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Subject: QuickTime 2.0 -- 94/02/09 Press Releases
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Date: 22 Feb 1994 11:35:26 -0600
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Contact: Katy Boos
Apple Computer, Inc.
(408) 974-4451
New QuickTime adds Interactive Television, Music and Full-Screen
Video Support QuickTime 2.0 Supports MPEG Standard
CUPERTINO, California-- February 9, 1994-- Apple Computer, Inc.
today announced a new version of Apple QuickTime , the revolutionary
software that brings multimedia capabilities to personal computers
and consumer electronic devices. The newest version, QuickTime 2.0,
is significant because it provides larger video at faster frame
rates, support for music, and support for interactive television
applications.
Larger, Faster, TV-Like Video
Video on computers is often confined to small windows and played at
less than 12 frames per second, making the video appear rough and
jerky. QuickTime 2.0 provides greatly increased performance
resulting in full-screen movies-- without the addition of any
hardware-- closely resembling what viewers see on television today.
For example, on a Macintosh LC475, one of Apple's lowest-cost
computers, 30 frames per second video is possible at a resolution of
320 x 240, or full-screen video (640 x 480) is possible at 15 frames
per second.
A key component of the new video enhancements are new features that
support professional-level video editing. QuickTime 2.0 includes
support for time-code, 60 fields per second video and high data
throughput greater than 3MB per second-- representing a 300 percent
increase over previous versions of QuickTime.
Interactive Television Support
QuickTime 2.0 creates an infrastructure for development and delivery
of interactive television applications through MPEG support and
network enhancements. Now, with its new device protocols, QuickTime
can address distributed networks and devices, such as video servers,
on the information superhighway.
QuickTime 2.0 also supports MPEG*, widely regarded as the industry-
standard method of delivering video into the home for interactive
television applications such as Video On Demand (VOD) and home
shopping. However, MPEG, by itself, allows only playback. With
QuickTime 2.0, users of MPEG-based devices will be able to edit,
search for, interact with-- as well as play back-- video information.
"With Apple's support for the MPEG standard, the Macintosh will
become the development platform of choice for ITV applications," said
Mark Bain, president of Wired Incorporated, a Mountain-View,
California-based product design firm that extensively utilizes
digital video and audio.
Music For The Masses
Building on Apple's industry-reknowned ease-of-use, QuickTime 2.0
makes it much easier for computer users to create, edit, playback and
synchronize music with video-- all without a technical understanding
of MIDI technology. In the past, users of Macintosh computers and
other personal computers have required an understanding of MIDI
technology in order to create and playback music on computers.
In addition, QuickTime 2.0's music capabilities will save disk space
for users, because QuickTime music tracks are much smaller than
digital audio. For example, Beethoven's 5th Symphony could easily
fill a 300MB hard disk if stored as CD-quality audio, but when
represented as a QuickTime music track it would fill just a single
800K floppy disk.
"The technical advances we've made with this release of QuickTime
will have a profound impact on the multimedia industry," commented
Tom Ryan, manager of Media Products at Apple. "QuickTime's faster,
full-screen video with MPEG support, will raise the video quality
standards for multimedia developers, while its new music capabilities
lower the barrier to entry for multimedia customers who do not want
to learn the technical nuances of MIDI."
More than one million copies of QuickTime have been sold. Both
Windows and Macintosh developers have adopted QuickTime technology,
and there are more than 300 software products supporting it today.
System Requirements
QuickTime 2.0 will run on any color-capable (68020 or later)
Macintosh computer running System 7 or 6.0.7 with at least 2 MB of
memory.
Availability
QuickTime 2.0 is expected to be available on the Macintosh in the
middle of 1994, with developer seeding planned to begin in March. As
with previous versions, QuickTime 2.0 is designed to permit cross-
platform compatibility between platforms which support it.
QuickTime 2.0.