Originally developed by Apple for their own QuickTime movie player, the QuickTime format is often used in the Apple ecosystem to store videos. The most common file extension is .mov.

Depending on whether QuickTime is used as an audio or video container, Apple speaks of "sound" or "movie" files. 

This format relies heavily on the concept of single tracks. It is possible to store different types of data in each track, from audio or video to text. The individual tracks ("atoms") can contain, move or manipulate further tracks independently of each other. This makes the QucikTime format particularly suitable for later editing of videos, since unlike other formats not all data has to be rewritten into the container.

Advantages:

- widely used formats

- well suited for videoediting

Disadvantages:

- proprietary format

http://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000052.shtml

https://developer.apple.com/standards/classic-quicktime/