TABLE OF CONTENTS George Towner
QuickTime is a digital multimedia technology developed and maintained by Apple Computer, Inc. It comprises a file format, a set of applications and plug-ins, and a software library with an application programming interface. The applications, plug-ins, and software library help computers perform a variety of multimedia operations on most of the media data formats in use. The file format defines how the information that QuickTime handles is stored and transmitted.
The basic unit of QuickTime information is the movie. A QuickTime movie is a data structure that contains the instructions and metadata required to access and present digital media in a defined order, which may be temporal or interactive. The media are external to the movie; the movie fetches each piece of media at the appropriate time, decompresses or otherwise processes it as necessary, and presents the result on the user s computer. Thus, the movie processes and delivers the media according to a timeline or another organizing principle.
A QuickTime file on a magnetic disk, DVD, CD, or other storage medium may contain a movie alone or the movie and its media. When a movie is stored alone, the media may be located in the local file system, on a network, or on an Internet site. When a movie is combined with its media, they are flattened into a single file that can be moved and played on any computer.
The QuickTime file format is platform independent. QuickTime movies can be delivered from most...
