Introduction

Whether your multimedia needs are basic or advanced, OS X brings world-class support for adding professional-grade audio and video features to your application.

For audio recording, playback, and synchronization, Audio Queue Services offers a flexible, high-level API. For even more control, look at Extended Audio File Services and audio units—OS X’s audio plug-in architecture.

Audio units provide digital signal processing for filtering, effects, format conversion, I/O, and MIDI-based music synthesis. Use one of the many system-supplied audio units or develop your own. Other OS X interfaces support audio streaming, surround sound, custom codec development, hardware access for driver development and disc recording, and MIDI control.

If your application needs to play video, including content purchased through iTunes, you can take advantage of the new, lightweight, and more efficient media playback capability provided in QuickTime X. You gain access to this capability through the QTKit framework, a feature-rich Objective-C API for manipulating and rendering time-based media such as movies, audio files, animations, and streaming content.

Start Here

Before you embark on adding OS X audio technologies to your application, become familiar with Core Audio’s features and architecture by reading Core Audio Overview. Learn about OS X video support by reading QTKit Application Tutorial.

Want to get familiar with the fundamentals?

Prefer to learn by example?

For audio:

For video, QTKit Application Tutorial explains how to build three different Cocoa applications for playing, editing, and recording audio and video media:

Go In Depth

Ready for More?

The OS X Reference Library contains many additional resources to make your job easier. Browse by topic, framework, or resource type (such as guides or sample code). Set filters to focus on what you are looking for.