Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections
Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections |
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| Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact | |
| Full name | QuickTime Video, Sorenson Codec |
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| Description | QuickTime file format wrapping a Sorenson video bitstream with other data chunks, e.g., audio. |
| Production phase | Used as a final-state format for enduser delivery; may also be used as a middle-state format, e.g., as the video source when producing lower-resolution streaming versions. |
| Relationship to other formats | |
| Subtype of | QuickTime, QuickTime File Format |
| Contains | Sorenson_3, Sorenson Video Codec, Version 3 |
| May contain | Audio streams not documented at this time |
| LC experience or existing holdings | See QuickTime |
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| LC preference | See QuickTime |
| Disclosure | See QuickTime and Sorenson_3 |
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| Documentation | See QuickTime and Sorenson_3 |
| Adoption | Appears to be widely adopted for video filemaking. |
| Licensing and patents | See QuickTime and Sorenson_3 |
| Transparency | See Sorenson_3 |
| Self-documentation | See QuickTime |
| External dependencies | See QuickTime |
| Technical protection considerations | See QuickTime |
| Moving Image | |
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| Normal rendering | Good support. |
| Clarity (high image resolution) | Moderate, given that this is a format typically used for compression and does not support interlaced video. Outcome will depend on the type and extent of compression, and the encoder used. Several commentators state that the quality of QTV_Sorenson surpasses that of QTV_AppleVideo and QTV_Cinepak, at the same bitrate. At higher bitrates, QTV_MJPEG is likely to provide the highest quality of the QuickTime codecs described at this web site. |
| Functionality beyond normal rendering | See QuickTime. |
| Tag | Value | Note |
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| Filename extension | mov |
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| Internet Media Type | See related format. | See QuickTime |
| Magic numbers | See related format. | See QuickTime |
| Apple Video Sample Description | svqi |
Four-character code identifying the Sorenson video codec, from QuickTime File Format, p. 92 or p.96.1 |
| General | |
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| History |
1There seem to have been at least two printings of the specification carrying the same date. These were not systematically compared by the compiler of this Web page. Pagination varies between these two printings.
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