With the latest seed of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Apple has made dramatic changes to QuickTime Player in both interface and features. Changes to the interface has gotten the most attention with a description posted by AppleInsider. The new QuickTime X playback window appears to be minimalistic with all user-interface pieces fading away, leaving just the video displayed:
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.
While AppleInsider posts "mock ups" of the interface, Swedish site Feber.se appears to have posted a believable screenshot of the new player.
Apple's additional changes to QuickTime Player to "focus on playback" raise the possibility of the return of QuickTime Pro as a separate application. In previous seeds, it had been noted that QuickTime Pro features had been enabled by default in QuickTime Player. With this latest revamp, however, many of the "Pro" encoding features seem to be in transition, and introducing a the more simplistic "ability to export video clips in a variety of sizes to your iTunes library .... or publish them through a MobileMe account".
