Apple on Thursday released QuickTime 6.4, a new version of its multimedia technology. The software is now available for download through the Apple Web site or through the Software Updates system preferences pane in Mac OS X.
The new version of QuickTime “integrates extensive support for 3GPP,” according to Apple, including video, audio, text and native .3GP file format support. 3GPP is a multimedia technology gaining speed with cellular telephones and other mobile devices.
“The technologies in QuickTime 6.4 that provide these capabilities are enhanced MPEG-4 and H.263 video codecs, a newly enhanced AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) audio codec, an AMR (Adaptive Multi-Rate) audio codec, a 3G Text importer and exporter, and a user-friendly 3GPP export dialog to aid in the creation of 3GPP-compliant files,” said Apple.
Additionally, QuickTime v6.4 adds performance improvements to DV encoding and decoding in Mac OS X, and enhanced playback of both SD and HD streams.
This new version supports Pixlet, the studio-grade codec previously described by Apple for its forthcoming Mac OS X v10.3 (“Panther”) release. Pixlet is only supported by Mac OS X v10.3.
Support has been added for Java v1.4.1. Java developers can integrate QuickTime into their applications through QuickTime’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
QuickTime 6.4 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows users. Visit the Web site for more details.