What is QuickTime?

QuickTime is a cross-platform multimedia framework and architecture developed by Apple Inc., that is used to handle digital video, audio, animation, text, and image formats. Quicktime is built into the Mac OS X operating system and is also available for use on Microsoft Windows as a standalone install or bundled with iTunes.

What does QuickTime do?
Quicktime is used by Mac OS X and applications including QuickTime Player, iTunes, and Safari (via the QuickTime browser plug-in) to play video, sound, and image files. In fact, Quicktime is the foundation on which the popular iTunes software and iPod technologies are built. QuickTime provides file format converters for more than 250 common video, audio, and image file formats. QuickTime competes with a number of other standards.

QuickTime Use and Features

Key tasks that QuickTime is useful for include:

Playing movies and other media, including MP3 audio and Flash
Editing of movies and other media. QuickTime is used by Apple applications including Final Cut.
Compressing and decompressing of video and sound
Importing and exporting images between formats
Capturing and storing content from real-time sources, such as video cameras and audio devices
Creating movies
Creating presentations
Real-time broadcast streams
Media distribution over the Internet or physical storage including DVDs and discs

What is a QuickTime Movie File?
At a high level, a QuickTime movie file encapsulates the various media types into a file that QuickTime can play including images, text, audio, and video.

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