QuickTime 4.1: Apple's Multimedia Engine

In what appears to be further evidence of Apple's second wind (or is it the third?), QuickTime fans with Internet access on April 19th, 1999 gained early access to an ambitious upgrade of Apple's multimedia architecture for Macs and Windows PCs, with a public beta of QuickTime 4. In the months that followed, Apple put the finishing touches on the software and rolled it out, to both acclaim and criticism, in mid-1999. Then, in early 2000, the company updated it again, addressing some of the outstanding limitations of the 4.0 release. In this article, we'll look at the features, with an eye for what Apple did right -- and wrong -- in this latest update.

Apple's QuickTime version 4 was a substantial upgrade to its cross-platform QuickTime multimedia architecture that provided several new capabilities, including the ability to play MP3 audio files. However, QT4 lacked support for MP3 files encoded with a recently developed technique called variable bit rate encoding. Hence, it couldn't play some audio files. This limitation was addressed by QuickTime 4.1.

Variable bit rate MP3 files are increasingly common on the Internet. These files are both smaller and play back with higher quality than so-called CBR files; there is every likelihood they will continue to grow in popularity.

Sidebar: how VBR works.
The Nyquist theorem stipulates that the sampling rate of a digitally recorded sound must be at least double the highest frequency of the sound, or an unpleasant audio artifact known as digital aliasing will occur. This aliasing manifests as a non-harmonic "metallic" noise evident in lower frequencies. VBR encoding parses the audio file and increases and decreases the sample rate as required. Hence, a passage of bass guitar doesn't need as high an encoding rate as a section containing hi-hat cymbals.

What's new in 4.1.2
QuickTime 4.1 includes several new capabilities including seamless ad insertion, improved firewall navigation, AppleScript support for easy digital media creation and streaming, and support of synchronized multimedia integrated language (SMIL), the emerging standard for interactive media creation. An Apple web page details other improvements in QuickTime 4.1.2.

Unfortunately, the free version of the software still suffers from a few limitations that Apple apparently hopes will prove onerous enough that you'll want to upgrade to the US$29.95  "Pro" version. Notably, the free version is unable to save files or play full screen movies or loop playing files. Compared to Microsoft's free Media Player, which provides all these capabilities, this seems unnecessarily limiting.  As well, QuickTime 4 doesn't directly support Intel's popular Indeo 5 video compressor/decompressor (known as a "codec") and is thus unable to play back certain video files, even if these files are playable on the same system with Microsoft's Media Player. (This limitation can be resolved via a freely downloadable patch, but Apple stubbornly refuses to include the codec in the official release version, presumably due to the fact that the Indeo codec performs very poorly on a Macintosh.)

And, unlike Microsoft's player, QuickTime wasn't able to automatically retrieve the missing codec from the web -- it just fails with a blank white screen. When confronted with the same file, the Microsoft player successfully retrieved the required decompressor from Microsoft's own codec repository. There is, however, an update function provided in QuickTime 4.x that can check with an Apple server to see if there is a newer version of the software or a missing codec available -- hopefully, Apple will take a cue from Microsoft and make this process even more automatic in future releases.

Other new additions in QT4 include support for (Macromedia) Flash animations and so-called "streaming video" playback -- meaning, it can begin to play a large file before it has finished downloading.

Apple launched launched QuickTime 4 at the NAB99 show in Las Vegas, where it also released a long-awaited video editing package called Final Cut Pro for US$999. In April 2000, a free download version of Apple's iMovie software -- essentially, a simplified version of Final Cut Pro --  was made available for FireWire-enabled G3 Macs.

QuickTime is available for free download at quicktime.apple.com, in an Internet-centric format that downloads a small installer that subsequently downloads and installs various optional components. If you prefer, a full download of QuickTime 4.1.2 is also available on an Apple's Website and FTP mirrors such as ftp://apple.doit.wisc.edu/.

In related news, Apple vowed to open QuickTime source code during its announcements at the show.

