New QuickTime 7.6 addresses quality, security

[AppleInsider]

Apple just released the new QuickTime 7.6, which includes updates for encoding quality, reliability, compatibility, and security enhancements.

Video improvements include better single-pass H.264 encoding quality and better playback of Motion JPEG content.

For audio, Apple reports that encoding fidelity has been improved for MPEG 4 AAC (Advanced Audio Codec, the successor to MP3) playback, the default option for ripping in iTunes. Release notes also state that audio tracks from MPEG video files now export consistently.

The new update also includes compatibility improvements for iChat and Photo Booth.

A series of security fixes are also part of the update, which benefits both Mac OS X and Windows users. Many of the security patches address issues with handling maliciously crafted media files, based on security vulnerabilities discovered by third party researchers.

QuickTime 7.6 is available as a 72MB download for Mac OS X 10.5 or higher, a 63MB download for Mac OS X 10.4.10 or higher, and a 20MB download for Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista.

Alternatively, you can download and install the update via Mac OS X's Software Update mechanism accessible via the Apple menu.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[bdkennedy1]

I hope this addresses the overall speed of the program.

Quicktime is the slowest loading program on my 2.4ghz iMac and movies take 5-10 seconds to load.

[fellaintga]

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

I hope this addresses the overall speed of the program.

Quicktime is the slowest loading program on my 2.4ghz iMac and movies take 5-10 seconds to
load.

Well mine is instant on a 2.2 MBP maybe you loading a big movie file but even then mine is only 2 seconds.

[hillstones]

Originally Posted by bdkennedy1

I hope this addresses the overall speed of the program.

Quicktime is the slowest loading program on my 2.4ghz iMac and movies take 5-10 seconds to load.

Movies load fast on my iMac G5! Maybe you have some third-party QuickTime plug-in slowing things down.

[amac4me]

Installing now

[minderbinder]

Interesting improvements. Should those make a difference with apps like iSquint or handbrake which use shared libraries?

[teckstud]

Question: What is the diff between H.264 for iPod/Phone or H.264 for ATV? Both play on ATV but only one plays on iPod/Phone.
Does anyone know the direct setting for iShowU for ATV or iPod?

[ruckerz]

Can we have High Profile support for H264 in quicktime?!

[ruckerz]

Originally Posted by teckstud

Question: What is the diff between H.264 for iPod/Phone or H.264 for ATV? Both play on ATV but only one plays on iPod/Phone.
Does anyone know the direct setting for iShowU for ATV or iPod?

See http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/...ne/003218.html or google ffmpeg ipod .

[eAi]

Calling AAC 'the' successor to MP3 is a little bold isn't it?

[Virgil-TB2]

Originally Posted by eAi

Calling AAC 'the' successor to MP3 is a little bold isn't it?

No. It was designed from the start to be the successor to MP3. It was originally going to be called "MP4."

[MrAntonio]

Well, it's very interesting, thank you
and my site Viagra

[8CoreWhore]

Originally Posted by eAi

Calling AAC 'the' successor to MP3 is a little bold isn't it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at many bit rates.

AAC has been standardized by ISO and IEC, as part of the MPEG-2 & MPEG-4 specifications. The MPEG-2 standard contains several audio coding methods, including the MP3 coding scheme. AAC is able to include 48 full-bandwidth (up to 96 kHz) audio channels in one stream plus 16 low frequency enhancement (LFE, limited to 120 Hz) channels, up to 16 "coupling" or dialog channels, and up to 16 data streams. AAC is able to achieve good audio quality at data rates of 320 kbit/s for five channels. The quality for stereo is satisfactory to modest requirements at 96 kbit/s in joint stereo mode, however hi-fi transparency demands data rates of at least 128kbit/s (VBR), better thanMP3. The MPEG-2 Audio tests showed that AAC meets the requirements referred to as "transparent" for the ITU at 128 kb/s for stereo, and 320kb/s for 5.1 audio.

AAC's best known use is as the default audio format of Apple's iPhone, iPod, iTunes, and the format used for all iTunes Store audio.

AAC is also the standard audio format for Sony’s PlayStation 3 and is supported by Sony's Playstation Portable, latest generation of Sony Walkman, Walkman Phones from Sony Ericsson, Nseries Phones from Nokia, Nintendo's Wii (with the Photo Channel 1.1 update installed for Wii consoles purchased before late 2007), the Nintendo DSi, and the MPEG-4 video standard.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

No. It was designed from the start to be the successor to MP3. It was originally going to be called "MP4."

I don't think it was ever going to be called MP4. In fact, that was the biggest mistake the MPEG group made. Most people think that AAC is a proprietary Apple thing, and many people demand MP3 despite AAC being superior. If the MPEG group had called AAC MP4 instead, people would have been all over it (according to the tried and true "hey, it's got a bigger number, so it must be better!" marketing method).

[Wiggin]

Originally Posted by teckstud

Question: What is the diff between H.264 for iPod/Phone or H.264 for ATV? Both play on ATV but only one plays on iPod/Phone.
Does anyone know the direct setting for iShowU for ATV or iPod?

