At the second-annual QuickTime™ Live! conference today, Apple® released public previews of QuickTime 5 and QuickTime Streaming Server 3, the next generations of Appleis industry-leading software for creating, streaming and playing high-quality audio and video over the Internet.
QuickTime 5is many new innovations include an updated media player with a new QuickTime TV (QTV) network channel display and new audio controls; a new component downloader for adding plug-ins on the fly; and support for new web codecs including Macromedia Flash 4, Cubic VR and Shoutcast.
QuickTime 5, in combination with the new open-source QuickTime Streaming Server 3, offers "Skip Protection," a collection of Apple-invented technologies that ensures a higher quality experience for watching and listening to Internet streams. "Skip Protection" protects against media "skipping," or dropping frames, caused by the unpredictability of Internet transmissions.
In addition to the updated media player, the new "in-place" component downloader and Skip Protection, QuickTime 5 also features:
- Hot Picks" guide highlighting cool, new QuickTime TV content;
- support for Sorenson Video 3*;
- easy developer support for delivering new user interfaces, or "skins"*;
- an improved digital video codec for improved iMovie™ playback performance; and
- real-time professional video editing support for professional applications such as Appleis Final Cut Pro®.
Leading web developers whose technologies take advantage of the new component download feature include:
- DDD, which takes existing video and encodes it in 3-D for viewing with 3-D glasses;
- Pulse 3D, which provides playback of low-bandwidth 3D interactive animations;
- BeHere, which delivers 360-degree streaming and on-demand video;
- Sealed Media, which allows content developers to "seal" their media and set up digital rights
- management (DRM) solutions for streaming live or on-demand content;
- On2, which provides high-quality broadband video, encoding and playback; and
- iPIX, which makes virtual reality software that provides dynamic imaging solutions for creating 360-degree spherical images and movies.
Availability
The public previews of QuickTime 5 for the Macintosh® and QuickTime Streaming Server 3 are available immediately for download. The public preview of QuickTime 5 for Windows will be available by the end of the year. QuickTime 5 and QuickTime Streaming Server 3 will be available in early 2001.* Features expected to be available with the release of QuickTime 5 in 2001.
You can find more information and download links for the preview release of QuickTime 5 at Appleis Web site.