Apple has released QuickTime Broadcaster v1.5, a new version of their free software to let you webcast QuickTime content. Based on Apple’s recently released QuickTime 7 software, QuickTime Broadcaster 1.5 features new capabilities like H.264 broadcasting, improved performance and better 3G video streaming.
QuickTime Broadcaster lets you broadcast not only QuickTime, but video that any MPEG-4 compliant video player on any platform can read. It integrates with Apple’s QuickTime Streaming Server software and supports the delivery of live broadcasts using the RTP/RTSP transport. In addition to MPEG-4 and H.264, the new high-quality, scalable video codec in QuickTime 7, QuickTime Broadcaster also supports other QuickTime codecs that can help with streaming and compression functions. It’s AppleScriptable and works with video capture from most FireWire-based sources.
H.264 support means that you can broadcast higher quality live streams and lower data rates than before, although it requires an H.264-compatible client to view (such as QuickTime 7). The improved performance now allows users to send QuickTime broadcasts in 640 x 480 30 frames-per-second video. And enhanced 3G support means better live streaming to mobile devices, such as some PDAs and cell phones, that support the 3GPP standard.
QuickTime Broadcaster 1.5 requires Mac OS X v10.3.9, a G3 or faster CPU, 128MB RAM, QuickTime 7 or later and 1.0MB of free hard disk space.