Updated Review : Quicktime 7 Final

Apple has released the final version of QuickTime 7 for Windows, QuickTime 7 is a multimedia player which is the foundation of many other industry software, & is required by many software like 3D Max, Adobe premiere & ACDsee, and it’s a complete multimedia powerhouse

The installer is 32 MB is size, a lot more then QuickTime 6.52, it is Windows Installer based, & unlike installation of version 6.52 which used to give an option of which components to install, this version installs everything in the installation directory, which by default is program files\QuickTime

Apple has adopted the iTunes like interface with QuickTime 7, which gives it a more Windows feeling, like the title bar & control buttons, although it is still not skinned by Windows blinds or Windows XP GDI

The main window, except for the layout everything is changed

Following the Preview 3 version, Apple has introduced a new sound recording feature to QuickTime, just like the one found on Mac QuickTime 7, U can select the format of saved audio, from 3 options

1) QuickTime Movie compressed
2) Uncompressed Audio
3) AAC Music



Although Mac version also supports video recording in H.264 format directly with any Cam or their iSight web cam, such feature is still awaited in QuickTime 7 for Windows

Apple has introduced up to 24 channels audio with QuickTime 7, using their new revolutionary Core Audio technology, this feature is ported to Windows but only in a limited sense. To enable multi channel audio Open QuickTime Preference->Audio-> & in the sound out section configure it accordingly, select the number of speakers here & in the Windows speaker settings

Video playback is now handled by their Core Video technology which uses the power of your graphics card to calculate the video playback, this increases quality & performance greatly according to Apple; this is also not completely ported to Windows, as of now.

The most important introduction with QuickTime 7 is the native H.264 support, although for playing HD Contents you also need a pretty high end system, I can give you an example by the means that the Batman begins trailer, at 480p, as given at their HD Gallery, skips frames at a Pentium 4 2 GHz system with 256 MB RAM & even on a Athlon XP 2400+.

It seems Apple has optimized QuickTime, for hyper threading & dual core, as when playing the same video at a Pentium 4 2.4 GHz system with HT enabled, resulted in smooth playback, but again even at this system QuickTime skipped frames when I played the 115 MB, 720p HD video, although on my own Pentium 4 3.06 GHz with HT it played fine, so you better have a good system if U R thinking of even playing that much High resolution based content

The export function is now working properly, U can convert from many formats to many formats, but for some reason, QuickTime still doesn’t plays DivX contents, & if U have a mpeg-1 Muxed file, like those found on VCDs or recording of TV, it does not processes the Audio, & skips the track at all

Exporting to H.264 or any other format uses all the cores or threads available to your CPU, although not as fast as Nero Recode in encoding but it’s about 70% the speed of Recode right now



The streaming just got better, even at 56 kbps the quality of streaming video is better then Real media or Windows Media, although this is subjective, version 7 also supports “Instant on� like version 6.

This time, it caches the file to your system for future playback even if u r offline, simply right click on the movie being played on the webpage, select “Save as source� give it a name & .mov extension, now U can simply play the file again anytime, even if U R offline, the amount of movie already played is in your cache & U can start just from where U left, great for Dial–Up users

To make the installation a little less fatty, simply go to c:\program files\QuickTime\ or where ever U have installed the player, inside U will see many folders with the name as

abc.resources

these are the resource files QuickTime uses to play contents, but it contains different language files, for Dutch or Japanese language usage, if U R using an English version of Windows & QuickTime, U can safely delete all the folders in each xxx.resource folder other then en.lproj folder, this will reduce the size of QuickTime 7 by 21 MB

QuickTime Homepage

Quicktime HD gallery

To download the Final QuickTime standalone installer, check below the megaupload link, this is a compressed version of original 32 MB QuickTime 7 installer, good for dial up users, as it is only 19 MB compared to 32 MB, with no change in file, just a recompression in 7z format, U can use WinRAR or 7 zip file manager or Power Archiver to open it

[expertno.1]

thats cool man

[QwertyManiac]

Apple quickie takes too much of time for processin mov's
Dont use it that much even though i got the PRO version of 7...

[vignesh]

Cool review .

[navjotjsingh]

Excellent Review done.

