Library for reading and writing Quicktime files (utilities).

This is the home of libquicktime, a library for reading and writing quicktime/avi/mp4 files. It provides convenient access to quicktime files with a variety of supported codecs.

Note:
libquicktime is in no way related to the original quicktime software, which can be found here. You should not expect all quicktime files created by original software to be playable by libquicktime or vice versa. You might, however, be lucky in some cases.
The goal is to have a simple and stable library, which can create reasonable compatible Quicktime and AVI files either uncompressed (for high-end or production applications) or with decent compression codecs for end user applications. Today, we write Quicktime files with a wide range of uncompressed codecs for professional use. Together with sample accurate seeking, this makes libquicktime the library of choice for editing applications.
Starting with version 0.9.9, libquicktime can also produce files for lots of consumer level players. AVIs for Divx players (with mp3 audio) can be written as well as multichannel H.264/AAC files for Quicktime 7. Furthermore, we encode fairly compatible MPEG-4 (.mp4) files. AAC audio files (.m4a) are also supported.
On the decoder side, the development goal is that libquicktime should at least be able to decode it's own files. If other formats or codecs be added with a reasonable amount of labour, they will be supported as well.
If you are looking for a general purpose library, which supports other formats than Quicktime/AVI and many more codecs, try gmerlin_avdecoder or ffmpeg.
Libquicktime is based on the quicktime4linux library, with the following extensions:

• Sourcetree upgraded with autoconf/automake/libtool and all the other stuff, people like in "standard" linux libraries.
• All 3rd party libraries (jpeg, OggVorbis) were removed to reduce download size, compilation time and code duplication on users harddisks. Instead, the sytemwide installed libaries are autodetected by the configure script.
• All codecs have been moved into dynamically loadable modules. This makes it possible to distribute closed source codecs (or codecs with an incompatible license) as separate packages.
• Unlike other quicktime libraries, we are source compatible with quicktime4linux.
• Libquicktime 0.9.4 introduced support for handling QTVR files. QTVR is a technology to store panoramas and interactive "3D pictures" (Object Movies) in Quicktime files. For more information check out this document. The current implementation allows developers to write applications that display and/or create QTVR V1.0 object movies and panoramas.
  Although it's usable there are a few limitations:
  
  • the newer versions of the QTVR format aren't supported (yet)
  • no multinode support
  • no abstraction of the movie structure. That means the application writer has to take care of which frame to decode when (object movies) and how to piece them together (panoramas) (see http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1036.html and http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1035.html for information about that)
  • no documentation
  Examples: lqt_transcode: a simple mov/avi transcoder, extended to write QTVR files lqtvrplay: a simple QTVR viewer

Currently, the whole discussion happens on the libquicktime-devel mailing list. Software developers, who are interested in this project, are welcome to subscribe to this list. The sourceforge project page is here.

Some documentation for the codec interface can be found here. Please note, that the codec interface isn't completely frozen yet, but this is roughly, what you can expect.

Codecs.
Note that this list might not reflect the last stable release. Instead, we try to keep this in sync with the CVS version.

Audio codecs.

• ima4 Encode/Decode
• Raw 8 bit audio Encode/Decode
• Twos Encode/Decode
• Ulaw Encode/Decode
• Sowt Encode/Decode
• Alaw Encode/Decode
• 24 bit PCM Encode/Decode
• 32 bit PCM Encode/Decode
• 32 bit float Encode/Decode
• 64 bit float Encode/Decode
• Linear PCM (QT 7) Encode/Decode
• MPEG-2/4 AAC encoder Encode only
• Lame mp3 encoder Encode only
• MPEG-2/4 AAC decoder Decode only
• FFMPEG MPEG-1/2 audio layer 1/2/3 Decode only
• FFMPEG Mpeg Layer 2 Audio Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG AC3 Audio Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG QDM2 Audio Decode only
• FFMPEG Apple lossless Decode only
• FFMPEG McRowsoft ADPCM Decode only
• FFMPEG ADPCM ima WAV Decode only
• Ogg Vorbis (qt4l compatible) Encode/Decode
• Ogg Vorbis (qtcomponents compatible) Encode/Decode

Video codecs.

• RTjpeg Encode/Decode
• RGB uncompressed Encode/Decode
• RGBA uncompressed with alpha Encode only
• 8 bit planar YUV 4:4:4 (v308) Encode/Decode
• 8 bit Planar YUVA 4:4:4:4 (v408) Encode/Decode
• 10 bit Packed YUV 4:4:4 (v410) Encode/Decode
• 8 bit Packed YUV 4:2:2 (yuv2) Encode/Decode
• YUV 4:2:0 (yuv4) Encode/Decode
• 8 bit Planar YUV 4:2:0 (yv12) Encode/Decode
• 8 bit Packed YUV 4:2:2 (2vuy) Encode/Decode
• 10 bit packed YUV 4:2:2 (v210) Encode/Decode
• Dirac video Encode/Decode
• PNG Encode/Decode
• PNG (with alpha) Encode only
• FFMPEG Mpeg 1 Video Decode only
• FFMPEG MPEG-4 Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG MSMpeg 4v1 Decode only
• FFMPEG MSMpeg 4v2 Decode only
• FFMPEG MSMpeg 4v3 (DivX 3 compatible) Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG MSMpeg 4v3 (WMP compatible) Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG H263 Decode only
• FFMPEG H263 Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG H264 Decode only
• FFMPEG H263+ Encode only
• FFMPEG I263 Decode only
• FFMPEG Sorenson Video 1 Decode only
• FFMPEG Sorenson Video 3 Decode only
• FFMPEG MJPEG Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG Motion JPEG-B Decode only
• FFMPEG Targa Decode only
• FFMPEG TIFF Decode only
• FFMPEG Quicktime Planar RGB (8BPS) Decode only
• FFMPEG Intel Indeo 3 Decode only
• FFMPEG Apple Video Decode only
• FFMPEG Apple Graphics Decode only
• FFMPEG Cinepak Decode only
• FFMPEG Creative YUV Decode only
• FFMPEG RLE Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG Microsoft RLE Decode only
• FFMPEG DV (NTSC) Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG DV (PAL) Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG DV (AVI version) Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG DVCPRO50 (PAL) Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG DVCPRO50 (NTSC) Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG DVCPROHD Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG modified huffyuv lossless Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG codec #1 (lossless) Encode/Decode
• FFMPEG dnxhd Encode/Decode
• JPEG photo Encode/Decode
• Motion Jpeg A Encode/Decode
• H.264 (MPEG4 AVC) encoder Encode only
• FFMPEG IMX Decode only

Applications.
The following 3rd party projects are known to have support for libquicktime:

kino/dvgrab : Kino allows you to record, create, edit, and play movies recorded with DV camcorders

gmerlin: Multimedia libraries and application suite

QuickTime Studio: Webcam application can be used as

• a streaming Video4Linux viewer
• a snapshot grabber
• a quicktime movie recorder / player with sound
• a simplistic editor for quicktime files

mjpeg tools: The mjpeg programs are a set of tools that can do recording of videos and playback, simple cut-and-paste editing and the MPEG compression of audio and video under Linux.

transcode: Linux Video Stream Processing Tool (use the --with-qt configure option)

nvrec: High quality video capture for Linux

gridflow: A Multidimensional dataflow processing library for PureData and Ruby, designed for interactive multimedia

Open Movie Editor
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