as they have lost my custom there years ago, a nice little freeware app MovieTime plays full-screen, and with the Flip4Mac plug-in it will work most of the time, VLC when it doesn't (Perian is 10.4+, I'm on 10.3.9).
Still, some progress. Now Apple, what about RAM prices?

[Ireland]

I still don't get when Apple added that feature (or took it away as the case may be) whereby when you launch another app, say 'Calculator' or 'Dictionary' for example, and you are playing a video podcast or a movie in iTunes (not in fullscreen) and you open those other apps they stay hidden behind the iTunes video window. Why not include a fix for that issue in this update, cause that's certainly..

not a feature!!!

[Ireland]

They added a lovely bug too; the floating video controller likes to jump around, great. I clicked on it twice and it reappeared up in the corner, half-way out of the window.

[Amorya]

I got a round of applause for asking for that at last year's WWDC. I'm glad they finally did it!

[EruIthildur]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

a new version of QuickTime Player that unlocks support for viewing videos in full-screen -- a feature which was previously available only through a $30 QuickTime Pro license.

BS. I've been doing it via AppleScript for months.

[a_greer]

Holy dog crap! apple does listen to customers...they are hard-of-hearing, but they listen!


ABOUT DAMND TIME FULL SCREEN WAS FREE...it is a BASIC feature.

[Mr. Me]

Originally Posted by G_Warren

... Why did it take them so long to sort this back to the way it was before?!

Before? Before what? Before QuickTime Pro, the QuickTime Player played exclusively in Windowed mode. The fullscreen mode was added to the editing features as part of QuickTime Pro.

[DaveGee]

Originally Posted by Kolchak

It's about time. It took way too long for Apple to realize that VLC can do everything QT Player can do (and more, like adjust audio sync), play fullscreen, play more media formats, and is completely free.

And VLC has always seemed a tad more 'fragile' too... Don't get me wrong, I really like VLC and wouldn't be without and it's Mac support has been (as far as I've seen) pretty equal with that of Unix and Winodws it but when it comes to stability it seems (for me) to be:

1. QuickTime
2. VLC
3. MPlayer (only really pull this out if VLC can't play something)

I don't even comment on Real since I've tried my best to simply avoid and ignore any/all content that requires it's use... Heck if given a choice between Real & Windows Media... I'm ashamed to admit it but I usually click on the WMP icon over real.

Dave

[solsun]

Originally Posted by emig647

Hopefully iTunes 7.3.1 will fix the 1 second pauses I've been experiencing on songs not played before in the beginning. Once they play that pause goes away.

It's about time they unlocked the full-screen. Every other movie player does it.

I'm not sure that's an iTunes issue... Mine does that too, but it's because I have a lyrics widget..

Every-time a song that hasn't been played comes on, the widget grabs the lyrics and copies them to the iTunes file, which creates a short pause...

[DaveGee]

Originally Posted by a_greer

Holy dog crap! apple does listen to customers...they are hard-of-hearing, but they listen!

Hey.... now lets not go overboard.... If adding fullscreen to 'QT Basic' in any way shape or form resembles Apple listening to it's customers it's purely coincidental, that you can be assured of.

[jonnyboy]

i got stick at work for "activating" a couple of computers for full screen quicktime playback, but i'd like to think this kind of action might've made apple realise the error of their ways and enabled this feature for the free version of the software

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Kolchak

It's about time. It took way too long for Apple to realize that VLC can do everything QT Player can do (and more, like adjust audio sync), play fullscreen, play more media formats, and is completely free.

While VLC may be free and has it's benefits Quicktime Pro also does things that make the $30 cost more than worth it for me.

Still, I'm glad they addd fullscreen capabilities now even thought we knew this was going to be included with Leopard.

[Eduardo]

For iTunes 7.3.1:
it appears the problem with the 'fuzzy'/distorted scroll bar when using cover flow has been finally been fixed!

It is about...time!

(By the way does anyone know how to arrange the iTunes library so that it shows albums by a specific artist by year released-as opposed to listing albums by alphabetical order)?

Cheers!

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by Eduardo

For iTunes 7.3.1:
it appears the problem with the 'fuzzy'/distorted scroll bar when using cover flow has been finally been fixed!
It is about...time!

While it did a long time to fix this issue it was fixed on June 29th with the release of 7.3.0.

Originally Posted by Eduardo

By the way does anyone know how to arrange the iTunes library so that it shows albums by a specific artist by year released-as opposed to listing albums by alphabetical order)?

Off the top of my head, you can select Album view and then arrange by Year. This will still keep all the tracks from the same album together.

[Eduardo]

Originally Posted by solipsism

While it did a long time to fix this issue it was fixed on June 29th with the release of 7.3.0.



Off the top of my head, you can select Album view and then arrange by Year. This will still keep all the tracks from the same album together.

Thanks, I'll try that.

Funny, I kept on having the problems with cover-flow even when I updated to 7.3.

[Slimecat]

Originally Posted by Eduardo

(By the way does anyone know how to arrange the iTunes library so that it shows albums by a specific artist by year released-as opposed to listing albums by alphabetical order)?

I don't have iTunes in front of me right now, but I think you sort by Artist, then click the Album bar until it cycles through Album, Album by Artist, Album by Year.

[bobmarksdale]

Originally Posted by DaveGee

And VLC has always seemed a tad more 'fragile' too... Don't get me wrong, I really like VLC and wouldn't be without and it's Mac support has been (as far as I've seen) pretty equal with that of Unix and Winodws it but when it comes to stability it seems (for me) to be:

1. QuickTime
2. VLC
3. MPlayer (only really pull this out if VLC can't play something)

I don't even comment on Real since I've tried my best to simply avoid and ignore any/all content that requires it's use... Heck if given a choice between Real & Windows Media... I'm ashamed to admit it but I usually click on the WMP icon over real.

Dave

I also hate real. If given a choice between using real and not watching it at all, I would go with the latter. But, I plave VLC as the best player because of this feature:


for those of us with ripped dvds.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by bobmarksdale

I also hate real. If given a choice between using real and not watching it at all, I would go with the latter. But, I plave VLC as the best player because of this feature:


for those of us with ripped dvds.

I've had VLC crash while using that feature more than any other (expect maybe re-encoding files). Converting my copied DVDs to better codec like XviD or H.264 has saved me a great deal of space taken up by the old and busted MPEG-2 codec.

Originally Posted by Eduardo

Funny, I kept on having the problems with cover-flow even when I updated to 7.3.

It fixed it for me and many others with GMA950s so I figured it fixed it for everyone. bad assumption on my part.

PS: THe other option posted about just choosing Album View and then sorting my Artists is better than my option as it keeps the artist's albums together while still separating by year. They will be in decending order but that shouldn't be an issue.