What should I use - QuickTime Source or MP4 & QuickTime Splitter?

The MP4 & QuickTime Splitter and QuickTime Source are completely different products.

QuickTime Source is an interface to Apple's QuickTime runtime. With this tool you can play everything the original QuickTime Player can play on a Windows PC. Since the actual decoding is handled by QuickTime, the QT Source requires that Apple's QuickTime Player is installed on the user's PC.

Benefits:

• Supports any .MOV, that can be played by the original QuickTime Player.

Downsides:

• Requires Apple's runtime (QuickTime Player).
• Technically, if a file can't be played back by QuickTime Player, there's no way we can fix it.

MP4 & QuickTime Splitter is an MPEG-4 Part 14 standard-compliant splitter. It splitts the content into audio & video streams and handles them over to the downstream decoders. For more information about the container please see here. .MOV and MPEG-4 have a lot in common, and most of .MOV content will be properly processed by this Splitter.

Benefits:

• Is independent from third-party components. Does require decoders, but most of them can be licensed royalty-free from AVObjects (such as the H.264/AVC Decoder and Audio Decoder).

Downsides:

• May have issues playing back some .MOV content (such as Apple ProRes).