QuickTime

**QuickTime** is a multimedia framework originally developed by Apple Computer for its Macintosh line of computers.

## Product history

QuickTime 1.0, codenamed "**Warhol**", was originally released for Macintosh System 6 in December 1991. Adobe Premiere 1.0 had also been in development by Randy Ubillos and was one of the first QuickTime-based video editors on the market.

Apple released QuickTime 2.0 for System 7 in June 1994, the only commercial version that was not freely released. Version 2.5 was released on July 22nd of that year.

## Components

### QuickTime MPEG Extension

On January 24, 1997, Apple released the QuickTime MPEG Extension, which allowed playback of MPEG-1 video on Power Macintosh computers without the need for additional dedicated hardware.

### QuickTime Musical Instruments

Adds MIDI support to QuickTime 2.0 and later. A companion QuickTime Music control panel and Macintosh MIDI Manager had also been in development for QuickTime 2.1, but were never released.

### QuickTime PowerPlug

The PowerPlug extension accelerates performance of QuickTime 2.5 and later on systems with a PowerPC processor.

### QuickTime VR

QuickTime VR allowed for 360-degree navigation in multimedia titles.

## Deprecation

QuickTime 7 introduced QTKit in April 2005 as a new 64-bit framework in the transition leading up to QuickTime X. Classic QuickTime (pre-X) and QTKit have since been deprecated in favor of AVFoundation and AVKit, which originated on Apple's iOS platform and have now become the default media framework for macOS.

Apple discontinued QuickTime development for Windows since version 7.7.9, leading the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team to recommend the removal of obsolete versions of QuickTime from Windows computers due to the lack of future security updates. Adobe discontinued support for the classic 32-bit versions of QuickTime and its legacy formats since April 2018 and ported the ProRes codecs of QuickTime X to support its Windows apps.

## References

1. ↑ VideoSpigot Review by Jon Pugh, TidBITS. 1992-04-20.
2. ↑ August and July 96 by Judith L. Stern and Robert Lettieri, Archive Little QuickTime Page. Accessed 2019-02-04.
3. ↑ Press Release: Apple Introduces High-Quality MPEG Software for QuickTime by Jonathan Hirshon, Apple Computer. 1997-01-24. Archived 1998-12-02.
4. ↑ QuickTime gets extension: MPEG-enhanced playback possible by Ed Scannell, *InfoWorld*. 1997-02-03.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Apple Easter Eggs: QuickTime by David K. Every & Daniel Fanton, MacKido. 2002-11-09.
6. ↑ Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review - QuickTime X by John Siracusa, Ars Technica. 2009-08-31.
7. ↑ Exploring AV Foundation, Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, 2011. Accessed 2019-02-05.
8. ↑ Transitioning QTKit Code to AV Foundation, Apple Developer Documentation Archive. 2013-05-28. Accessed 2019-02-05.
9. ↑ Moving to AV Kit and AV Foundation by Sam Bushell, Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, 2013. Accessed 2019-02-05.
10. ↑ Download QuickTime 7.7.9 for Windows, Apple. 2016-01-07.
11. ↑ QuickTime on Windows by the Creative Cloud Team, Adobe Blog. 2016-04-16.
12. ↑ Dropped support for QuickTime 7 era formats and codecs, Adobe. 2019-10-14.
13. ↑ This Is Huge: Adobe Now Supports ProRes Export on Windows by Oliver Kmia, Fstoppers (2018-12-14)

## External links

* QuickTime | Software at Apple Computer (archived 1997-02-12)
* Archives | News Index at Judy and Robert's Little QuickTime Page
* QuickTime at the Apple Wiki
* QuickTime at the Pippin @WORLD & Atmark Wiki
* QuickTime at Wikipedia

### Articles

* QuickTime and the Rise of Multimedia by Hansen Hsu at the Computer History Museum (2018-03-30)