I don't know how it translates into iShowU settings, but the Tech Specs pages on Apple's web site for each device you are interested in lists the supported formats including bit-rates, resolutions, profiles, etc. You can usually fudge around with the resolutions a bit depending on aspect ratio as long as the total number of pixels/macroblocks doesn't exceed the limit. Profile selection seems to be the part that trips up most folks.

AppleTV: http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html

iPod Classic (I think all iPods are the same): http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/specs.html

[wizard69]

I hope that like last year this becomes a sign of continued roll outs of new and updated products.

As to quick time I'm hoping this improves performance on my MBP. I still get decode glitches on movies and TV shows dowloaded from iTunes. This on either the Intermal or external disks. I'm not sure if it is QuickTime or possibly Perian. Maybe I will delete perian first.

Also has any body done an install on an early 2008 MBP and seen any signs of GPU acceleration of movie decodes? It will be a few hours before I can install and I'm in wishing mode that Apple will finally put the GPU to better use here. I don't want to wait for Snow Leopard to get this feature. More so I kinda imagine that the new white MB now has GPU acceleration, if it does it will make my relatively new MBP look rather sad.

Thanks
Dave

[Zandros]

Originally Posted by ruckerz

Can we have High Profile support for H264 in quicktime?!

Pretty please. CABAC support is long, long overdue. If only Apple would embrace x264 rather than their own sub-standard implementation.

Originally Posted by Virgil-TB2

No. It was designed from the start to be the successor to MP3. It was originally going to be called "MP4."

MP4 is stupid and has no logical support as a name. Nevertheless, you can stick AAC files in a .mp4 container.

Originally Posted by Mr. H

I don't think it was ever going to be called MP4. In fact, that was the biggest mistake the MPEG group made. Most people think that AAC is a proprietary Apple thing, and many people demand MP3 despite AAC being superior. If the MPEG group had called AAC MP4 instead, people would have been all over it (according to the tried and true "hey, it's got a bigger number, so it must be better!" marketing method).

Why should it be called MP4? MP4 is a container format, and mp3 isn't named after "MPEG-3", but as audio layer 3 of the MPEG-1 standard. Furthermore, the MPEG-4 (MPEG-4 part 3) standard doesn't define only audio, but multiple video formats too, and AAC is part of the MPEG-2 (MPEG-2 part 7) standard as well. Let's name it MP2, or MP3, or MP7? Why MP4?

The reason why people demand mp3 is first and foremost compatibility, and secondly the lack of an encoder with the status of EAC.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by Zandros

Why should it be called MP4?

Didn't I explain that? You don't need to tell me all that stuff about MPEG-4 and AAC, I know it. (BTW, QuickTime does support CABAC, the problem preventing high-profile H.264 is mainly lack of support for pyramidal B-frames). Edit: are we talking encoding or decoding? According to wikipedia, Apple's encoder doesn't do CABAC. But I know that QuickTime will decode content that uses CABAC. But either way, Apple should be embarrassed that their H.264 encoder and decoder both absolutely suck in comparison to open-source alternatives.

The reason AAC should have been called mp4 is a purely marketing thing. People would see "mp4" and immediately recognise that this is a successor to mp3 (with a thought process along the lines of: "hey 'mp4' is like 'mp3' but the number's bigger! mp4 must be the successor to mp3 and it must be better because the number's bigger!" sorry, but that's how most people (as opposed to geeks like us) think about technology).

Originally Posted by Zandros

The reason why people demand mp3 is first and foremost compatibility

But if AAC had been called mp4, the codec would have been more widely accepted and understood to be an mp3 successor (not a proprietary Apple technology as most people believe), and people would demand their music players support mp4, not that content be provided in a seriously outdated and under-performing codec.

[jlaselva]

Deleted.

[Erunno]

From my personal observation one of the biggest problems with AAC is the general lack of support by non-Apple players. These players support a whole range of formats, even obscure ones like Vorbis and FLAC, but AAC seems more often than not missing. On the other hand since pretty much every player on this planet can decode MP3 it's little surprising that it is the de-facto lingua franca of digital music, despite Apple's dominance on the music player and digital distribution market.

[daniel84]

Will Apple ever fix the AC3 passthrough issue in QuickTime? It's been broken for ages and I wish VLC wasn't the only media player out there that actually outputs audio over multiple channels.

[pmjoe]

Well, it crashed the first time I quit out of it, but otherwise, it seems to be less buggy than the previous version ... so far anyhow.

What always bothered me with the previous versions was that the Flip4Mac WMA/WMV plug-in actually worked better than Apple's built-in support for other types. If you did an "Open URL", Flip4Mac would apparently start the download in a separate thread and QuickTime was fine to go from there. If you do an "Open URL" with a built-in type, QuickTime would hang (apparently waiting for the download to start), and then would also occasionally hang during the download (I keep assuming it was caused by a brief dropout in the network connection). Then you'd have to kill QuickTime and restart. I hope this is improved in the latest version.

