A peek at Apple's new QuickTime X interface
A widely reported interface overhaul making its debut in early betas of QuickTime X Player distributed with pre-releases of Apple's Snow Leopard operating system this week is reportedly not much to write home about.
Unlike the current version of QuickTime Player 7.6 -- which reserves considerable real estate for sizable, platinum-themed video controls at the base of the each player window -- QuickTime X Player is said to forgo all traditional interface controls in favor of video overlay controls (like those that appear when you mouse over video in full-screen mode of the current Player software).
The only window-based interface element in the QuickTime X Player is reportedly the title bar, which is reminiscent of the iPhone's semi-transparent black glass interface while also adopting hues from the video frames playing beneath it. However, this too fades away and disappears with the new overlay controls so videos appear to float on the screen with nothing more than a deep shadow surrounding all four sides.
AppleInsider has made its best attempt to provide mockups of this reported new interface using existing Apple interface elements, based off descriptions of the new QuickTime X Player provided by people familiar with the software. In addition to the standard overlay for controlling playback, the new player is also said to offer overlay controls for trimming, editing, and viewing scenes of a video like in iMovie.
Apple has described QuickTime X as a new version of its media software due to ship with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that "optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback."
The current window interface in QuickTime Player 7.6
An artist's mockup of the minimal QuickTime X Player window interface in Snow Leopard.
Another artist's mockup of the minimal QuickTime X Player window interface with the "trim" tools overlay.
A few other features are rumored to be baked into the new player software, such as the ability to export video clips in a variety of sizes to your iTunes library with the help of the CoreMedia framework or publish them through a MobileMe account.
An artist's mockup of CoreLocation in action in the Date & Time preference panel.
Meanwhile, those familiar with the latest betas of Snow Leopard in general say that the previously-reported addition of Apple's CoreLocation framework has been put to work in the Time Zone tab of the Date & Time panel, which attempts to pinpoint a Mac's geographic location, dropping a pin on the world map at the Mac's estimated location.
A handful of other additions and omissions are also being reported. For example, a new version of Apple's Preview app is said by those familiar with the software to include a new annotations toolbar at the base of content windows, while VoiceOver is being upgraded from version 2.0 to 3.0. Also back from early betas are QuickLook icon previews but gone is the awkward interface for drilling down into stacks under grid view that first surfaced in pre-releases of Snow Leopard distributed last month.
Unlike the current version of QuickTime Player 7.6 -- which reserves considerable real estate for sizable, platinum-themed video controls at the base of the each player window -- QuickTime X Player is said to forgo all traditional interface controls in favor of video overlay controls (like those that appear when you mouse over video in full-screen mode of the current Player software).
The only window-based interface element in the QuickTime X Player is reportedly the title bar, which is reminiscent of the iPhone's semi-transparent black glass interface while also adopting hues from the video frames playing beneath it. However, this too fades away and disappears with the new overlay controls so videos appear to float on the screen with nothing more than a deep shadow surrounding all four sides.
AppleInsider has made its best attempt to provide mockups of this reported new interface using existing Apple interface elements, based off descriptions of the new QuickTime X Player provided by people familiar with the software. In addition to the standard overlay for controlling playback, the new player is also said to offer overlay controls for trimming, editing, and viewing scenes of a video like in iMovie.
Apple has described QuickTime X as a new version of its media software due to ship with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that "optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback."
The current window interface in QuickTime Player 7.6
An artist's mockup of the minimal QuickTime X Player window interface in Snow Leopard.
Another artist's mockup of the minimal QuickTime X Player window interface with the "trim" tools overlay.
A few other features are rumored to be baked into the new player software, such as the ability to export video clips in a variety of sizes to your iTunes library with the help of the CoreMedia framework or publish them through a MobileMe account.
An artist's mockup of CoreLocation in action in the Date & Time preference panel.
Meanwhile, those familiar with the latest betas of Snow Leopard in general say that the previously-reported addition of Apple's CoreLocation framework has been put to work in the Time Zone tab of the Date & Time panel, which attempts to pinpoint a Mac's geographic location, dropping a pin on the world map at the Mac's estimated location.
A handful of other additions and omissions are also being reported. For example, a new version of Apple's Preview app is said by those familiar with the software to include a new annotations toolbar at the base of content windows, while VoiceOver is being upgraded from version 2.0 to 3.0. Also back from early betas are QuickLook icon previews but gone is the awkward interface for drilling down into stacks under grid view that first surfaced in pre-releases of Snow Leopard distributed last month.
Comments
As long as the editing controls are still as powerful, I welcome the change. It would be great if the Pro features did turn out to be free too. What would be interesting is if they deprecated iMovie in favor of Quicktime.
All they need is an effects window and maybe an audio track panel that sits under the movie window when active.
A translucent title bar that obscures a portion of its window's contents? Completely braindead.
An "artist mock-up"? Are you kidding me? You might as well have captioned those pics "Here's some random BS that might not look anything like the real thing, but here you go anyway". At first I thought, cool new interface tweaks. pffft!
