Kurt Shintaku's Blog

First of all, no corporate customer I know should actively encourage the usage of Quicktime.  Wow.  That’s a pretty bold statement isn’t it?  I mean, what’s wrong with Quicktime?  What’s wrong with installing just one more client application?  It’s just a media player right?  WRONG.

HUH?  WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?
Quicktime like any application is prone to vulnerabilities however there’s no integration between Quicktime and any standard patching system like Microsoft Update or Systems Management Server.  Being that Quicktime is so rarely used for business purposes (it’s primarily used these days for movie trailers and miscellaneous entertainment videos) is that something that any IT department really wants to have to patch on an ongoing basis?

LOTS OF PATCHES
This isn’t a small number of patches folks.  For those of you thinking that it’s "not that big a deal", you should check out the list of patches that have been released over the past year or so.  For example, just this September 13th, 2006, Apple released a major set of vulnerability updates for Quicktime 7.x.  For a listing of all patches, check this link out:  http://secunia.com/product/5090/?task=advisories

WHAT TO DO?  CONVERT IT!
Simple.  If anyone needs to see a Quicktime video, CONVERT IT.  Convert it to MPEG or Windows Media.  This is an easy process if you know how.  For a cheap and reliable method of converting Quicktime videos to a more managable, readable format, grab the program "MPEG4 DirectMaker" from Artech365.  http://artech365.com/mpeg4maker/index.htm

It will require that you yourself install QuickTime 7 (you won’t need to buy it) and possibly some other free tools.  Check this page for a list of tools that you might want to install.  Note that MPEG4 DirectMaker will convert more than just Quicktime videos to Windows Media format – it will also convert DiVX videos, Real Media (.rm), 3GP camera phone video files,  MPEG1 files, and other formats.
http://artech365.com/mpeg4maker/down.htm

WHAT TO DO?  USE QUICKTIME ALTERNATIVE
If you’re a consumer, you might consider using Quicktime Alternative which is a small Quicktime viewer that runs within Windows Media Player.  It’s a pretty good solution for folks that just want to run something small to see a single video in .MOV format.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alternative.htm