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File Types that QuickTime Can Open as Movies

QuickTime can open a number of different file types as movies. You can call a NewMovieFrom... function with a reference to one of these files and get back a playable movie. The list of file types is extensible by adding movie importer components (component type 'eat ').

QuickTime can of course open QuickTime movie files (file extension .mov, MIME type video/quicktime) and QuickTime media link files (file extension .qtl or .mov, MIME type application/x-quicktimeplayer or video/quicktime). For more about QuickTime media link files, see HTML Scripting Guide for QuickTime.

QuickTime can also open any file type for which it has an installed importer. QuickTime ships with importers for dozens of file types, including:

3GPP
3GPP2
AIFF
AMC
AMR
Animated GIF
AU
AVI
BMP
DLS
DV
FlashPix
FLC
GIF
GSM
JPEG 2000 (Mac OS X)
JPEG/JFIF
Karaoke
MacPaint
Macromedia Flash 5
MIDI
MPEG-1
MP3 (MPEG-1 Layer 3)
M3U (MP3 Playlist files)
MPEG-4
M4A
M4B
M4P (iTunes 4 audio)
PDF (Mac OS X)
Photoshop
PICS
PICT
PLS
PNG
QCP
QuickTime Image File
SD2 (SoundDesigner 2)
SDP
SDV
SGI
SMIL
System 7 Sound (Mac OS 9)
Targa
Text
TIFF
TIFF Fax
VDU (Sony Video Disk Unit)
Wave

Additional import components, such as MPEG-2, can be purchased separately from Apple or are available from third parties.

Note that some file formats, such as MPEG-1, include a compression format. Other formats, such as AIFF, WAVE, and AVI, may contain data compressed using various schemes. QuickTime can open files that support multiple compression formats, but the file may not be playable unless QuickTime also has a compatible decompressor for the media. For example, an .avi file with MPEG-1 compressed video might open and play in QuickTime, while another .avi file compressed using WM9 compression would not play unless the user installed a WM9 decompressor component for QuickTime.

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