Quicktime 7 is out

By b mitchell
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Grand Master

aristotle-dude

Posted
Posted
That's because it's called Windows Media Player

i see no reason to have video recording in a media player, unless they make ripping DVDs legal; then I would be happy to have a built in dvd ripper in WMP

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Well Quicktime player is also a "player" but they happen to expose the encoder to a recording interface. Why are you complaining about this? If this feature is included in the Pro version of the windows version, you will be able to take a DV camera and encode directly to H264 within quicktime. You could also record audio directly as well and IIRC, Quicktime 7 supports multiple channel audio/recording.

This is about as close as you will get to iMovie on windows.

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Grand Master

aristotle-dude

Posted
Posted
Comparing the H.264 movies to the ones on the Windows Media HD Showcase with the same time-length, its not impressive at all unlike what Apple is saying. I'm not saying WMV-HD is the best, but its not using H.264 technologies and still achieves about the same results. Unlike what Apple stated, that you can get like a near full screen video with the same file size as the smaller ones.

Whilst the technology might be ahead of other non-HD codecs, but it certainly isn't like what it was hyped up to be.

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Well of course you are going to get similar quality with both codecs but I don't see how you cannot find it to be impressive given than the "same" codec can be used to encode to handhelds/phones with very little degradation of quality other than a drop in resolution.

Do you realize that H.264 is the codec and .mov is just a container format like .avi,.wmv and .MP4 (based on mov)? MSFT could choose to support the standard .MP4 container or even just support H.264 within the WMV container but they are interesting in pushing their own codecs for some reason.

I find this ironic considering that MSFT was heavily involved in the development of H264 and yet they choose to ignore it. I believe this means that someone higher up in MSFT want to push their codecs because it would sell them more licenses of windows (for content development) and their codecs rather than supporting an industry standard.

It is interesting that you mentioned the Windows Media HD Showcase because many of those clips are not actually full HD resolution as for some reason they chose to use 1440 horizontal resolution for their 1080p clips instead of the full resolution as specified by the standard.

It would be interesting to see how some "real" HD resolution WMV clips performed.

Given that MSFT was involved in the development of H.264 and you are a MSFT fanboy shouldn't you be impressed by it?

:rofl:

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Grand Master

aristotle-dude

Posted
Posted

Concerning the fullscreen mode and it requiring the Pro Version of Quicktime, you are all free to develop a fullscreen player using the Quicktime SDK which can be found here:

http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/

The Version 7 SDK is available now only for OS X but I'm sure they will release the windows version after their release the player for windows.

I whipped together a viewer with a fullscreen mode option in under half an hour. I'm sure some windows developer could do the same for the windows version although I think it would probably take a bit more time.

:D

I already have pro but I was curious about how easy it was to do.

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Fonze

Posted
Posted
Do you realize that H.264 is the codec and .mov is just a container format like .avi,.wmv and .MP4 (based on mov)? MSFT could choose to support the standard .MP4 container or even just support H.264 within the WMV container but they are interesting in pushing their own codecs for some reason.

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I think wmv is a codec and not a container, since they released wmv7 and wmv9 codecs. I've put divx video in AVIs before but I don't think there are any programs that put divx video into a wmv file.

I think the reason microsoft doesn't want to adopt H.264 is because they don't want to pay royalties to use it and they want more control over what the final spec is able to do. They made wmv a great codec for local and streaming play, and built in DRM so content creators can protect their content. If apple opened their fairplay DRM to other music stores, i think the AAC format would be more widely accepted

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Long

Posted
Posted
Well of course you are going to get similar quality with both codecs but I don't see how you cannot find it to be impressive given than the "same" codec can be used to encode to handhelds/phones with very little degradation of quality other than a drop in resolution.

Do you realize that H.264 is the codec and .mov is just a container format like .avi,.wmv and .MP4 (based on mov)? MSFT could choose to support the standard .MP4 container or even just support H.264 within the WMV container but they are interesting in pushing their own codecs for some reason.

I find this ironic considering that MSFT was heavily involved in the development of H264 and yet they choose to ignore it. I believe this means that someone higher up in MSFT want to push their codecs because it would sell them more licenses of windows (for content development) and their codecs rather than supporting an industry standard.

It is interesting that you mentioned the Windows Media HD Showcase because many of those clips are not actually full HD resolution as for some reason they chose to use 1440 horizontal resolution for their 1080p clips instead of the full resolution as specified by the standard.

It would be interesting to see how some "real" HD resolution WMV clips performed.

Given that MSFT was involved in the development of H.264 and you are a MSFT fanboy shouldn't you be impressed by it?

:rofl:

585857294[/snapback]

I don't find it impressive because with the WMV9 codec, it can also scale up and down quite nicely. Ranging from 100kbit to 3000kbit streams with easy and nice file sizes to go along.

