QuickTime Player 7.6.6 playing Big Buck Bunny running on Microsoft Windows
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Developer(s) | Apple Inc. |
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Initial release | December 2, 1991 |
Last release | 7.7.9 (January 7, 2016 | )
Preview release | None |
Development status | The Windows version is no longer supported – it has known security vulnerabilities that will not be fixed. |
Written in | C, Objective-C (through Cocoa API) |
Operating system | Windows, Classic Mac OS, macOS |
Type | Multimedia framework |
License | Freemium |
Website | apple |
QuickTime X 10.4 playing Big Buck Bunny running on OS X Yosemite
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Developer(s) | Apple Inc. |
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Initial release | August 28, 2009 |
Stable release | 10.4 (October 16, 2014 | )
Operating system | Mac OS X Snow Leopard or later |
Website | apple |
QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. First made in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is currently available on Mac OS X Snow Leopard and newer. Apple ceased support for the Windows version of QuickTime in 2016.
As of Mac OS X Lion, the underlying media framework for QuickTime, QTKit, is deprecated in favor of a newer graphics framework, AV Foundation.
QuickTime is bundled with macOS. QuickTime for Microsoft Windows is 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.
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 and Windows 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, but since version 7.2 full-screen viewing is now supported in the non-Pro version.
QuickTime Player 7 is limited to only basic playback operations unless a QuickTime Pro license key is purchased from Apple. Until recently, Apple's professional applications (e.g. Final Cut Studio, Logic Studio) included a QuickTime Pro license. Pro keys are specific to the major version of QuickTime for which they are purchased and unlock additional features of the QuickTime Player application on macOS or Windows. The Pro key does not require any additional downloads; entering the registration code immediately unlocks the hidden features.