QuickTime

QuickTime is widely adopted standard for delivery of multimedia content and was developed by Apple in the early 1990s, originally for the Macintosh but Windows support was added in a later release. Although capable of dealing with other types of media such as audio, text and 3D panoramas (such as QuickTime VR), it is generally associated with video. The QuickTime file format (see the MOV entry for more) is known as a Container Format because it holds various types of media - rather than being a native codec in its own right. The QuickTime player required to view media has a high penetration on Macintosh computers because it ships with this operating system. On Windows, it is reasonably widely deployed, however, it must be separately installed and this makes it less suitable than Flash Video for pure web based delivery using an online Video Digital Asset Management System.