Apple Releases QuickTime 6 Public Preview

After tantalizing a developer audience last February with a preview of QuickTime 6 – then holding back the release of its newest streaming system due to MPEG-4 licensing concerns – Apple delivered today with preview editions of QuickTime 6, QuickTime 4 Streaming Server, and its newest product, QuickTime Broadcaster.

With a strong commitment to the MPEG-4 standard, Apple held back the release of QuickTime 6 due to proposed video licensing fees the company feared were prohibitive to the widespread adoption of MPEG-4. Such fears are abating, "We feel confident that the concerns of ours – and others – are being heard loud and clear," said Frank Casanova, director of QuickTime marketing at Apple, in an interview.

Casanova said that Apple has been working aggressively in conversations with MPEG LA to come up with "fair and reasonable" encoder and decoder licensing fees, with certain caps and thresholds for MPEG-4 content providers. The release of QuickTime 6 is a positive sign that manufacturers are confident of balanced video licensing terms, which are planned for release by MPEG LA later this summer.

Included in QuickTime 6 is an ISO-compliant MPEG-4 video codec developed in-house. Previously, Apple has worked with other video codec technology providers such as Sorenson. QuickTime6 comes with support for the MPEG-4 standard audio format Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), the CELP MPEG-4 speech codec, and is compatible with Flash 5.

QuickTime 6 also features an "Instant-On" capability, wiping out frustrating buffering delays in real-time streaming. The user can pause, scrub or jump through video files without buffering. Microsoft previewed a similar function for the Windows Media player in its as-yet-unreleased Corona product. RealPlayer offers another similar technology in "TurboPlay" available only to RealOne SuperPass subscribers, says Casanova.

In addition to QuickTime 6, Apple also released the QuickTime 4 Streaming Server with MPEG-4 support and improved skip protection – a technology that monitors bandwidth fluctuations to help smooth the delivery of streaming media. Also announced was QuickTime Broadcaster, a new product developed for live streaming and exclusively for Mac OS X. Broadcaster supports MPEG-4, in addition to QuickTime codecs and includes a function to record a file for immediate archiving.

All products are provided free for download by Apple except for QuickTime Pro.