Sustainability of Digital Formats
Planning for Library of Congress Collections
Sustainability of Digital Formats
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| Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact | |
| Full name | QuickTime, Apple Video Codec |
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| Description | File format that wraps a Apple video bitstream with other data chunks, e.g., audio. Apple video encoding is part of QuickTime production software. |
| Production phase | Used as a final-state format for enduser delivery; may also be used as a middle-state format, e.g., as the video source when producing lower-resolution streaming versions. |
| Relationship to other formats | |
| Subtype of | QuickTime, |
| Contains | Apple video codec, not separately documented |
| May contain | Audio streams not documented at this time |
| LC experience or existing holdings | See QuickTime |
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| LC preference | See QuickTime |
| Disclosure | See QuickTime |
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| Documentation | See QuickTime |
| Adoption | Appears to be widely adopted for video filemaking. |
| Licensing and patents | See QuickTime |
| Transparency | Depends upon algorithms and tools to read; will require sophistication to build tools. |
| Self-documentation | See QuickTime |
| External dependencies | See QuickTime |
| Technical protection considerations | See QuickTime |
| Moving Image | |
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| Normal rendering | Good support. |
| Clarity (high image resolution) | Moderate, given that this is a format typically used for compression and does not support interlaced video. Outcome will depend on the type and extent of compression, and the encoder used. Several commentators state that the quality of QTV_Sorenson surpasses that of QTV_Cinepak, at the same bitrate. At higher bitrates, QTV_MJPEG is likely to provide the highest quality of the QuickTime codecs described at this web site. |
| Functionality beyond normal rendering | See QuickTime. |
| Tag | Value | Note |
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| Filename extension | mov |
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| Internet Media Type | See note |
See QuickTime |
| Magic numbers | See note |
See QuickTime |
| Apple Video Sample Description | rpza |
Four-character code identifying the Apple Video codec, from QuickTime File Format, p. 92 or p96.1 |
| General | |
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| History |
1There seem to have been at least two printings of the specification carrying the same date. These were not systematically compared by the compiler of this Web page. Pagination varies between these two printings.
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