Page 232 - DCAP303_MULTIMEDIA_SYSTEMS

Multimedia Systems

notes 2. The QuickTime framework, which provides a common set of APIs for encoding and decoding
audio and video.
3. The QuickTime Movie (.mov) file format, an openly-documented media container.

QuickTime is integral to Mac OS X, as it was with earlier versions of Mac OS. All Apple systems
ship with QuickTime already installed, as it represents the core media framework for Mac OS
X. QuickTime is optional for Windows systems, although many software applications require
it. Apple bundles it with each iTunes for Windows download, but it is also available as a stand-
alone installation.
QuickTime Players

QuickTime is distributed free of charge, and includes the QuickTime Player application.
Some other free player applications that rely on the QuickTime framework provide features not
available in the basic QuickTime Player. For example:
• iTunes can export audio in WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC.
• In Mac OS X, a simple AppleScript can be used to play a movie in full-screen mode. However,
since version 7.13 the QuickTime Player now also supports for full-screen viewing in the
non-pro version.
QuickTime Framework
The QuickTime framework provides the following:
• Encoding and transcoding video and audio from one format to another.

• Decoding video and audio, and then sending the decoded stream to the graphics or audio
subsystem for playback. In Mac OS X, QuickTime sends video playback to the Quartz
Extreme (OpenGL) Compositor.
• A plug-in architecture for supporting additional codecs (such as DivX).
The framework supports the following file types and codecs natively:

Audio
• Apple Lossless
• Audio Interchange (AIFF)
• Digital Audio: Audio CD - 16-bit (CDDA), 134-bit, 313-bit integer and floating point, and
64-bit floating point
• MIDI
• MPEG-1 Layer 3 Audio (.mp3)

• MPEG-4 AAC Audio (.m4a, .m4b, .m4p)
• Sun AU Audio
• ULAW and ALAW Audio
• Waveform Audio (WAV)
Video
• 3GPP & 3GPP13 file formats

• AVI file format
• Bitmap (BMP) codec and file format
• DV file (DV NTSC/PAL and DVC Pro NTSC/PAL codecs)

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