QuickTime - multimedia framework

QuickTime is a multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, media clips, sound, text, animation, music, and several types of interactive panoramic images. Available for Classic Mac OS, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, it provides essential support for software packages including iTunes, QuickTime Player (which can also serve as a helper application for web browsers to play media files that might otherwise fail to open) and Safari is a multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, media clips, sound, text, animation, music, and several types of interactive panoramic images. Available for Classic Mac OS, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems, it provides essential support for software packages including iTunes, QuickTime Player (which can also serve as a helper application for web browsers to play media files that might otherwise fail to open) and Safari.

The QuickTime technology created by Apple, which is a media player, consists of:

The QuickTime framework, which provides a common set of APIs for encoding and decoding audio and video.
The QuickTime Movie (.mov) file format, an openly-documented media container.
QuickTime is integral to Mac OS X, as it was with earlier versions of Mac OS. All Apple systems ship with QuickTime already installed, as it represents the core media framework for Mac OS X. QuickTime is optional for Windows systems, although many software applications require it. Apple bundles it with each iTunes for Windows download, but it is also available as a standalone installation.

Software development kits (SDKs) for QuickTime are available to the public with a free Apple Developer Connection (ADC) subscription.

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