Inside Macintosh: QuickTime Reference

Summary of Changes and Enhancements

The primary focus of the QuickTime 4.1 release is to provide advertising insertion capability for QuickTime content providers and firewall support for QuickTime end users. A number of additional features and enhancements have also been included in this release. These are intended to benefit both content providers and end users.

In brief, QuickTime 4.1 includes the following changes:

Added 64-bit file support for Mac OS 9, which enables recording and playback of movie files larger than 2 gigabytes (2G) on Mac OS 9.
Added support for Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL), a simple, text-based format defined by W3C http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-smil/ which lets you create presentations out of diverse media elements -- any media that QuickTime supports. Content providers can now insert advertising content in a sequence of streams, using QuickTime 4.1's implementation of the SMIL standard.
Added the capability of movies to embed other movies as a track, which means that movies may now contain other movies which may have independent clocks. This is accomplished by means of a new Movie Media Handler API.
The addition of variable bit rate (VBR) support for MP3 and MP3 playlists via M3U files.
Improved navigation through firewalls. The QuickTime Settings control panel has additional options for Streaming Proxy settings and a new Streaming Transport panel. Users may click the Auto Configure button in the Streaming Transport panel.
AppleScript support (on Mac OS). Developers and scripters can now use AppleScript and QuickTime Player to automate tasks. AppleScript support provides Macintosh content creators with the capability to automate distribution and playback of QuickTime content.
Access to sites requiring authentication, e.g., pay-per-view sites.
New wired actions and events for creating more advanced, interactive wired movies.
Additions and changes to QuickTime for Java, including deprecation of AWT dependencies and the addition of two new packages.
Changes to the QuickTime VR controller, so that buttons now match the standard QuickTime controller.
JavaScript support now includes the capability of accessing the QuickTime Plug-in, thus enabling you to control the Plug-in via JavaScript methods.
Elimination of support for 68K Macintosh computers. However, QuickTime movies running under 68K Macintosh computers still work. QuickTime 4.1 now only supports Power PC computers and Mac OS 7.5.5 or later, in addition to Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT. Note that QuickTime 4.1 is still backward compatible and plays all existing QuickTime movies.

Inside Macintosh: QuickTime Reference