It's ok. If you're having a bad day, you can tell us all about it. We'll listen...I can't promise that we can help you, but we'll pretend to listen.
K
From what I was told by a friend who is actually working on this project. Quicktime X, will focus solely on playback. While Quicktime 7.6 will still be available for anyone who feels they still need to use those features, but there will be no further development of the old Quicktime.
Could you ask this person about what does all this mean for both the Quicktime API and the Quicktime Player? One thing is Apple updating its player (which needs advancing in so simple features such as, say, letting a web-embedded movie to be played fullscreen a la Youtube), and another one is reforming the API or cleanstarting a new one, which would impact developers.
We videoediting types often need the editing features of Quicktime Player. Whatever Apple does, we would need a substitute that keeps up with Quicktime's features.
Could you ask this person about what does all this mean for both the Quicktime API and the Quicktime Player? One thing is Apple updating its player (which needs advancing in so simple features such as, say, letting a web-embedded movie to be played fullscreen a la Youtube), and another one is reforming the API or cleanstarting a new one, which would impact developers.
We videoediting types often need the editing features of Quicktime Player. Whatever Apple does, we would need a substitute that keeps up with Quicktime's features.
Since Quicktime X is a playback only tool it's not competing with legacy Quicktime 7.x for anything involving encoding, transcoding or anything else. This makes sure it's lightweight and should perform well. QTX came from the Quicktime stack on the iPhone.
How it relates to legacy QT is this.
Developers will write to QTkit which is like a cocoa based front end for dealing with media elemenst. QTkit will then parcel out the request to the appropriate tool. So if the request is for playing back a media element I suppose QTX will get the nod and if the if more robust features are being requested then legacy QT will be engaged.
It should all be transparent to the end user.
Apple's new war on dedicated title bars continues, but this time even more egregiously than the Safari 4 beta.
A translucent title bar that obscures a portion of its window's contents? Completely braindead.
As long as it's only there when you are using it, that's no problem. When you are using the controls, you are looking at them, not the video, for those moments.
This is also better, because all too often, when resizing a video to fit the screen, the control area at the bottom of the video moves below the edge of the screen, making it impossible to use it at all. You then have to resize using the menu. This is much better.
Apple's new war on dedicated title bars continues, but this time even more egregiously than the Safari 4 beta.
A translucent title bar that obscures a portion of its window's contents? Completely braindead.
I think it would be if it stayed on the screen but I don't think it will be that way, it will probably be like the floating controls when you play videos in iTunes, those auto hide when you're not doing anything with the controls.
I prefer the look of QuickTime 7.
To what? Mockups?
Apple's new war on dedicated title bars continues, but this time even more egregiously than the Safari 4 beta.
A translucent title bar that obscures a portion of its window's contents? Completely braindead.
Read more carefully:
the title bar, which is reminiscent of the iPhone's semi-transparent black glass interface while also adopting hues from the video frames playing beneath it. However, this too fades away and disappears with the new overlay controls so videos appear to float on the screen with nothing more than a deep shadow surrounding all four sides.
It's like Leopard's Dock's reflections. It does not obscure the video, that would be brain dead.
Furthermore, having the title bar fade away makes sense. It's distracting. No doubt, it will reappear the instant you mouse over it, just as controls reappear when mousing over iTunes videos (which is also kind of in effect in Safari 4; open a .MOV in Safari 4 and watch as the controls fade away when it starts playing).
To what? Mockups?
Read more carefully:
It's like Leopard's Dock's reflections. It does not obscure the video, that would be brain dead.
Furthermore, having the title bar fade away makes sense. It's distracting. No doubt, it will reappear the instant you mouse over it, just as controls reappear when mousing over iTunes videos (which is also kind of in effect in Safari 4; open a .MOV in Safari 4 and watch as the controls fade away when it starts playing).
The mockups are accurate i,m using the seed right now the title bar goes away when the mouse is not on the window as do the controls looks pretty cool actually
The mockups are accurate i,m using the seed right now the title bar goes away when the mouse is not on the window as do the controls looks pretty cool actually
But when the title bar is visible, does it obscure the video?
The mockups are accurate i,m using the seed right now the title bar goes away when the mouse is not on the window as do the controls looks pretty cool actually
Of course!
I can't imagine why anyone would assume anything else.
An "artist mock-up"? Are you kidding me? You might as well have captioned those pics "Here's some random BS that might not look anything like the real thing, but here you go anyway". At first I thought, cool new interface tweaks. pffft!
I assumed the opposite: That they're actual screen shots and AI doesn't want to get caught up in who violated their NDA.
From what I was told by a friend who is actually working on this project. Quicktime X, will focus solely on playback. While Quicktime 7.6 will still be available for anyone who feels they still need to use those features, but there will be no further development of the old Quicktime.
I can't believe Apple will stop all development on editing/encoding with Quicktime. It's too engrained in their pro app workflow.
I could see them implementing playback first in Quicktime X, and then encoding later (no sense trying to do too much at once, and rewriting a media framework is a huge job).
Amorya
Could you ask this person about what does all this mean for both the Quicktime API and the Quicktime Player?