QuickTime
QuickTime is a discontinued[1] extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats.[2][3] The term QuickTime also refers to the QuickTime Player front-end media player application,[2] which is built-into macOS, and was formerly available for Windows.[4]
For the gameplay mechanic in video games, see Quick time event.
QuickTime was created in 1991, when the concept of playing digital video directly on computers was "groundbreaking."[2][3] QuickTime could embed a number of advanced media types, including panoramic images (called QuickTime VR) and Adobe Flash. Over the 1990s, QuickTime became a dominant standard for digital multimedia, as it was integrated into many websites, applications, and video games, and adopted by professional filmmakers. The QuickTime File Format became the basis for the MPEG-4 standard.[5][6][2][3][7] During its heyday, QuickTime was notably used to create the innovative Myst and Xplora1 video games, and to exclusively distribute movie trailers for several Star Wars movies.[8][2] QuickTime could support additional codecs through plug-ins, for example with Perian.[9]
As operating systems and browsers gained support for MPEG-4 and subsequent standards like H.264, the need for a cross-platform version of QuickTime diminished, and Apple discontinued the Windows version of QuickTime in 2016.[10][11][12][1] In Mac OS X Snow Leopard, QuickTime 7 was discontinued in favor of QuickTime Player X, which abandoned the aging QuickTime framework in favor of the AVFoundation framework. QuickTime Player X does not support video editing (beyond trimming clips) or plug-ins for additional codec support.[1][13] macOS Catalina dropped support for all 32-bit applications, including the QTKit framework and the old QuickTime 7.[11]
Overview[edit]
QuickTime is bundled with macOS. QuickTime for Microsoft Windows was downloadable as a standalone installation, and was bundled with Apple's iTunes prior to iTunes 10.5, but is no longer supported and therefore security vulnerabilities will no longer be patched.[14] Already, at the time of the Windows version's discontinuation, two such zero-day vulnerabilities (both of which permitted arbitrary code execution) were identified and publicly disclosed by Trend Micro; consequently, Trend Micro strongly advised users to uninstall the product from Windows systems.[15][16]
Software development kits (SDK) for QuickTime are available to the public with an Apple Developer Connection (ADC) subscription.
It is available free of charge for both macOS operating systems. There are some other free player applications that rely on the QuickTime framework, providing features not available in the basic QuickTime Player. For example, iTunes can export audio in WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless. In addition, macOS has a simple AppleScript that can be used to play a movie in full-screen mode,[17] but since version 7.2 full-screen viewing is now supported in the non-Pro version.[18]
Developer(s)
December 2, 1991
macOS
Discontinued: Windows, Classic Mac OS
Bugs and vulnerabilities[edit]
QuickTime 7.4 was found to disable Adobe's video compositing program, After Effects.[114][115][116] This was due to the DRM built into version 7.4 since it allowed movie rentals from iTunes. QuickTime 7.4.1 resolved this issue.[117]
Versions 4.0 through 7.3 contained a buffer overflow bug which could compromise the security of a PC using either the QuickTime Streaming Media client, or the QuickTime player itself.[118] The bug was fixed in version 7.3.1.
QuickTime 7.5.5 and earlier are known to have a list of significant vulnerabilities that allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds memory access and application crash) on a targeted system. The list includes six types of buffer overflow,[119][120][121][122][123][124] data conversion,[125] signed vs. unsigned integer mismatch,[126] and uninitialized memory pointer.[127]
QuickTime 7.6 has been found to disable Mac users' ability to play certain games, such as Civilization IV and The Sims 2. There are fixes available from the publisher, Aspyr.[128]
QuickTime 7 lacks support for H.264 Sample Aspect Ratio.[129] QuickTime X does not have this limitation, but many Apple products (such as Apple TV) still use the older QuickTime 7 engine. iTunes previously utilized QuickTime 7, but as of October 2019, iTunes no longer utilizes the older QuickTime 7 engine.[130]
QuickTime 7.7.x on Windows fails to encode H.264 on multi-core systems with more than approximately 20 threads, e.g. HP Z820 with 2× 8-core CPUs. A suggested solution is to disable hyper-threading/limit CPU cores. Encoding speed and stability depends on the scaling of the player window.
On April 14, 2016, Christopher Budd of Trend Micro announced that Apple has ceased all security patching of QuickTime for Windows, and called attention to two Zero Day Initiative advisories, ZDI-16-241
[131] and ZDI-16-242,[132] issued by Trend Micro's subsidiary TippingPoint on that same day.[15] Also on that same day, the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued alert TA16-105A, encapsulating Budd's announcement and the Zero Day Initiative advisories.[16] Apple responded with a statement that QuickTime 7 for Windows is no longer supported by Apple.[14]