Rumor: Snow Leopard to include QuickTime Pro

I really hope they do drop the Pro fee. Currently, I just use VLC as it's more powerful and will always be totally free. I really only use Quicktime if VLC won't play a file for some odd reason (rare). If I need to convert a video, I'll use Handbrake which now converts between video formats in addition to DVD ripping. When I've tried video editing, I've used iMovie.

It's not that Quicktime is bad; I just don't like dealing with codecs (I installed Perian for Quick Look) and find the interface to be lacking, especially in terms of settings for fixing movies encoded in the wrong aspect ratio or with letterboxing. Plus, I like how the windows can float on top and only add a slim margin to the video, unlike Quicktime's huge buttons that I almost never use (keyboard just feels more appropriate).

I hear that the new Quicktime will use GPU decoding, so that's appealing, but I've heard VLC could just as easily get OpenCL/CUDA decoders once the open source community writes the right libraries.

Are there any other major draws for a person like me, a guy who occasionally rips a DVD and mostly just watches AVIs and MKVs from the internet?

Yeah, but swatting flies with a Buick is better than not driving a Buick at all, so I think your analogy needs some work.

And then they're going to give back the FireWire port? I'm not holding my breath.

The reason this may be true is that the registration dialog has been completely removed from the QT pref pane. There would be no point in removing this if they intended to ship it as a limited version.

They may be eradicating a revenue stream but if it helps increase the proliferation of QT content out there (how many Windows users are going to pay for Pro?) they will make far more than they lose.

P.S. Fullscreen playback has been present in the free version for ages.

This may be partially correct but the more interesting part has yet to be revealed. Snow Leopard is supposed to be come with / be concurrent with QuickTime X. Looks like it won't be your daddy's QuickTime.

So they drop the export tax? Good move but there's more. Stay tuned.

i paid for QT Pro when I bought my MacBook Pro and never though about it again.

I've never had a developer version of OS X - is this the first time the QT Pro features have been unlocked in a distribution? I assume it is or else there wouldn't be much else to base this rumor on....

Man, I bought QTPro years ago. It was only $30. Great investment to. Sometimes people are just too cheap.

A simple addition of the "rotate" option would suffice. In the meantime I will continue to support the shareware community.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/21859/transformmovie

Good on them! I always thought that having locked down options in a core OS component was rather, well, tacky!

Something I would expect to see in a MS operating system....