QuickTime 3 Reference
QuickTime 2.0 made the data handler component interface available to developers. Data handlers provide a way to access data stored in any location, in any kind of container. Using a data handler, you can access data on a Macintosh hard disk, stored in memory, or stored on a network volume on a non-HFS volume. Although data handlers allow a movie data to be stored on any kind of device, before QuickTime 2.0, the movie resource had to be stored on an HFS volume. QuickTime 2.1 provided you with a new function, named NewMovieFromDataRef , that allows a movie to be created from any device that has a corresponding data handler. Use the NewMovieFromDataRef function NewMovieFromDataRef when you need to instantiate movies from other types of devices.