Quicktime : the dying and abandonned file format

[Elodie]

Apple does not support Quicktime anymore and stopped the development.

So, even if it's working properly on 32 bit OS, on 64 bit OS, it's a real headache to allow its use (import / export).

You should better use another video file format. QT is really not the best deal to preserve colors, IMO.

[Léo]

Or you can install the 32 bit version of TVPaint in addition of the 64 bits, to be able to export more easily in Quicktime format.

[furushil]

Apple does not support Quicktime anymore and stopped the development.

What do you mean, they don't support quicktime anymore ?
Do you mean the lack of export options in Quicktime X as opposed to Quicktime 7 ?

[Thierry]

It's a tricky one.

Most people view Quicktime only as a Media Player (like VLC, Windows Media Player, WinAmp...), while in fact it's a lot, lot more than that.
It is an entire media framework that is used for exporting, encoding, decoding... and a really powerful one, and one of its biggest advantages was that is was cross platform.

However, in 2011, Apple dropped the support for Windows : it is no longer supported. This article explains it very well : http://karaoke.kjams.com/wiki/Blog/Appl ... ons_QT_Win" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Since Apple has abandoned supporting QuickTime for Windows, developers will no longer support it, and users will be FORCED to buy Apple hardware or software to create content their iDevices. Have an iPod? Want to use your favorite third party software to export some media to it? Too bad for you. You have to purchase the QuickTime Pro license and use Apple's software to do it.

Maybe that's not much of an inconvenience for you, but for folks using third party software, who depend on the ease of use of one-click encoding for their iDevices, must now figure out how to export their media in some agnostic format, then re-encode it *again* using another software (or move to Apple hardware).

And for developers, it means re-writing their Windows encoders, pretty much from scratch, to use something other than QuickTime.

-------------

While DTS (Developer Technical Support) no longer supports QuickTime on Windows, Apple still does though bug reports.

That's the deal for Windows.

Also, the librairies haven't been ported to support 64-bits operating systems
However, in the 32 bits version of TVPaint, you will be able to export in Quicktime format, as Élodie and Léo said.
And I strongly advise you to have both 32 bits and 64 bits versions of TVPaint installed on your Mac if you want to be able to use Quicktime format

[furushil]

I see... I did not know anything about this. This also may explain some past issues that I had (with other software as well)
I know it is of topic but what is a good alternative? It is not "avi" ,is it ?

[Thierry]

MP4 is probaly the best alternative.

[slowtiger]

MP4??? A _compressed_ format? Never. I exchange stuff a lot between programs in production, so it must be an absolutely lossless codec.

[Paul Fierlinger]

The same issue is of course occurring to film editors on Vegas and it seems that many (most?) have been switching to AVI. I've never used anything but AVI and since it'll be uncompressed, I have no problems with it. When I need to export my WIP to clients, I export as MP4 which can be played back with QT, VLC or SM player at excellent preview quality.

[D.T. Nethery]

However, in the 32 bits version of TVPaint, you will be able to export in Quicktime format, as Élodie and Léo said.

And I strongly advise you to have both 32 bits and 64 bits versions of TVPaint installed on your Mac if you want to be able to use Quicktime format

I have found that the idea of being able to install BOTH 32bits and 64bits version of TVPaint on the same computer is something that is not generally well-known, especially to new users . Most new users will simply assume that 64bits is always better and will default to installing 64bit version, unaware that they have the option to use the 32bit version for selected tasks (such as exporting to Quicktime) .

Since many people may still have the need for exporting to Quicktime .mov format it should probably be noted more clearly in the User Manual and other documentation that it is possible to have both 32bit and 64bit version running on the same computer if needed.

[Henk Beumers]

Hi.
I use QT for no other reason than to be able to flip trough the images with the keyboard key's. There is no better way to view storyboards like this. To me knowledge no other player is able to do so. Maybe there are others now but I don't check because QT works fine. You can also see frame numbers instead of sec which is ofcourse very helpfull when discussing the ST.
I use TVP9 to export to QT and also to work in again because I having these crashes of beginning of this topic from the early beginning. I stopped visiting the forum because there was no response anymore at one point. I updated everything, I put al the posible memory in it. I changed the temp file to a single drive. No change. I keep having these problems and as well as Sewi I have earn my living with TVP and these constant chrashes are making this version of TVP unworkable. So I stopped trying at 10.0.17 and swithed to TVP9 so I don't spend hours and hours to find out what is the problem. A few days ago I started TVP10 again to check something and voila, crash.
It seems that the problems Sewi was having are solved whit the last version of 10.50.1. Is that correct?

Regards Henk.

Desktop PC W7pro-64 bit. 16GB ram.
i5 750 2.67GHz.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470. Intuos Wacom.

[ematecki]

MP4??? A _compressed_ format? Never. I exchange stuff a lot between programs in production, so it must be an absolutely lossless codec.

I'm sure you know this, slowtiger, but others may not...

For exchange between apps, you have too choices (actually more, but these are the 'intelligent' ones) :
- Uncompressed AVI ('internal AVI' in TVPaint) => a single file, but a huge one.
- PNG => lots of files, but small ones. (you CAN compress PNGs, it's a lossless compression, files will be smaller but it takes much more time to export)

You have to check with 'the other software' which is the best one, especially speed of import and/or export.

[slowtiger]

Not all software is able to import an image sequence - not AnimeStudio, not FinalCut Express. So I'm stuck to Quicktime.

[Sewie]

Hi.
I use QT for no other reason than to be able to flip trough the images with the keyboard key's. There is no better way to view storyboards like this. To me knowledge no other player is able to do so. Maybe there are others now but I don't check because QT works fine. You can also see frame numbers instead of sec which is ofcourse very helpfull when discussing the ST.
I use TVP9 to export to QT and also to work in again because I having these crashes of beginning of this topic from the early beginning. I stopped visiting the forum because there was no response anymore at one point. I updated everything, I put al the posible memory in it. I changed the temp file to a single drive. No change. I keep having these problems and as well as Sewi I have earn my living with TVP and these constant chrashes are making this version of TVP unworkable. So I stopped trying at 10.0.17 and swithed to TVP9 so I don't spend hours and hours to find out what is the problem. A few days ago I started TVP10 again to check something and voila, crash.
It seems that the problems Sewi was having are solved whit the last version of 10.50.1. Is that correct?

Regards Henk.

Desktop PC W7pro-64 bit. 16GB ram.
i5 750 2.67GHz.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470. Intuos Wacom.

It's stable for me, Henk. But if you don't trust it it's better to wait for the official release. But perhaps that's something the TVPaint team would know more about.

[idragosani]

For exchange between apps, you have too choices (actually more, but these are the 'intelligent' ones) :
- Uncompressed AVI ('internal AVI' in TVPaint) => a single file, but a huge one.
- PNG => lots of files, but small ones. (you CAN compress PNGs, it's a lossless compression, files will be smaller but it takes much more time to export)

You have to check with 'the other software' which is the best one, especially speed of import and/or export.

I like these options the most and pretty much only ones I will use for exporting out of TVPaint. I then use kdenlive NLE using MLT + ffmpeg backends for final conversion to other formats (h264 or whatever). Best of all, it's 100% 64-bit workflow

[Elodie]

Not all software is able to import an image sequence - not AnimeStudio, not FinalCut Express. So I'm stuck to Quicktime.

You know, you can export in AVI and read the video via Quicktime : you'll get the same "frame per frame" feature