[Zandros]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

Didn't I explain that? You don't need to tell me all that stuff about MPEG-4 and AAC, I know it. (BTW, QuickTime does support CABAC, the problem preventing high-profile H.264 is mainly lack of support for pyramidal B-frames). Edit: are we talking encoding or decoding? According to wikipedia, Apple's encoder doesn't do CABAC. But I know that QuickTime will decode content that uses CABAC. But either way, Apple should be embarrassed that their H.264 encoder and decoder both absolutely suck in comparison to open-source alternatives.

I was mostly thinking encoding, decoding is somewhat decently handled by installing av1decoder, although it'd be really nice if there was a codec that could match Windows counterparts in performance. I still prefer VLC though.

The reason AAC should have been called mp4 is a purely marketing thing. People would see "mp4" and immediately recognise that this is a successor to mp3 (with a thought process along the lines of: "hey 'mp4' is like 'mp3' but the number's bigger! mp4 must be the successor to mp3 and it must be better because the number's bigger!" sorry, but that's how most people (as opposed to geeks like us) think about technology).

Maybe they should have emphasized the "Advanced" part more, I know I certainly thought AAC was short for Apple Audio Codec before I did my research. I doubt people would have cared in either case. MP3, or more accurately, the LAME presets V2 and V0 are deeply ingrained in the file-sharing community. It also didn't help that iTunes didn't have real VBR encoding until just recently.

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by Zandros

although it'd be really nice if there was a codec that could match Windows counterparts in performance. I still prefer VLC though.

Are you familiar with Perian (for decode) and x264 Encoder (for encode)?

VLC is decent and more CPU efficient, but what many people don't realise is that QuickTime is actually a rather good lightweight editor (obviously only interesting if you've got QT pro), with frame-by-frame advance and retreat (using the keyboard left/right arrows); FF and REW also work a lot better in QuickTime than in VLC.

Originally Posted by Zandros

Maybe they should have emphasized the "Advanced" part more, I know I certainly thought AAC was short for Apple Audio Codec before I did my research.

You see. Even a geek had to do research before he realised it wasn't a proprietary Apple thing. Very, very poor branding by the MPEG group which would have been avoided had they called it .mp4 instead.

Originally Posted by Zandros

MP3, or more accurately, the LAME presets V2 and V0 are deeply ingrained in the file-sharing community.

You're still not quite getting my point: what % of the population over the age of 10 have heard the "word" MP3? And what % of the population have heard the word "lame"?

I'm going to go with well over 90% in both cases.

Now, of those, what percentage of people associate the word "MP3" with music? I'm going to go with over 90% again - there will be some who've heard of mp3 but don't know/can't remember it's related to music.

What percentage would associate the word "lame" with an mp3 encoder, and how many would associate it only with its dictionary definition?

To a first approximation, everyone has heard of mp3 and knows it's got something to with music. LAME being associated with an mp3 encoder is very much the reserve of geeks.

[Zandros]

Originally Posted by Mr. H

Are you familiar with Perian (for decode) and x264 Encoder (for encode)?

Perian, yes. I'm not familiar with x264 encoder, but Handbrake works decently.

VLC is decent and more CPU efficient, but what many people don't realise is that QuickTime is actually a rather good lightweight editor (obviously only interesting if you've got QT pro), with frame-by-frame advance and retreat (using the keyboard left/right arrows); FF and REW also work a lot better in QuickTime than in VLC.

Fast forward and rewind works very well in VLC now. Framestepping is a huge advantage when making comparison screenshots, but is hurt by QuickTime's lack of format support, even with Perian. I still want video accelerated decode.

You see. Even a geek had to do research before he realised it wasn't a proprietary Apple thing. Very, very poor branding by the MPEG group which would have been avoided had they called it .mp4 instead.

IIRC, I didn't believe it was proprietary. And I knew it was better. Also, I certainly likes Apple's implementation better, with .m4a for audio, and .m4v for video, akin to Matroskas .mka and .mkv.

You're still not quite getting my point: what % of the population over the age of 10 have heard the "word" MP3? And what % of the population have heard the word "lame"?

I'm going to go with well over 90% in both cases.

Now, of those, what percentage of people associate the word "MP3" with music? I'm going to go with over 90% again - there will be some who've heard of mp3 but don't know/can't remember it's related to music.

I get it alright. My points were these: Much of the music on the internet is encoded by the Scene, who have some odd penchant for never substituting ancient formats. They certainly knew AAC is an MPEG standard, and they didn't change. Much of the rest of the music is music from people who don't know anything about encoding. They pop in the CD, and press "rip" in Windows Media Player or iTunes. One case gives us WMA files, the other AAC files. None of these people would change their codec/encoder if more attractively named.

That leaves us with the people who are knowledgeable, and they are probably aware of that AAC is a better codec than MP3. I'd put that number at about 1 million people, if we discount those who would be using AAC in any case (Apple users). And they still have compatibility reasons to not use AAC. Some have ideological reasons.