The MIME type video/quicktime is used to denote the presence of a QuickTime file and encoding necessary for it. This MIME type falls within the "video" category. The extensions used by the files are QT and MOV.

Apple Inc. (makers of the Mac OS) developed QuickTime as a multimedia framework that can handle multiple formats of digital video, audio, media clips, animation, sound, interactive panoramic images and music. It is available for the older as well as newer versions of the Mac OS series (system 6, 7, 7.5, Mac OS 8, 9, X, etc.). It is also available for Microsoft Windows.

The QuickTime framework is completely integrated with the Mac OS platform and it provides support for various multimedia playback and preview features within the platform. It comes preinstalled on all Mac OS installations. QuickTime for Windows offers no integration and is available via download or as a part of iTunes for Windows. The QuickTime framework is available for use by other softwares. For example, iTunes uses the QuickTime framework to export audio in multiple formats (AAC, WAVE, Apple Lossless, etc.).

The framework itself allows you to encode and transcode audio and video between multiple formats. It also decodes video and sends the decoded stream to be utilized by a graphics or audio subsystem for playback.