Death of QuickTime for Win - effect on ProRes?

Will the recent us government recommendation to uninstall QT for Windows effectively kill the use of ProRes on the Windows platform? Or is it already a nonissue?

Well, keep in mind this is QuickTime Player 7, which Apple also killed off for the Mac at the same time. And there's no Quicktime X player for Windows. Will Apple release one? No telling. Microsoft has never made the Windows Media codecs available for the Mac. You have to buy Flip4Mac to get them.

The question is not about ProRes, but what will happen to Adobe's products that run on Quicktime? PPro, AE? How does this effect those apps?

I don't think ProRes ever got used much on Windoze PC's anyway. Then again, man I stay away from that part of the universe as much as possible.

Is Bill Gates Microsoft? HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

But a good question, indeed! Thanks for starting this thread, very interesting subject.

the recommendation relates to QT as browser component - and modern browser playback QT without it.

it doesn't touch the QTengine, which Avid or Adobe products are based upon.

'Quicktime' is mishmashed, 'generic' word for
• an old media engine, Apple replaces for years by AVfoundation. ... it's up to Avid/Adobe/Co to replace it on other OS
• a media wrapper, mov, ... modern Windows version playback without QT4W
• a bundle of codecs, most famous proRes (rec format for Arri, Atomos, etc) .... has nothing to do with the warning ...

Here's where my confusion begins—Premiere CC requires QT7 for QuickTime features—or does it not?. Does that mean uninstalling QT7 will disable all use of .mov files in Premiere CC? Or, in another scenario, can one buy a new Mac or Windows machine, never install QT7 and still run Premiere CC just fine with ProRes and other modern fkavors of QuickTime files?

It's already a non-issue. As Karsten says, this is only relevant for outdated websites that still require the legacy QT7 web plugin for video playback. Any website that is remotely up-to-date will not be affected by this:

support.apple.com/en-us/HT205081

It has no influence on using ProRes for editing on Windows machines.

- Ronny

Actually, the government warning is to remove QuickTime, not just the plugin.
www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA16-105A

And that based on the simple fact that unsupported software is no longer updated to ward off new invasive hacks.

Here's the article the warning points to, which uninstalls QT Player, not just the plugin.
support.apple.com/en-us/HT205771

This is interesting, because I was talking to a PP editor the other day, and he wanted to try out Resolve 12, but ended up not doing so, because the installer said that it required QT to run.

The vulnerability issue only affects the QT browser plugin, not QuickTime. Of course, when you remove QuickTime completely, this will also automatically remove the browser plugin.

But you can disable only the browser plugin and still run QuickTime on a Windows system. This is for Explorer:

Open up Internet Explorer, and click on the small gear button located on the top right. A drop down menu will open. Click on 'Manage Add Ons'.

A new window will open up, which will include details of all the plugins and extensions that have been downloaded and are operable with Internet Explorer. Browse through the list until you find the QuickTime Plugin. You can then right-click on it in order to enable or disable it as per your wishes.


- Ronny

Which brings up a kinda OT question - when editing in an environment that uses both macs and PC's - what codec are people using? ProRes seems not to play nice with Windows and Adobe CC as much...

PPro/AE support ProRes, but you have to have it installed on the PC. Thus the need to install QT 7 Player. But I've found most PC users won't install QT Player.

Sending to a PC I sometimes used H.264. I've got Flip4Mac installed so I can import/edit/export WMV files. Never had issues.

It's really an interesting question what's the best/ most used codec for exchange between the OSs
While it's certainly true that most Windows users don't have Quicktime installed I think a lot of the people in post production will have it - may they like it or not.
Between the people I work with exchange is normally done in ProRes or DnxHD.
A friend who is in compositing was mostly sending DPX when he was still on windows. But he is in high end work.

Another thing slightly Off Topic: when I had some problems regarding DnxHD Masters in FCPX I realized that FCPX still uses Quicktime to read several 3rd party codec.
As there is no way of creating 3rd party codecs for AVFoundation - if I am informed correctly - it would be really interesting what apple is planning regarding Quicktime in OSX

QT is used for playback. AVFoundation is the media engine now. Pretty simple.

Adobe describes the situation here: blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/quicktime-on-windows/