Snow Leopard Technologies: QuickTime X, part of Snow Leopard, brings new capabilities and performance to Macs running on Intel processors. QuickTime X’s new interface and color accurate rendering capabilities may be just the thing if you want to watch video full screen or on an external HDTV.
- 64-bit application
- New streamlined user interface
- Improved performance
- Pro and Standard versions combined into one
- Supports OpenCL for accelerated video playback
- Intel only; no PowerPC version
- Controls take time to fade out, obscuring video for a short time
- Frameless window may seem to merge into desktop background image
- 64-bit application
- OpenCL aware
- Grand Central Dispatch aware
- Faster launching
- ColorSync support
- Syncs with iTunes, iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, and more
QuickTime X, part of Snow Leopard, has been rewritten as a 64-bit application built on Cocoa, Apple’s object-oriented programming environment. The QuickTime X player uses the Core Animation, Core Audio, and Core Video technologies built-in to Snow Leopard to provide very clean, jitter-free playback of multimedia content. And as a 64-bit application, QuickTime X is able to use Snow Leopard’s Grand Central Dispatch feature to not only launch faster, but also produce stunning results that take advantage of Apple’s ColorSync standards to render high quality color playback.
The QuickTime X player benefits from a user interface makeover. Gone is the old framed QuickTime window, with its controls at the bottom; the new QuickTime X interface uses a frameless window. Controls embedded within the viewing frame appear and disappear as needed. Navigation controls are also improved, with new chapter navigation that uses large thumbnails to mark each chapter of a video, letting you easily and quickly navigate to the content you want.
QuickTime X also does away with the Pro version of QuickTime, bundling its editing capabilities into a single application. You can use QuickTime X to capture video directly from your Mac’s built-in camera and microphone, as well as perform basic editing tasks. When you’re finished editing, you can use QuickTime X to send the movie off to an iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV, or upload it to YouTube or MobileMe.
QuickTime X expands its already impressive support for Internet video streaming to include support for HTTP live streaming. HTTP streaming allows video to be streamed by any standard web server, instead of requiring specialty servers or applications. HTTP streaming can recognize the device being streamed to, and adjust for non-desktop devices, such as the iPhone or iPod touch.
