Goodbye to Quicktime?

The stock footage industry quickly adopted Quicktime as its delivery standard because it is more universally available on platforms and it provides good results.

However, Adobe's announcement that CS5 will be 64-bit only (no 32-bit version available) on both the PC and Mac platforms raises an interesting question. Especially since Sony is expected to make a similar announcement for Vegas this month.

With Apple not providing a 64-bit version of Quicktime, will its reign over the industry end? Even on the Mac platform, Apple does not provide a 64-bit version of Quicktime, only a 64-bit 'converter' that is limited in which codecs and features are supported.

Existing 64-bit applications such as Cinema 4D, 3D Studio Max, Nuke, Syntheyes, etc... can not export video to the Quicktime format. Nor will Adobe Premiere or After Effects in CS5 or Sony Vegas in the next version.

Will the industry get used to an extra step is their video processing and distribution? Output to an intermediate format and then conversion to Quicktime for final delivery...?

Will clients and stock footage sites start allowing other formats such as MP4 (which is independent of Apple) or WMV which is supported on both the PC and Mac platforms at 64-bit?

Will Apple wake up and realize they will lose their kingly status and release a 64-bit version of Quicktime?

I think it might the right time to start accepting raw formats such as .m2t Heck even Windows 7 sees that as a native codec now in media player. I have never been a real fan of quicktime. AVI - what happened? In any case, the camera mfg's are driving this point now more than ever. Perhaps Quicktime will become the "beta" and everything else the "VHS". :)

One problem is finding an AVCHD encoder. If I only use 15 seconds of a 30 second clip, I have to re-encode it into something.

And P5 at least supports AVCHD encoding encapsulated in a .MOV container (I've tested it). But the problem is having to encode it into the .MOV container once these 64-bit apps are released.

What stops Apple to put on the market the 64 bit version same time with CS5? And what is the problem of using a 32 bit app in a 64 environment? Am I missing something?

Apple can certainly release a 64-bit version of Quicktime and that would be the best solution for all. But so far they have stated they have no plans to release a 64-bit version of Quicktime any time soon.

And yes, the 32-bit version of Quicktime works great in 64-bit Windows and 64-bit OS X. But if you are running a 64-bit application such as AE CS5, Premiere CS5 and 64-bit Sony Vegas they will not be able to NATIVELY output quicktime .MOV files. Which means you have to render your clips to an intermediate codec (MPG, MP4 or AVI) and then run a second step of converting that to .MOV using a 32-bit app. Essentially adding an extra step in your current workflow (if you choose to switch to a 64-bit editor).

Adobe has a problem with Quicktime for quite a long.... time :). CS4 was unable to export Quicktime containers for almost a year.