Is The QuickTime Plugin Still Relevant Online?

Seen this lately?We all know that love it, or hate it, Flash is the video format of choice for video sharing sites like YouTube. Of course, that's not entirely accurate since more and more files are really h.264 or MPEG-4, wrapped in flash. So when we say flash is the "format" of choice, we really mean flash is the required player of choice.

What about Quicktime as the player of choice? Five or ten years ago, it looked like QuickTime, Real Player, and Windows Media would slug it out for online dominance. Now, for better or worse, we've all more or less agreed that h.264 is the codec du jour, and if you want to allow users to put annoying captions over it, or need to pay the bills with video ads, then you'll wrap in something requiring a flash player.

When's the last time you encountered a site that had content designed to play back in the browser through the QuickTime plugin? There are three places where this still seems to happen: 1. The Apple Website (although this is now more html 5, embedded video-driven), education sites (usually neglected ones), and motion graphics / video editors demo reels, generally to showcase the quality of their product.

Is anyone out there embedding video for QuickTime playback exclusively? Have third party players/hosting sites made the concept of hosting your own video obsolete?

What's in Store For The Future of QuickTime?

Image: TheLogoFactory.comWhen you're as big as Apple, with hit products like the iPhone and iPod, inevitably, some smaller, less sexier projects are going to fall through the cracks. But does QuickTime (the technology, not the player) deserve to be in this category?

Once upon a time, QuickTime led the horse race for online video playback, not to mention bringing video to the desktop in the first place. And, more people use QuickTime today than ever before thanks to it being the underlying engine for iTunes. However, QuickTime has certainly fallen far behind Flash as a delivery method for online video. Is Apple content to let Flash be king? It might simply be a matter of having to many other major projects right now.

Beyond use as a simple video plug-in, (and in theory, Flash and QT should be equal here as more and more video is h.264/mp4 and therefore playable by both) QuickTime has had several interactive hooks/calls that could create a more immersive, interactive experience. Unfortunately, compared to Flash, the effort and difficulty (and end-user numbers) have all tilted strongly to Flash.

It would make sense that the format that powers the largest online music retailer in the world would dominate online streaming and video playback. Perhaps with the iPhone 3Gs and Snow Leopard out the door, some time can be spent on this key Apple technology. That is, if a tablet doesn't get in the way.

What do you think? Should Apple be content using QuickTime as the engine for iTunes, or should they give Flash a run for its money? Or, do new standards make the whole argument moot?

Forget Flash, How About Quicktime on the iPhone

I know it sounds crazy at first... After all, can't the iPhone play QuickTime. Well, yes, some of it. If you navigate to websites with embedded Quicktime (A small portion of sites, but that's for another blog entry) you'll find some that have QuickTime that plays fine. As a matter of fact, for awhile, a site I previously worked on had functioning QuickTime clips, despite me not doing anything to them. Meanwhile sites like lynda.com cannot currently have their QT clips played on the phone.

Yes, they can tweak some settings to make it work on their end, but it makes a lot more sense to have Apple make Quicktime playback ubiquitous on the iPhone. It's their own technology after all! Even the Apple website isn't immune. As I tuned into the quarterly results conference call, I had to go on the road. So I thought, maybe, just maybe, the iPhone would be able to stream that QT content. Nope. The above message stating the iPhone version would be available later via iTunes. Apple, do you want QuickTime/h.264 to be a standard, or not? 

The iPhone's QuickTime playback capability could be more accurately described as iTunes paid content playback. Is that by accident?

April Apple Fantasy Merger: Adobe

(Each month we weigh the pros and cons of a particular potential merger for Apple. Please note the "fantasy" part of this speculation: Many times the mergers mentioned couldn't or wouldn't be realistically possible. But put all that aside and enjoy this month's edition of Fantasy Merger.)

For this month's edition of Apple fantasy merger, I went with an old standby: Adobe. Why? well, because frankly time may be running out on this merger rumor. There was a time when controlling Photoshop may have seen like a golden ticket to allow Apple to grow an even larger share of the creative community. However, with the release of Aperture, and most recently the 2.1 Aperture update supporting 3rd party plugins, the feature gap between the two programs continues to shrink.

However, there is one other Adobe property that might just make it all worth it for Apple: Flash. Flash has been widely accepted as the standard for internet media. Sure QuickTime (and Windows Media) provides a far superior picture, Flash, thanks to it's near-100% install base has become the streaming media format of choice for Youtube, Metacafe, and just about every other online video site.

And if you follow iPhone news, it would be hard to miss the back and forth struggle of bringing Flash to the phone. Some people think it's the missing piece to completing the feature set of the phone, while others see it as a nuisance. Yes, the code can seem bloated. But imagine what Apple could do under the hood... While all web video is slowly migrating to the h.264 open standard, think of the interactive possibilities if Flash and QuickTime became one. You could create interactive slide shows with iPhoto, giving people the ability to add their own features. You could make the full feature set of Photoshop available online for manipulation and adjustment of the pictures. As we move past disc-based media, the winner in online content might be the first format that allows for stunning playback and ease of purchase, as iTunes and QuickTime already do, coupled with the authoring tools, and universal install base Flash provides.

There would still be a big "get" for Apple in the creative market as well. While they would acquire Premiere, a Final Cut Pro competitor, they would also get After Effect, which is far and away the most popular/most used effects software for video production.

Apple could make even greater in-roads in the consumer market with the Flash/QuickTime combination, while simultaneously bringing another important product into their pro software portfolio.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments,