As promised, Apple has delivered a version of its QuickTime 7 software for Windows, about a month and a half after Mac OS X “Panther” and “Tiger” users first landed the multimedia technology. Apple on Monday offered a “preview release” of the Windows version.
QuickTime 7 features support for H.264 or Advanced Video Codec (AVC), a video standard that provides much higher-quality video playback at lower bandwidth speeds than has been previously available. Also new in this release is support for playing up to 24 channels of audio, including 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound; new and improved playback controls; zero-configuration streaming and live resizing.
Also released today is a preview release of QuickTime 7 Pro, the upgraded multimedia technology that offers additional capabilities, especially for authors of video and multimedia content. QuickTime 7 Pro features H.264 encoding, support for configuring and encoding 5.1 audio, new full-screen controls, native support for VBScript, background exporting and new movie settings for simplified authoring.
The preview release of QuickTime 7 Player is a free download; the preview release of QuickTime 7 Pro for Windows costs US$29.99 for a single-user license. Apple expects to release final versions for Windows during the summer.