In This Chapter
QuickTime is a set of exciting technologies that gives you access to the greatest multimedia experience around. Despite its power, don't be surprised if you don't even realize that you're using it sometimes. Built with the average Joe in mind, QuickTime Player takes multimedia to new heights without forcing its users to become rocket scientists in the process.
QuickTime was created by Apple to perform all sorts of multimedia functions. Although normally associated with movie playback, QuickTime Player can do much more. Whether it's playing movies, audio, animation, or music, QuickTime acts as the main engine that drives all your multimedia needs.
Media player: QuickTime Player's main claim to fame is playing all sorts of media — and I do mean all sorts. Table 8-1 lists the most popular of the media types that QuickTime can play.
Internet media tool: When it comes to using media from the Internet, QuickTime is in a league all its own. In addition to playing the usual movies and audio files found on the World Wide Web, QuickTime can play (or display) 3-D scenes and animations. As if that weren't enough, QuickTime even lets you interact with some media. For example, with QuickTime, you can navigate within 3-D worlds or play Flash games.
Table 8.1. QuickTime Playback Formats
Media Type
File Types
Movie
.mov[a],.avi[a],.mpg, .dv, .mp4, 3g(cell phones),h.263, h.264Audio
.aiff, .wav, .mp3, .au, .sfil, .aac, .amrMusic
.mid, .kar3-D
QTVR(QuickTime Virtual Reality)Animation
.swf[a] Movies in MOV and AVI formats use a wide range of compression schemes, many of them proprietary. For this reason, QuickTime might not be able to play some MOV or AVI movies that you download.
QuickTime makes a world of movies, audio, graphics, and music instantly available to you. Whether you want to view professional movie trailers or listen to a garage band's new single, QuickTime faithfully reproduces nearly any media format that you feed it.
To launch QuickTime Player, double-click its icon in the Finder. You can also launch QuickTime Player from the Finder by double-clicking a media file that QuickTime can play. (See Table 8-1 earlier in this chapter for a listing of these file types.)
Note
Don't make the mistake of thinking that QuickTime and QuickTime Player are the same thing: QuickTime is a technology that hides in the background waiting for instructions to do something with media; QuickTime Player is an application that uses the QuickTime technologies. You'll do recording, media conversions, playback, and editing with QuickTime Player. What you won't see is the QuickTime technology in action behind the scenes in applications such as Safari and iTunes.
Tip
You can also launch QuickTime Player from its oh-so-convenient Dock icon. For more on the Dock, read Book III, Chapter 2.
To begin viewing and hearing — aw, what the heck, how about absorbing — multimedia files, choose File
Drag a file to the QuickTime Player icon in the Dock.
Right-click (or Control-click) a movie and choose Open With; then choose QuickTime Player from the pop-up menu.
Double-click the media file in the Finder. If it has a QuickTime-style icon (a blue letter Q), it opens automatically in QuickTime Player.
When you open a QuickTime file, QuickTime Player creates a new window to display it. All QuickTime Player windows share some common features:
Close, Minimize, and Zoom controls: These three controls appear at the top-left corner of most windows in Mac OS X. You probably recognize them by their colors: red, yellow, and green, respectively.
Resize handle: Drag the lower-right corner of QuickTime Player to resize its movie for playback. Hold Shift while dragging to break free from constrained resizing. If the document contains only sound media, the window grows or shrinks in a horizontal direction when you resize it.
Tip
Any resizing that you perform makes no changes to the original file. QuickTime provides it for your convenience during playback.
Although some window features are common to all QuickTime Player windows, many features depend on the type of media that you wish to play. Table 8-2 lists some of the window features that you might find and the media types associated with those features.
Table 8.2. QuickTime Player Window Features Based on Media
Window Feature | Media Type That Uses This Feature |
|---|---|
Play button | All time-based media: movies, audio, animations, and MIDI |
Rewind button | All time-based media: movies, audio, animations, and MIDI |
Fast Forward | All time-based media: movies, audio, animations, and MIDI |
Timeline | All time-based media: movies, audio, animations, and MIDI |
Volume slider | All media with one or more audio tracks |
Add to iTunes/Share | All media with audio or video |
Toggle Full Screen | All movies and animations |
Zoom buttons | QTVR 3-D media |
Rotate buttons | QTVR 3-D media |
Mute | All media with one or more audio tracks |
To make your life easier, QuickTime does a lot of work for you behind the scenes each time that it opens a media file. Although you might think that there are different combinations of controls in QuickTime Player, the reality is that the various media windows are more similar than they are different. Figure 8-1 shows the location of various QuickTime Player controls.
Playback begins as you might suspect — by clicking the Play button. While a file is playing, the Play button toggles to a Pause button. Click that button to pause playback, which toggles the button back to Play.
Clicking the buttons with double arrows on them advances the playback head at high speed in the direction of the arrows. (Click once to advance at 2x speed; click again to increase the speed.). If the file has audio in it, you hear the playback at high speed, which sounds like an episode of those helium-inhaling Chipmunks. (Remember? Meee, I waaant a hooola hooop.) Despite its comical sound, it's helpful for quickly scanning through a file.
Tip
You can also advance through the file by dragging the playback head in either direction. This action is permissible while the file is playing or when it's stopped. When you drag the playback head, however, you miss out on the high-speed sound and video that you would get if you used the buttons.
To adjust the volume of a movie, simply move the volume slider left or right. To mute the volume, click the speaker icon to the left of the volume slider.
You can control playback by using the keyboard as well. Table 8-3 summarizes the keyboard shortcuts for playback.
Table 8.3. Common Playback Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard Shortcut | What It Does |
|---|---|
Spacebar | Starts or stops the player |
Left/right arrow | Advances the playback head (either one frame at a time or in slow motion) |
Option+Up/down arrow | Sets the volume to Maximum and Minimum, respectively |
Up/down arrow | Increases/decreases the volume of the current movie |
Sometimes you might want to play a piece of media more than once. In these situations, you need to loop the playback. To force a movie to loop, choose View
To see more information about the files that you're playing, ask the expert: QuickTime Player. To view basic information about a movie, choose Window
Source: Location of the file
Format: Compressor and dimensions of the file
FPS: Preferred rate of playback in frames per second (fps), shown only for video
Playing FPS: Actual rate of playback in fps (available during playback only), shown only for video
Data Size: Size of the file
Data Rate: Preferred rate of playback (in bytes per second)
Current Time: Position of the playback head (in units of time)
Current Size: Actual movie dimensions (if you've resized the movie since opening the file)
These bits and pieces of information are read-only — you can't change them from the Movie Inspector window.
Tip
If you'd like to share a multimedia file with others from your MobileMe home page on the Web, choose File