Quicktime 7 mov processing is slow, but it also depends on the codecs being used, QT bundles Sorenson video codec which is preety good, but I prefer using mp4 codec bundled with quicktime for mov files, processing is fast as well as good quality

time to ressurect the thread

Finally Apple has launched Quicktime 7 final for Windows, after a long time

right now even i m downloading, & it seems like they have ported core audio & core video to windows, it's a hefty download t 32 MB, I wonder, what's the reason for the size

u can check the Quicktime Homepage for more info

To download quicktime 7, there are 2 options download which ever suits

Quicktime 7 standalone 32 MB

Quicktime 7 with iTunes 33 MB

I tunes is only 1 MB

[Vishal Gupta]

I hv Quick Time Pro 7.
Its size is 14.5 MB.

And I also hv iTunes, its size is 20.8 MB...

what u seem to have is quicktime 7 Preview 1 which was 14 MB, as preview 2 was 22 MB, Preview 3 25 & Final is 32

What I don't seem to understand , that Y isn's apple compressing the file to dwnload

i simply converted the installer to Solid RAR & File size came to 19 MB, 7z & file size will become even lower

if someone with a broadband connection compress it with 7z, to bring the file to a lower size & then upload somewhere with Download resume ability, it will help a lot of people, like megaupload or yousendit

[Nemesis]

1. Apple's site doesn't seem to have a standalone QuickTime download.
2. Their download link is currently not working.

I guess they have decided to bundle iTunes and QT together, regardless of whether you want both or not.

thats impossible, i have downloaded the standalone installer for quicktime, just click on the download now link on apple.com/quicktime & in the new page where it asks u t oenter your e-mail, u will see a small text "Quicktime standalone installer"

link works for me fine

[allindrome]

Here is the link for QuickTime v7.0.2.120 and it works.

Download

[allindrome]

OK,I have compressed and uploaded it to megaupload for the benefit of members with slower connections.It is now 18.7MB in size as compared to 31.6MB of the original installer.It is 7-zipped though.

Download

[Nemesis]

Ahh! I missed that small link on the Apple site. Yes, the standalone installer is 32MB. I am guessing that iTunes shares it's engine with QT and that 1MB size of iTunes is just the interface or something like that. BUt yeah, just 1MB is kinda surprising.

there are a few things, i would like to say here

1) Does mega upload supports download resume, as many free file sharing websites don't

2) insted of 7-Zip a Self extracting 7z would have been better, as it's not so popular

anyway, thanx for even a 18.7 MB file, now add to it WinRAR of 1 MB, thats still 12 MB lower then QT

[Sourabh]

1.MegaUpload servers are slow most of the time of the day and max speeds you would ever get is 10-11 KB/s, thats the max i have ever got. Mostly the download speeds there is 4-5 KB/s. And NO, MegaUpload doesnt support resume, atleast not for me. It is well renowned for downloads coming to a hault even without any reasons from the clients side.

2.Well if you yourself agree that 7zip is not so popular and the filesize came down just by a mere 1-2 MB as compared to the Rar of it. Just wanted to say, if u wanted 7zip self extracting archive you could have very well told that before. Nothing against you, I felt it could be avoided. Anyways thanks allindrome and Gx.

There are a few things that I would like to point out here which I find problemitic with quicktime 7, I have also mailed Apple feedback about these

1) Go to Apple.com/ipodnano & in the features section, now no matter what U R using weather IE or Firefox, the browser will crash with an error in quicktimeh264.qts file

2) Play a Movie encoded in H264 & then drag another movie encoded in H264, Quicktime player will crash

[ShekharPalash]

hey nice review there GX... >>> rushing to *update*

[Sreekanth V]

I will go for Quicktime alternative instead.

Apple has just released Itunes 6 with Quicktime 7.0.3, which is a minor update over quicktime 7.0.2 but it fixes the most important bug for windows user because of which many browsers were crashing with error in quicktimeh264.qtx file when watching online contents on apple.com, like the ipod nano page, etc

U can download the full standalone installer, which is now slimmed,33 MB file to a small 20 MB File officially

Download20 MB

anyone who have downloaed the quicktime 7 standalone installer, plz check if re-compressing it with WinRAR solid archive mode decreses the file size or not, if possible lz upload the decresed file size file somewhere for othre to download

[vignesh]

Good review mate..Quicktime Alternative is good too.