We've now had a chance to run through many of its new features. Here's what's new and improved in this release:

• Support for Flash animations
• support for MP3 audio (VBR support was added in 4.1)
• Better full-screen playback performance (Pro version only)
• New Movie player (now renamed as "QuickTime Player.")
• Streaming support (improved in 4.1)

QuickTime 4 improves upon the limited streaming capabilities of version 3.0, with support for both "fast start" streaming (created by  saving a movie "with hints") and true server-based streaming with support for RTP and RTSP real-time protocols. Although Apple does not support streaming from servers running Mac OS (at NAB'99, Apple claimed its MacOS X server can support up to 1000 simultaneous streams, while IBM said its video server can support up to 18,000 simultaneous streams), third parties have already announced and shown Mac OS-based streaming servers such as Sorenson's Broadcaster, a US$199 product for streaming live QuickTime 4.0 video from a Power Mac G3 running the Mac OS.

TribeWorks' iShell, a free media authoring tool for QuickTime streaming, is also worth checking out.  

We've seen a demonstration in which Mac OS X streamed decent-quality video to fifty iMacs using QuickTime 4, however, some reports suggest that streaming video quality can be poor; we'd recommend evaluating prospective solutions carefully.

(Steve Jobs has characterized RealNetworks' RealVideo/RealAudio streaming technologies as QuickTime's major competitor. We'd also place Microsoft's NetShow and its successor Windows Media Technologies 4.1, in that category.)

We found it somewhat inconvenient that, when using the Pro version of QuickTime 4, it is impossible to view a movie on a web site in full-screen mode until after it has been completely downloaded, viewed and saved, then re-opened in "Present movie" mode. Those familiar with Microsoft's recent Media Player updates know this doesn't have to be the case.

Although the new QuickTime Player looks cool, certain aspects of its don't seem very well thought out. For example, a playlist "tray" is provided for favorite items. However, this tray only shows a generic waveform icon for audio files. We'd much prefer to see the name of the file. Another annoyance: the QuickTime Player doesn't remember the volume control settings you selected in your last session when relaunched. We also found that, although improved, the US$29.95 QuickTime Player Pro's full-screen playback is inferior to that provided by Microsoft's free Media Player.

QuickTime 4 provides both Macs and Windows systems with direct support for Macromedia's Flash animation format. Flash is an efficient format that combines support for vector graphics, bitmapped images and audio. It, too, is already supported in Microsoft's latest operating systems.

QuickTime 4 makes no substantial improvement to the quality of its internal software wavetable synthesis MIDI file playback, which, as we noted in our review of QT3, remains inferior to that of Roland's Virtual Sound Canvas VSC-55 for Windows and Yamaha's SYG20 SoftSynth. But it's better than no soft synth at all. In fact, reports on macfixit.com seemed to confirm our suspicions: sound quality of the Mac version was actually worse in the April release; fortunately, a version 4.0b22 update posted May 5th provides an updated Sound Manager that, of course, is also present in the official release.

There is a Mac-only feature that is a bit of an "Easter egg." As users of previous QuickTime releases may recall, turning on Balloon Help and pointing to the QuickTime extension produced an odd snippet of descriptive text. It's still there, along with several new bits -- some quite humorous -- accompanying the new extensions.

After the initial release of QuickTime 4, an update provided support for the Indeo 5.x codec that is now one of the most popular (and efficient) solutions on the PC for compressing digital video files. Unfortunately, Macs do not play Indeo files, which are optimized for Intel processors, well. In our tests, Indeo 5 reduced files to a size comparable to that of MPEG-1, but with better playback quality on mid-range Intel-based machines. On the Mac, however, the Sorenson codec (described below) provided much better playback performance. QuickTime also supports playback of MPEG-1 files but does not provide MPEG-2 support at this time.

Sorenson
QuickTime's best compression is obtained with the Apple-Sorenson Codec, a successor to the venerable Cinepak codec. With minimal visual degradation, the Sorenson codec reduced this movie (a file created with the ElectricImage Animation system on a Mac) to 27K -- less than one-tenth the size of the original 284K file as saved by Microsoft's Video codec.

