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Technical Q&As
QuickTime is Apple's cross-platform multimedia technology for creating and delivering video, sound, animation, graphics, text, interactivity, and music. QuickTime supports dozens of file and compression formats for images, video, and audio, including ISO-compliant MPEG-4 video and AAC audio. QuickTime applications can run on Mac OS X and all major versions of Microsoft Windows. QuickTime content plays on Mac OS and Windows computers and many handheld devices, and can be served by progressive download from any web server or as realtime streams from streaming servers on all major operating systems.

QuickTime Resources
A guided introduction and learning path for developers new to QuickTime.   Essential information for developers using QuickTime.   Descriptions of the programming interface elements for QuickTime.
QuickTime Topics
The QuickTime C API, with over 2000 functions developers can use to create multimedia applications for Mac OS X using the Carbon programming framework.   Object-oriented classes and methods for creating and displaying multimedia in applications written using the Cocoa framework for Mac OS X.   Use of the Image Compression Manager, codec components for images and sound, transcoders, and data codecs.

Policies for creating efficient, reliable, and intuitively usable QuickTime programs.   The QuickTime high-level, cross-platform tool set for incorporating video, sound, graphics, text, interactivity, and music into games.   High-level graphics capabilities in QuickTime and support for rendering of QuickTime visual output to graphics and imaging layers such as Quartz and OpenGL.

A cross-platform multimedia technology supporting devices that handle video, sound, animation, graphics, text, interactivity, and music.   Features that allow QuickTime to display and create media in multiple file formats, such as JPEG, WAVE, AVI, and MPEG-4.   QuickTime browser plug-in support for scriptable Internet delivery of multimedia from any web server, and from some streaming servers, to the Mac OS, Windows, and hand-held devices.

An API for developing cross-platform applications supporting video, sound, animation, graphics, text, and more using QuickTime and Java (both included in Mac OS X).   QuickTime media such as audio, video, text, and timecodes, and the components that interpret and manipulate them.   The fundamentals of initializing QuickTime and of opening, playing, editing, and saving movies.

Resources to create new movie, track, and media structures; add samples; and capture audio and video.   Track-level editing, space and time characteristics, previews, track references and alternates, modifier tracks, access keys, and clock components.   A multiplatform, multimedia technology with programming interfaces for creating, processing, and playing high-quality sound content.

Interfaces that support creation of new QuickTime components, such as codecs, media handlers, packetizers and reassemblers.   Special considerations for Windows programmers using QuickTime.   Data handlers for opening and storing QuickTime movies, and components for sending video to devices other than displays.

Real-time effects, filters, and transitions for images, movies, and applications.   Scriptable, interactive movies plus media, such as sprites, that can be animated at runtime.  

View legacy technologies, including technologies, features, products, APIs, and programming techniques that are no longer supported or have been superseded.