QuickTime in Live

• Live Versions: All
• Operating System: Mac, Windows 7

Quicktime is used to decode compressed audio and video files, as well as render exported video files on Mac (32/64-bit) and on Windows 7 (32-bit)

Mac

On Mac computers QuickTime is pre-installed and can't be removed or reinstalled. To make sure that QuickTime is up to date, please use the system's software update functionality.

Windows 7

For performance reasons we recommend to install QuickTime on Windows 7 when working with compressed audio files or video in Live 32-bit. In case QuickTime isn't installed, to encode compressed audio files, Live utilizes Microsoft's DirectShow, which is pre-installed on Windows computers.

Note that Quicktime is not available on later versions of Windows because it's not supported on Windows by Apple any longer. New versions of Windows since 2009 have included support for the key media formats, such as H.264 and AAC, that QuickTime 7 enabled.

Decoding audio and video in the 64-bit version of Live

On Windows OS, the 64-bit version of Live does not utilize QuickTime. When using video in the 64-bit version of Live, you'll need to install additional codecs. Please check our dedicated about using Video on 64-bit Live (Win).

Up to and including Live version 10.1.1, Live uses QTKit (Quicktime) on macOS. As part of the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit technology in macOS 10.15 Catalina, Apple has dropped support entirely for QTKit. 

As of Live version 10.1.2, Live now uses AVFoundation for MP3 decoding, video playback and video export. AVFoundation is Apple's recommended replacement framework.

All compressed audio file decoding (eg. MP3, M4A, FLAC etc) now uses AVFoundation instead of QTKit.

MP3 export/encoding uses the LAME MP3 Encoder and is unaffected by this change.

Issues importing compressed audio files

If importing compressed audio files doesn't work on your machine, please take a look into the article about issues importing compressed audio files to Live.