Snow Leopard's New QuickTime X – Screens

As soon as news broke out that Apple had seeded its developer community with a new Beta build of Snow Leopard, speculation based on the seed notes accompanying the build was spawned.

Besides detailing a few of the Core Text additions to be found in Snow Leopard, AppleInsider also took a close look at Build's 10A286 QuickTime X, which, reportedly, has a revamped interface compared to the existing media player. The source cites a minimalistic UI using controls that fade away after a short period of non-interaction, leaving just the video displayed.

AppleInsider suggests this is a smart move on behalf of the Mac maker, pointing out to the current version of QuickTime “which reserves considerable real estate for sizable, platinum-themed video controls at the base of the each player window.” In contrast, QuickTime X does without the traditional interface controls in favor of video overlay controls, according to the site's sources. A more detailed description of the changes is available below:

The only window-based interface element in the QuickTime X Player is reportedly the title bar, which is reminiscent of the iPhone's semi-transparent black glass interface while also adopting hues from the video frames playing beneath it. However, this too fades away and disappears with the new overlay controls so videos appear to float on the screen with nothing more than a deep shadow surrounding all four sides ... In addition to the standard overlay for controlling playback, the new player is also said to offer overlay controls for trimming, editing, and viewing scenes of a video like in iMovie.



Mockups of the minimal QuickTime X Player window interface and "trim" tools overlay (picture 2)


While the site has made attempts to provide mockups of the changes mentioned with QuickTime X, Sweden-based Feber.se has posted what appears to be the real thing. A screenshot of the alleged new QuickTime interface is available below.



Alleged (genuine) screenshot of Snow Leopard's QuickTime X in action


Apple will (allegedly) include QuickTime Pro features with QuickTime X free of charge. However, “with this latest revamp ... many of the 'Pro' encoding features seem to be in transition,” AppleInsider signals. Apple has described QuickTime X as a new version of the media player included with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, mentioning optimized support for modern audio and video formats as high points of the sofware.