I just read that Quicktime 6 is to be released as a preview. I think it is great that they are releasing it but, I think that I will wait till they officially release the final version. I’ve got my QT5 set up on my tower just the way I want it, and I really don’t want to mess up things with a preview version. Although maybe I will put it on my iBook and see what happens

I am thinking that this preview version is only being called a preview version because royalty issues on MPEG 4 are still being hammered out. I was under the impression that QuickTime 6 has been all but finished for some time.

That said, don’t install it if you aren’t comfy with the problems that preview versions can give you.  I may be wrong, after all. 

I am not sure if I will install it either, unless I can confirm what I said.

I’m guessing QuickTime 6 will come bundle with “Shaguar”, as Austin Powers would say, or MacOS 10.2 for the more prosaic amongst us.

I’ll use QT5 until then.

I can’t help myself, I’m getting it when I get home.

Hey, Flash 5, MPEG-4 and AAC? I’m sold, since my Quicktime 5 key works with the preview.

I share Bryan’s impression of why it is “preview”.  That said, I am wondering what I would gain at this point with MPEG-4 in limbo.  Is anyone actually going to put out content in QT6 and/or MPEG-4 while it’s only in preview (or in the case of MPEG, while the royalty thing is still up in the air)?

Yikes! :o I was reading there hype for QT6 and saw that you will have to get a new key for it. I hoped I could hold off buying a new key for awhile longer.

Already installed.  By the way, the Quicktime 5 pro key still works, although i bet only for the preview.  But then again, the quicktime 3 pro key worked with quicktime 4 pro as well, so maybe this one will say good.

The instant on servers are swamped, so it’s worthless for now.  I’ll try that again later…

OK, this is a Good Thing.  I just played with the instant on stuff, from the demo quicktime 6 site.  NICE.  There getting slammed right now, so the bandwidth sucks, but this is AMAZING.

The picture is like way better than a TV, and it’s live streaming (although granted in a 180 pixel window).  The colors are SO sharp and awsome, and when the sound isn’t choppy (bandwidth) it’s incredible. 

By the way, the file formats are   .mp4   how cool is that!

This is WAY seriuosly a GOOD THING.  The bandwidth just cleared up, and the 300 kbps stream is crystal clear.  It’s just like watching a downloaded movie, except it comes on like three seconds after you click the link, and the audio and video are WAY better. 

This is beyond cool.

All I have to say is that I am excited.  Seeing as I’m the QuickTime columnist for TMO, I feel my word processor opening soon…

Brad

GUH!!

I just downloaded this thing, and have been playing around with a sample piece of music: “Toss the Feathers” by The Corrs. It’s a good piece of sample music to deal with: Celtic fiddle, electric guitar, faint sounds of the band in the silent parts, and a wide range of drums for a pretty significant range.

I’m SERIOUSLY impressed!

I encoded this at 56kbps stereo using Quicktime. It encoded at roughly the same rate as an MP3 file. The quality was nearly indistinguishable from the original uncompressed AIFF. There was none of the characteristic “warble” that low-bitrate VBR encoding gives in MP3, and the file size was naturally equal to that of a 56K MP3. The nly area where it really fell down at that bit rate was with the soft snare-drum in the introduction, which was somewhat muted and softened. To a casual listener, especially over MP3 radio, this wouldn’t be noticeable. I only nopticed it because I was directly comparing it to the original AIFF.

I’ve also been playing around with some of my old Animations. One of the thorns in my side when producing my website have been a number of old animations done at school. Everything is light greys on white, with a fair bit of noise. So far, the only format that has given me any sort of quality has been MPEG-1, which really lacks any cheap solution for the Mac. Quicktime codecs, even Sorenson 3, have all chocked badly on these, requiring either very large file sizes, or terrible quality.

I just finished playing around with my old “Dancing Badgers” Animations. I’ll upload these tomorrow night for comparison, of anyone is interested. In a nutshell, the MPEG-1 displays noticable artifacting, has tinny, poor-quality audio, and is 542 KB for an 11 second animation at 256X182. MPEG-4 shows negligable artifacts, has far better audio, runs at 320x240, and is only 472 KB!

To get these results yesterday, I would have had to shell out over $550 for Cleaner 5.0 on the Mac. Suddenly, having to shell out $30 to re-register Quicktime Pro looks rather reasonable.

Is the performance any better in QT6?  I noticed Apple’s page didn’t mention the word, but I’m hoping they made it at least a little faster.  On a 400 MHz G3 w/ 384mb RAM, I get dropped frames on movies encoded with either Divx or Sorenson 3 (at 24fps and 512x384 or bigger).  I know people with 333MHz Pentium 2s that play the same movies back with no dropped frames—that’s why I’m hoping it’s a QT5 issue and QT6 will be much faster…

QT6 is definately faster than its predecessors. I’ve just installed it and played some >600MB divx movies. Opening the movies works more than twice as fast, playing, fastforward, scaling too (on a G4/500 512MB that is). So speedwise, it’s a big improvement.

Two thumbs up!!

Note: I did run the movies through DivX Doctor II first to fix the mp3 sound issue.

[quote author=“Jonathan”]QT6 is definately faster than its predecessors. I’ve just installed it and played some >600MB divx movies. Opening the movies works more than twice as fast, playing, fastforward, scaling too (on a G4/500 512MB that is). So speedwise, it’s a big improvement.

Two thumbs up!!

Note: I did run the movies through DivX Doctor II first to fix the mp3 sound issue.

Which plugin are you using with Quicktime 6?  I have a bunch of DIVX files that I had converted with AVI2MOV and the DIVX 5.0 quicktime plugins that will no longer play under quicktime 6.  They worked great with Quicktime 5.

The movies now have strange green & black banding on the video track.

I tried using the 3ivx plugin, but still have no luck.  Any suggestions?

Pete

[quote author=“Fletch”]
Which plugin are you using with Quicktime 6?

I use the following plugins (OS 10.1.5):

3ivx D4 PR1 Decoder OSX
AVI MovieImport.component
DivXâ„¢.component
OpenDivX.component

Good luck!

Seems like any Divx files converted with the AVI2MOV program will no longer play under Quicktime 6.  The files I converted with Divx Doctor all work flawlessly.  Seems like I either need reconvert the files using Divx Doctor or chock them up as a loss.

Pete

Have you installed the above plugins?

I don’t know wether it would work running them through DivX Doctor as well, but it’s worth a try.