QuickTime 2.0 is significant because it provides larger video at faster frame rates, support for music, and support for interactive television applications.
Larger, Faster, TV Like Video
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Video on computers is often confined to small windows and played at less than 12 frames per second, making the video appear rough and jerky. QuickTime 2.0 provides greatly increased performance resulting in full-screen movies without the addition of any hardware. This closely resembles what viewers see on television today. For example, on a Macintosh LC 475, one of Apple's lowest-cost computers, 30 frames per second video is possible at a resolution of 320 x 240, or full-screen video (640 x 480) is possible at 15 frames per second.
Key components of the new video enhancements are new features that support professional-level video editing. QuickTime 2.0 includes support for time-code, 60 fields per second video and high data throughput greater than 3 MB per second. This represents a 300 percent increase over previous versions of QuickTime.
Interactive Television Support
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QuickTime 2.0 creates an infrastructure for development and delivery of interactive television applications through MPEG support and network enhancements. Now, with its new device protocols, QuickTime can address distributed networks and devices, such as video servers, on the information super highway.
QuickTime 2.0 supports MPEG, widely regarded as the industry-standard method of delivering video into the home for interactive television applications such as Video On Demand (VOD) and home shopping. However, MPEG, by itself, allows only playback. With QuickTime 2.0, users of MPEG-based devices will be able to edit, search for, interact with, as well as play back�?video information.
Note:
QuickTime requires additional hardware for MPEG playback.
Music For The Masses
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Building on Apple's industry renowned ease-of-use, QuickTime 2.0 makes it much easier for computer users to create, edit, playback and synchronize music with video�?all without a technical understanding of MIDI technology. In the past, users of Macintosh computers and other personal computers have required an understanding of MIDI technology in order to create and playback music on computers.
In addition, QuickTime 2.0's music capabilities will save disk space for users, because QuickTime music tracks are much smaller than digital audio. For example, Beethoven's 5th Symphony could easily fill a 300 MB hard disk if stored as CD-quality audio, but when represented as a QuickTime music track it would fill just a single 800K floppy disk.
System Requirements
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QuickTime 2.0 will run on any color-capable (68020 or later) Macintosh computer running System 7 or 6.0.7 with at least 2 MB of memory (3-4 MB preferred on a System 7 system).
Availability
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Developers
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QuickTime 2.0 and QuickTime for Windows 2.0.x are available to software developers on the QuickTime Software Developer Kit (SDK) through APDA, and include licensing agreements from Apple's Software Licensing division.
End Users
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QuickTime 2.0 for Mac OS is available as part of System 7.5 or can be downloaded from CompuServe (GO QTIME) for a small fee.
QuickTime 2.0 for Windows is available from CompuServe for a small fee (GO QTIME).
QuickTime 2.0 for both Mac OS and Windows can also be downloaded from the internet for a small fee. It is available from the WWW site:
http://quicktime.apple.com
All earlier versions of QuickTime are no longer available and have been removed
from Apple SW Updates.
Most QuickTime products also include a copy of QuickTime.
Compatibility with Older Versions of QuickTime
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Movies created with earlier versions of QuickTime will playback with QuickTime 2.0, and usually they will playback more smoothly.
Applications and tools which support early versions of QuickTime, Movie Player and Movie Converter for example, will playback QuickTime 2.0 movies.
Article Change History:
24 May 1995 - Added QuickTime availability information.
02 May 1995 - Corrected spelling of LC 475 product name.
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