R.I.P. QuickTime; Long Live QuickTime

Mention QuickTime to your average Windows user, and you will probably get a nasty look. I admit it. Most users’ experiences with QuickTime leave something to be desired. QuickTime on Windows is ungainly nagware, and it was my initial exposure to Apple’s products – not a good first impression. Between the perpetual prompt screens to upgrade to Pro for simple features like full-screen movie viewing and the fact that QuickTime looks horribly out-of-place in Windows, the software defines poor user experience. QuickTime on the Mac could hardly be more different, and QuickTime X, released as part of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, promises to bring enhancements and refinements to this fundamental component of the Macintosh Operating System.

QuickTime Versus QuickTime Player

The first thing to understand about QuickTime on the Mac is that it is an integrated part of the operating system. There is no separating QuickTime from Mac OS X any more than you can completely separate Internet Explorer from Windows. The OS depends on its frameworks for basic functionality. This diagram from Apple’s Developer Connection illustrates QuickTime’s place in Mac OS X.

image © Apple

Like Internet Explorer on Windows, it’s easy to miss the differentiation between the QuickTime Player application and the QuickTime framework. On Windows, you can uninstall the browser called Internet Explorer, but the Explorer frameworks Windows needs will remain. The same is true of QuickTime. While QuickTime Player is an optional application, the framework remains whether or not the app is installed. Generically referring to QuickTime includes the old but capable codex that underlies much of OS X’s and iTune’s video capabilities. At its core, QuickTime is low-level code that Mac users seldom interact with directly but see the benefits pervasively through the system. Watching a video in Quick Look? That’s QuickTime. Watching a podcast on your iPod or in iTunes? That’s QuickTime.

QuickTime doing its thing through the Finder’s Quick Look feature

So What’s QuickTime X?

Where does QuickTime X fit into this then? Is it a new version of the framework or a new version of the QuickTime Player application? The answer is a little complicated. QuickTime X (like the initial release of Mac OS X and iMovie ‘08) serves as an update and a replacement to the previous versions. QuickTime X brings new things to the table at a fundamental level, serving as a sort of reboot for the application and framework. However, as was the case with iMovie ‘08 and Mac OS X, a trade-off exists between short-term losses and long term benefits.

To understand the necessity of this complete break, one has to appreciate QuickTime’s age and original purpose. QuickTime was originally introduced in December of 1991. It was the first successful implementation of video on computers in a time when 25 MHz constituted a powerful processor. Some forward thinking went into the writing of the original QuickTime programming, allowing the application to scale with modern demands and modern hardware. Still, it’s age is beginning to show.

The first shot against the venerable QuickTime came with the development of the iPhone. The framework and accompanying software was too resource hungry for the device. Apple needed something lighter. QuickTime 7 and earlier have no support for the GPU-acceleration needed for some modern video codecs, and the application must turn any form of media into a movie to play it. If you select an audio file for QuickTime to play, it will convert the audio file into a movie object it can better understand. The conversion is transparent to the user, but it’s another reason QuickTime was becoming overly resource hungry.

As John Siracusa predicted would happen in his review of Mac OS X 10.5, the aging QuickTime API is being phased out in favor of a newer framework known basically by the same name. QuickTime X reinvents both the player application and the underlying framework to the point that it’s fundamentally a new product. Only the brand remains.

The QuickTime Player

Back when Mac OS X was first introduced, not only was the Classic emulator available, but Macs also supported dual-booting between OS X and OS 9 to allow users who needed the features of the older system to return to it. The same thing happened with iMovie ‘08. Upon its release, iMovie HD was made a free download on Apple’s website, and the iLife’08 installer quarantined the app from removal. These steps were concessions to the fact that moving forward technologically often involves a few steps back in terms of features. Much the same is happening with QuickTime Player. QuickTime Player 7 is not removed by Snow Leopard. Rather, it is stored in the utility folder should a user need its functionality until QuickTime Player X is finished maturing.

QuickTime Player 7

QuickTime Player X

QuickTime X is a 64-bit cocoa application that brings with it a whole new interface. Alternatively, if you’re not interacting with the movie, the interface dissolves away completely. The new Player application also brings along a new iPhone-like interface for trimming audio and video as well as the ability to directly share videos with Mobile Me, iTunes, or YouTube. Finally, in addition to being able to capture video through a built-in iSight or other connected webcam, the new QuickTime Player finally features screen recording. This new feature is a limited but welcome addition for those of us who want to make simple screen recordings without investing in an expensive application.

The new trimming tool

There are a few missing features, though, that might send some back to QuickTime 7:

• Trimming only works on the ends of a file. Arbitrary cutting and pasting is gone.
• Track extraction and replacement is gone.
• The huge list of video/audio codecs in the export settings is gone.

Hopefully, these features will return in future releases. iMovie’s history gives me some hope. iMovie ‘08 was a non-starter for me. I used it once and was done. On the other hand, I love iMovie ‘09. In one release, Apple managed to bring their reinvention of iMovie up to par with previous releases. QuickTime Player X is no nearly as hobbled as was iMovie ‘08 in terms of feature loss. I’m sure it won’t take long for me to stop missing its predecessor.

The QuickTime X Framework

Behind the scenes, both QuickTime X and QuickTime 7 exist simultaneously as media libraries in Snow Leopard. To help the system decide which to use, Apple leverages QTKit, which takes a quick look at what the user is doing, then decides if the task will be best handled by QuickTime 7 or QuickTime X. Please note again that removing QuickTime Player 7 does not remove the framework. If you want to remove the Player, you will not be up any proverbial creeks should the system need to access QuickTime 7 for any video-related tasks – an important task because QuickTime X is still developing functionality.

This is even true while running the Player X application. If, for example, you are opening a video file that requires a QuickTime 7 plug-in, QTKit will pass that on to the QuickTime 7 framework while you watch the video in QuickTime Player X. The downside of this trade-off is that any application reverting to QuickTime 7 via QTKit will only be able to function as a 32-bit app rather than 64-bits. This may be a non-issue, though. Remember how much work QuickTime 7 had to do to play an audio file. It did that in 32-bit processing with no discernible delay in playback. The transition between the two versions of the QuickTime framework should remain completely invisible to the user. Except for when version 7 is expressly needed, QuickTIme X will automatically handle all video-related needs in Snow Leopard, and it will do so using fewer hardware resources than its predecessor.

For a more detailed look at QuickTime X as a framework and what this means for Mac OS X, I suggest you read John Siracusa’s very detailed Snow Leopard review at Ars Technica.

Conclusion

The future of QuickTime as a stand-alone product is unclear. There has been no word on QuickTime X being ported to older versions of Mac OS X or Windows. In fact, with Windows Media Player 12 natively supporting the .mov format, QuickTime Player for Windows may soon be irrelevant – appearing on Windows systems only as internal components in iTunes. While the Pro version of QuickTime 7 is still available for $29, the necessity for this concession will grow less and less and QuickTime X matures, continuing to evolve from a monetized application into a core technology that not only acts as a foundation to Apple’s operating system but may also find even wider use on the web.

Apple’s software engineers have proven themselves adept at difficult transitions. This evolution of QuickTime is just one more, and it should be far easier than rewriting an entire operating system or porting that same system to a completely new architecture. Again, Apple have chosen to take the more difficult road in upgrading one of their core products, but the long term benefits will very likely outweigh the current bumps.