Apple confirms QuickTime for Windows at end of life
After an 11-year run, QuickTime for Windows is no more. Apple has confirmed it will no longer issue updates or patch security holes for the PC version of its multimedia software, meaning those who continue to use the software do so at their own risk .
Last week software security outfit Trend Micro disclosed the discovery of two new flaws in QuickTime 7 for Windows, saying Apple was informed of the security threats in November. At the time, Apple said it had no plans to issue a patch, adding the software "would be deprecated on Windows and the vendor would publish removal instructions for users."
Apple has yet to post an official announcement regarding the apparent deprecation, but on Monday confirmed the development to The Wall Street Journal.
As for the vulnerabilities, Trend Micro was able to trigger heap overflows by directing QuickTime to a malicious website or playing back an infected file, thereby opening the door to remote code execution. A common attack vector, heap overflow bugs let nefarious users install data-harvesting malware onto a target computer.
While the security firm has not seen instances of the flaw being exploited in the wild, it said uninstalling QuickTime is the only sure method of protection. With QuickTime deprecated, and its last update now three months old, Windows users are urged to uninstall the software to avoid potential security breaches. Apple in March published a step-by-step uninstall guide on its Support Pages website.
Last week software security outfit Trend Micro disclosed the discovery of two new flaws in QuickTime 7 for Windows, saying Apple was informed of the security threats in November. At the time, Apple said it had no plans to issue a patch, adding the software "would be deprecated on Windows and the vendor would publish removal instructions for users."
Apple has yet to post an official announcement regarding the apparent deprecation, but on Monday confirmed the development to The Wall Street Journal.
As for the vulnerabilities, Trend Micro was able to trigger heap overflows by directing QuickTime to a malicious website or playing back an infected file, thereby opening the door to remote code execution. A common attack vector, heap overflow bugs let nefarious users install data-harvesting malware onto a target computer.
While the security firm has not seen instances of the flaw being exploited in the wild, it said uninstalling QuickTime is the only sure method of protection. With QuickTime deprecated, and its last update now three months old, Windows users are urged to uninstall the software to avoid potential security breaches. Apple in March published a step-by-step uninstall guide on its Support Pages website.
Comments
I must be missing something. Why aren't you saving your videos as .mp4 or some other more universal format?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime
It's not clear why they made it for Windows in the first place. It was used at one point for the encoding features in iTunes but that came later. Maybe they needed cross-platform support for projects made on the Mac. They had channels in it, which look like what the TV is now:
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/new-quicktime-channels.3772/
The downside to Quicktime Pro one day not working on the Mac is that old clips that have been stored in Quicktime containers with codecs not supported by Quicktime X won't be playable or convertible any more. 3rd party players like VLC etc don't do a good job of handling codecs in Quicktime containers, losing audio, breaking up video.
Quicktime for Windows is how ProRes is supported so it will affect film workflows. I guess they'll move to Avid formats. There will probably be more use of odd containers too: avi, wmv, mxf, mkv.
Quicktime X has editing features, some of which work better than 7. You can scrub to a point in the timeline, hit command-y to split the clip, scrub and split and you can crop parts out. But they have an export feature that has a "movie" export option, which means pass-through, similar to 7's 'save as self-contained' and if you edit too much, that option is removed. 7 lets you save as self-contained all the time. It made it easy to quickly chop movies up without having a long encoding time and losing quality. 7 had support for subtitles, plugins, multi-channel editing, masking, video filters. No real-time color correction in X.
I'd like to see Apple offer plugin support to X for decoders at least and always allow export to self-contained. Also ProRes export would be good and some simple audio features. Just being able to drag and drop an audio clip in and shuffle it back and forward is good for resyncing audio. They don't need to make a full player for Windows. Windows would just need a codec pack to support .mov and certain formats like ProRes.
Handbrake (which is based on ffmpeg) is very capable in common format / codec conversions such as avi, Xvid, mkv...
Tim Cook, March 21st 2016
MOV is just a container. The actual file is, most likely, just compressed with H.264 for video and AAC for audio. With ffmpeg, you can convert them losslessly to .mp4 like this:
ffmpeg -i /path/to/original.mov -acodec copy -vcodec copy /path/to/converted.mp4
Since the conversion is lossless, there's no re-encoding, and the process will only take about as long as a file copy. You could even make an Automator workflow for it—in fact, I decided to do it for you. Unzip the attached file and put it in your ~/Library/Services folder (or just double-click it and opt to Install when asked), and it'll show up in the Finder's context menu. The script assumes ffmpeg is installed in /opt/local/bin, which is where it'll be if you install it via MacPorts. If you install it somewhere else, alter the script as appropriate.
If you install both ffmpeg and this workflow, you can just right-click on any .mov file that's encoded using H.264 and it will quickly be converted to MP4 losslessly.
I would be very, very surprised if anything from this century were unable to play mp4 files.
Thanks for that, good to know. As a video ignoramus, it still means I need that much knowledge though.