Yes. I do realise H.264 is a codec, but WMV9 is also a codec.

I believe they didn't ignore it. Just because you don't use the product you developed for a while doesn't mean the technology may not be there. Microsoft probably gained a lot of experience developing H.264 and they wanted to take a different approach so they did their own.

The WMV-HD showcase content I watched are native HD resolutions. As same as the description they states HD resolutions are.

I'm not impressed as much as Apple stated it would be. They made it seem like it was better than any other codec available, when in fact its just an "industry-standard" HD codec, which is better than the previous codec they used, MPEG2.

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Grand Master

KeR

Posted
Posted (edited)

I am amazed by QT7, look at this screenshot I took...The Batman Begins trailer is the 720p HD trailer @ 1280x544 (not the full 1080p HD trailer because my 17" LCD resolution goes up to 1440x900 only) the quality is crazy. The smaller window is the Apple Tiger Online Seminar that is being streamed, the quality is unbelievably good for a stream.

Picture_1.png

Edited by KeR
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Grand Master

ZZOOzzoo

Posted
Posted

Woah, KeR, that screenshot is incredible.

I can't wait for Windows version of Quicktime7 to come out, but I wonder if my PentiumM can handel that thing. :unsure:

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Grand Master

Pink Floyd Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

can QT7 play mpeg4 divx avis?

Also if you have a h.264 movie on your HD, can another media player play it but with less resolution?

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Grand Master

aristotle-dude

Posted
Posted
can QT7 play mpeg4 divx avis?

Also if you have a h.264 movie on your HD, can another media player play it but with less resolution?

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Yes, with a Divx codec.

If the other media player has the codec installed or contains the codec internally, you should be able to play it back at full resolution if it supports the container format/codec combination used by the file.

These screen shots are of clips using the H.264 codec inside a .mov container.

IIRC, the latest VLC has primitive support for H.264 but it's far from perfect. Later versions should have improved performance.

I have not tried VLC but I here that it would have even higher requirements to support this format in it's current state. Again, future versions should become more optimised as they come out.

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Herby

Posted
Posted
I don't find it impressive because with the WMV9 codec, it can also scale up and down quite nicely. Ranging from 100kbit to 3000kbit streams with easy and nice file sizes to go along.

Yes. I do realise H.264 is a codec, but WMV9 is also a codec.

I believe they didn't ignore it. Just because you don't use the product you developed for a while doesn't mean the technology may not be there. Microsoft probably gained a lot of experience developing H.264 and they wanted to take a different approach so they did their own.

The WMV-HD showcase content I watched are native HD resolutions. As same as the description they states HD resolutions are.

I'm not impressed as much as Apple stated it would be. They made it seem like it was better than any other codec available, when in fact its just an "industry-standard" HD codec, which is better than the previous codec they used, MPEG2.

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:yes: Have a look here,.. ultra-high quality, 5.1 surround sound,.. :woot:

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Grand Master

pimpshiznid

Posted
Posted

Well, look what I have... :o

And before anyone pm's me on this, it isn't QT 7, nor the H.264 codec. This is a DivX HD encoded copy of the season premier of Grey's Anatomy...

Just wanted to mess with the masses... :p

post-24563-1115130066_thumb.jpg

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Experienced

Xab

Posted
Posted
Once Apple can make it unstable enough. :p

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Heh, I'm really, really hoping that Quicktime 7 is a good, stable product like the Mac versions of Quicktime. I'd love to be able to ditch WMP for it. Here's to hoping they won't repeat past mistakes.

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Grand Master

theyarecomingforyou

Posted
Posted
Heh, I'm really, really hoping that Quicktime 7 is a good, stable product like the Mac versions of Quicktime. I'd love to be able to ditch WMP for it. Here's to hoping they won't repeat past mistakes.

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I can't see Quicktime 7 being good enough to dump WMP - QT has always been good for streaming media and .mov files, but it's handling of .mpg and .avi is awful. We will see if this version is any different, but I can't imagine it ever being good enough to knock down WMP10 (which isn't even particularly amazing itself).

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Mentor

Azadre

Posted
Posted
i reckon it will be before that, it and the new itunes are meant to be out this week

585890361[/snapback]

I hope your assumption proves true! :woot:

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Experienced

Xab

Posted
Posted
I can't see Quicktime 7 being good enough to dump WMP - QT has always been good for streaming media and .mov files, but it's handling of .mpg and .avi is awful. We will see if this version is any different, but I can't imagine it ever being good enough to knock down WMP10 (which isn't even particularly amazing itself).

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Right, which is why I'm hoping Quicktime 7 improves upon that so I can :p

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