More on Indeo
Because QuickTime does not support the MPEG-2 or, without the update, Indeo 5 codecs, AVIs created on a PC or Mac using these or other unsupported codecs are not displayed correctly by the QuickTime player. Other than installing DVD playback hardware and/or software on your PC or Mac, there currently no solution to the MPEG-2 issue, other than to convert the file to a format the computer can read.  Older Indeo releases and some other popular codecs, however, can be obtained by installing Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.5. QuickTime 4 supports the older Indeo Video 4.4 codec, which is also available for downloading from the QuickTime web site for use with QuickTime 3 Pro. With these updates, you get the necessary system extensions that allow some Indeo-format movies to play as expected.

Apple says QuickTime 4's compression capabilities will be the basis of a forthcoming compression standard dubbed MPEG-4.

A full description of QuickTime's capabilities is at http://www.quicktime.apple.com

Some Windows applications will not work with QuickTime 4.x, but may work if version 2.1 is installed alongside it.  For example, the troubleshooting notes for Peter Gabriel's "Eve"" CD say, "QuickTime 2.1 for Windows must be installed even if you have QuickTime 3. QuickTime 2.1 and 3 will run side by side and should not cause any problems." In our tests, this advice also applies to QT4.

As we noted with version 3, the loading speed of our web browsers declined after installing QT4. After installing QuickTime 4 in beta 3 of Windows 2000 (already a little slower than we'd like on a 200 MHz Pentium Pro with 40 MB of RAM), IE 5 started operating very slowly, presumably due to the new overhead induced by the QuickTime plug-ins provided. Attempting to play a movie from Apple's website on this system was so sluggish as to be impractical. Our Windows 95 and 98 systems fared better. Playback on our 240 MHz PowerMac was decent, however, our Web browser (IE4.5) developed a never-before-seen propensity to quit spontaneously without even so much as an error message.

As with version 3, the freely downloadable version of QuickTime 4 is severely crippled and cannot export, loop, edit or even display full-screen movies. These limitations are erased by paying US$29.95 for a registration code; QT3 Pro owners can use their existing code to upgrade.

Note, however, that even with the Pro version, QuickTime cannot  convert sound files to MP3 format -- yet another feature provided by Microsoft's free Media Player 6.4.

What's in the Pro version:
The "QuickTime 4 Pro" version on sale from Apple's website provides an easy to use (i.e., limited) video editor and additional authoring and playback features (described at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/upgrade/), including several that were previously part of the 2.x release's freeware version, such as looping and full-screen playback. Mac downloaders may miss additional options the previous Windows versions of QuickTime never had, such as the now "Pro-only" Save Movie feature. Indeed, as many Mac users complained about version 3, Apple has basically crippled its freeware version of MoviePlayer and is making you pay for functionality that the old 2.x version provided for free (and still does, if you saved a copy).

Conclusion
The new QuickTime Player is a slick design, and its links to Internet content are undoubtedly revenue generators for Apple and its "featured partners." We were, however, disappointed that the free QuickTime 4.x release does not support full-screen playback, looping or the saving of files. We hope Apple adds these features (some or all of which are available in the free players from its competitors!), improves the quality of streaming video and adds more codecs, in a future version of QuickTime.

QuickTime 4.1 for the Macintosh and 32-bit Windows PCs is now available in freely downloadable and US$29.95 "Pro" formats from Apple's QuickTime website at quicktime.apple.com.

For Further Reading:

• QT is a new international Web site devoted to QuickTime.
• News.com: Java-capable QuickTime
• News.com: Apple to open QuickTime code
• AppleInsider.com: QuickTime 4.1
• Apple: QuickTime 4.1.2 changes

MacInTouch:

• NAB99 Special Report
• QuickTime 4 Analysis
• QuickTime 4 beta Reports
• Final Cut
• New Products