QuickTime is a multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, media clips, sound, text, animation, music, and several types of interactive panoramic images. Available for Classic Mac OS, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, it provides essential support for software packages including iTunes, QuickTime Player (which can also serve as a helper application for web browsers to play media files that might otherwise fail to open) and Safari.

Overview

The QuickTime technology created by Apple, which is a media player, consists of:

1. The QuickTime framework, which provides a common set of APIs for encoding and decoding audio and video.
2. The QuickTime Movie (.mov) file format, an openly-documented media container.

QuickTime is integral to Mac OS X, as it was with earlier versions of Mac OS. All Apple systems ship with QuickTime already installed, as it represents the core media framework for Mac OS X. QuickTime is optional for Windows systems, although many software applications require it. Apple bundles it with each iTunes for Windows download, but it is also available as a standalone installation.

Software development kits (SDKs) for QuickTime are available to the public with a free Apple Developer Connection (ADC) subscription.

QuickTime players

QuickTime is distributed free of charge. Some other free player applications that rely on the QuickTime framework provide features not available in the basic QuickTime Player. For example:

• iTunes can export audio in WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless.
• In Mac OS X, a simple AppleScript can be used to play a movie in full-screen mode. However, since version 7.2 the QuickTime Player now also supports full-screen viewing in the non-pro version.

Any application can be written to access features provided by the QuickTime framework.

QuickTime Pro

The included QuickTime Player is limited to only the most basic playback operations unless the user purchases a QuickTime Pro license key, which Apple sells for US$29.95. Apple's "ProApplications" (e.g. Final Cut Studio, Logic Studio) come with a free QuickTime Pro license. Pro keys are specific to the major version of QuickTime for which they are purchased. The Pro key unlocks additional features of the QuickTime Player application on Mac OS X or Windows (although most of these can be accessed simply by using players, video editors or miscellaneous utilities from other sources). Use of the Pro key does not entail any additional downloads.

Features enabled by the Pro license include, but are not limited to:

• Editing clips through the Cut, Copy and Paste functions, merging separate audio and video tracks, and freely placing the video tracks on a virtual canvas with the options of cropping and rotation.
• Saving and exporting (encoding) to any of the codecs supported by QuickTime. QuickTime 7 includes presets for exporting video to a video-capable iPod, Apple TV, and the iPhone.
• Saving existing QuickTime Movies (*.mov) from the web directly to a hard disk drive. This is often, but not always, either hidden or intentionally blocked in the standard mode.