Does Apple use MP4 or MOV?
What Is QuickTime File Format (MOV)?The QuickTime File Format (QTFF) is an Apple-designed video format that stores audio and video content for playback. Its video files use the file extension .MOV. QuickTime File Format formed the basis for the MPEG-4 format, and is technically very similar to it. However, MPEG-4 is much more widely supported by platforms and devices. Show
QuickTime File Format is a suitable format for exchanging digital media content between operating systems, devices, and applications—it works with most media types and can describe most structures. It is an object-oriented file format comprising a flexible set of objects, making it easy to parse and expand. The format is forward compatible—devices can skip or ignore unknown objects while introducing new objects. QuickTime provides various high-level media creation and editing functions. It allows creators to manipulate files without having to understand the file format itself. This functionality helps insulate developers from low-level operation details. Related content: Read our guide to MP4 format In this article: What Is the QuickTime Player?QuickTime is a video player developed by Apple that is bundled with macOS. Naturally, it supports the QuickTime File Format, as well as several other media formats:
Given the above list, it is clear that the QuickTime Player only supports a limited set of file formats. Users wanting to view video or audio files in other popular formats like WMV, FLV, AVI, MKV, and Blu-ray must convert them to a supported format. QuickTime users may want to install a media converter to view unsupported files. Please note – while QuickTime Player can play MP4, most video players that support MP4 do not support the QuickTime File Format. QuickTime File Extension StructureThe QuickTime File Format can hold various data types to support digital multimedia. QTFF can describe any media structure, making it well-suited to digital media exchanges. QuickTime has two structures for storing videos on a disk—atoms and QT atoms. Here is an example of an atom’s layout. Every atom includes information about itself (type and size) in addition to the video data.  Image Source: Apple Leaf atoms contain sets of data fields accessed by offsets. Atoms are the basic building blocks of QuickTime files—all atoms have two important fields before all other fields. The first is the Size field, describing the atom’s size. The second is the Type field indicating the type of data contained in the atom. An atom consists of a header and a data component. The header includes the type and size information, while the data component stores the actual data. Here are the details of each atom field and type:
Atoms are inherently hierarchical—one atom can hold multiple other atoms, and each sub-atom can also contain other atoms. The QuickTime format describes the properties of a QuickTime movie file. QuickTime movie files contain movie resources or point to one or multiple external sources with movie references. The movie uses media samples like a set of frames or audio data—these samples can be within a movie file or external, contained in another file or stream. A file type atom defines the file’s compatibility with the media reader—it indicates if the file is readable to the media player. This atom determines file type specifications to describe the file’s compatibility, allowing readers to distinguish between similar file types like MPEG-4 and QuickTime movie files. These files can contain file type, movie, and movie data atoms. QuickTime Format: Pros and ConsThe QuickTime format has the following advantages：
QuickTime’s drawbacks include:
How Do You Convert MOV to MP4 Or WebM Format With Cloudinary?Cloudinary can help you automatically convert MOV files to common video formats for faster loading and an enhanced user experience. Cloudinary performs the task automatically in the cloud, in three steps: 1. Convert MOV to MP4s or WebM through
dynamic URLs. The conversion capability is available in all Cloudinary plans, including the free tier. Do check it out. Why does Apple use MOV instead of MP4?The most logical explanation is that some app is creating a mov file that contains several different versions of the video for faster export to a variety of different formats. Otherwise, you would have to re-encode each time you exported.
Does iPhone use MP4 or MOV?Your iPhone works only with . m4v, . mp4, and . mov file formats for videos.
Is MOV or MP4 better for Mac?MP4 are typically more compressed and smaller in size, while MOV files are often higher in quality and larger in size. MOV files are better for video editing on a Mac, since they're specifically designed for QuickTime.
Does Apple use MOV files?MOV is a video format developed by Apple. It is a type of file container that can hold many different video formats and multimedia. Because Apple created it, it only works with Apple products or video players, like Quicktime. MOV files often contain high bitrate video files with little to no compression.
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