Media formats supported by QuickTime Player in Mac OS X v10.6

  • Last Modified: August 27, 2009
  • Article: HT3775

Summary

QuickTime Player in Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard is the default application for media playback on your Mac not handled by iTunes; it will attempt to open files with file extensions associated with audio or video formats.

Products Affected

QuickTime 7 (OS X), QuickTime X

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QuickTime Player can play media in the below file formats.

Video File Formats

  • QuickTime Movie (.mov)
  • MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4v)
  • MPEG-1
  • 3GPP
  • 3GPP2
  • AVI
  • DV

Audio File Formats

  • iTunes Audio (.m4a, .m4b, .m4p)
  • MP3
  • Core Audio (.caf)
  • AIFF
  • AU
  • SD2
  • WAV
  • SND
  • AMR  

The QuickTime Movie format supports audio or video tracks encoded using a variety of different codecs. QuickTime can play movies that use using the following codecs:

Video Codecs

  • MPEG-4 (Part 2)
  • H.264
  • H.263
  • H.261
  • Apple ProRes
  • Apple Pixlet
  • Animation
  • Cinepak
  • Component Video
  • DV
  • DVC Pro
  • Graphics
  • Motion JPEG
  • Photo JPEG
  • Sorenson Video 2
  • Sorenson Video 3

Audio Codecs

  • AAC (MPEG-4 Audio)
  • HE-AAC
  • Apple Lossless
  • MP3
  • AMR Narrowband
  • MS ADPCM
  • QDesign Music 2
  • Qualcomm PureVoice (QCELP)
  • IMA 4:1
  • MACE 3:1
  • MACE 6:1
  • ALaw 2:1
  • ULaw 2:1
  • 24-Bit Integer
  • 32-Bit Integer
  • 32-Bit Floating Point
  • 64-Bit Floating Point

QuickTime can be expanded to utilize additional media formats other than those listed above by installing additional QuickTime components on your Mac. Click here for more information.

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