From Gretchen Siegchrist,
Your Guide to Desktop Video.
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Definition:

QuickTime (.mov) is a media container format. It functions as a multimedia container file that contains one or more tracks, each of which store a particular type of data, such as audio, video, effects, or text.

Each track contains track media, either the digitally-encoded media stream (using a specific codec such as Cinepak, Sorenson codec, MP3, JPEG, DivX, or PNG) or a data reference to the media stored in another file or elsewhere on a network. Quicktime is a closed source, propriety format that cannot be manipulated. It is considered suitable for editing.