Quicktime What Gives?

Here are two clips encoded on a Mac. Compare this clip Hollyman CNN Story Encoded using Flip4Mac








I am in the process of re-encoding and posting some new video clips on my website. Crunching the clips I just re-encoded this story I did for CNN as a one person team, using Flip 4 Mac. It looks prettty decent except for the color cast. Compare it with the older funky encoded QT clip,against this one encoded two year ago for Quicktime to see how quickly codecs have advanced. Quicktime 7 still rocks supreme as the player war rages on.

But Apple has just programmed in some new predatory code which seems to make Quicktime take control of your browser. So if you want to play a .smil file...you just get that Big Q for Quicktime instead of the Real Player.


Peru CNN Hollyman story encoded with QT5

But Apple is suddenly sitting smug with Quicktime...I just reinstalled Quicktime Pro a night back after it reverted to a basic player, all by itself. Quicktime support was no help, telling me that all tech support for Quicktime is done by e-mail.

Once the key finally took ( you have to quit the player to do so) I suddenly found big Q's within pages on my Firefox browser where other players should have played. Evidentally Quicktime has taken over as my default player without my agreement.

In the old days one could set the default browser manually.

I just spoke with my video host Playstream and they were as baffled as me. They told me that many users were complaining that Quicktime, once installed, now seems to be taking control of their browser.

" It's a war zone out there," the rep told me at Playstream (now renamed Vital Stream). He says that the stakes are now higher than usual along the front lines of the player battlefields. Microsoft is teaming up with MTV to offer an I-Tune-like service for downloading music that can be played on a $50 MP3 player.