You can view QuickTime movies in various contexts, such as from your hard drive, CD-ROMs, the Web, using QuickTime TV, and so on. Although the appearance of the QuickTime Player controls varies a bit between these contexts, the viewing controls work similarly. NOTE You can watch QuickTime movies without upgrading to the Pro version. However, if you don't upgrade, you will see a dialog box urging you to upgrade the first time you open QuickTime Player each day. You can choose to upgrade later, or you can use this dialog box to upgrade immediately. Not having to see this dialog box might be one of the best reasons to upgrade! Setting QuickTime Player PreferencesQuickTime Player is the basic application you use to view and edit QuickTime movies. There are some preferences you might want to set by choosing QuickTime Player, Preferences, Player Preferences. The options in the resulting Player Preferences dialog box are as shown here:
Watching QuickTime Movies from Your Hard Drive or CD-ROMIf you use a VCR, CD, or DVD player, you won't have any trouble using the basic QuickTime Player controls (see Figure 17.3). Find a QuickTime movie that is on your hard drive or a CD-ROM and open it. Figure 17.3. The QuickTime Player window provides the basic controls you use to watch and edit QuickTime movies; it has many more commands you can access on the menus or by keyboard shortcuts.TIP QuickTime movie files use the extension .mov. If you don't know where a QuickTime movie is, use the Finder to search for files with this extension. To use the Finder to search for files, see "Finding Files and Folders on Your Mac," p. 93. NOTE If the Hot Pick option is enabled, when you open the QuickTime Player, it will search for the current "hot pick" movie and display that movie (or a few frames of the movie) in the window. Usually, you can click on the image to move to the Web to view the movie in its entirety. If the hot pick movies annoy you, disable them using the QuickTime Player preferences setting. A QuickTime Player window will appear and the movie will be displayed (see Figure 17.3). Most of the controls in the QuickTime Player window are easily understood. For example, the Review button plays the movie in reverse, the Preview button plays the movie in fast forward mode, and so on. However, you need to become familiar with the less obvious parts of the QuickTime Player window, especially if you have never worked with digital video before. The current frame is shown in the viewing window (if you haven't played the movie, it is the first frame in the movie). Just below the viewing window, you will see the movie's Timeline bar (also known as the Scrubber bar). This represents the total length of the movie. The location of the Playhead shows where in the movie the current frame is located. As you play a movie, the Playhead moves to the right in the Timeline bar so that it always shows the location of the frame being shown in the viewing window. At the left edge of the Timeline bar, you see the timecode. The timecode represents the location of the Playhead in the following format: Minutes:Seconds:FrameNumber. For example, if you see 2:34:10, the Playhead is located on the 10th frame of the 34th second of the second minute of the movie. The crop markers are used to select parts of a movie when you are editing it. The start (or left) crop marker shows the start of a selection, and the stop (or right) crop marker shows the end of the selection. The shaded area between the crop markers shows the frames that have been selected. Control the size of the movie using the commands on the Movie menu. Increasing the size of a movie beyond the size at which it was created will sometimes decrease its image quality and frame rate. With some movies, this is hardly noticeable; with others, increasing the size can make the movie unwatchable. You can experiment to see which size is the best compromise for a particular movie on your specific system. TIP You can also change the size of the QuickTime Player window using the Resize handle. The window will remain in proportion to the size in which the movie was created. If you hold down the Shift key, you can resize the window any way you want (with sometimes amusing effects on the movie itself). You can quickly return a movie to its default size by choosing Movie, Normal Size or by pressing +1. Click the Play button to view the movie and use the Volume slider to adjust its sound level. TIP To mute a movie, click the speaker icon at the left edge of the Volume slider. QuickTime Player offers many keyboard shortcuts; to learn what shortcuts are available, see "Using QuickTime Player Keyboard Shortcuts," p. 530. You can get more control over the sound using the Sound controls; display them by choosing Movie, Show Sound Controls. The Timeline bar will be replaced by sliders for balance, bass, and treble. Use the sliders to make the changes you want. Choose Movie, Hide Sound Commands to return to the Timeline bar view. Similarly, you can control the brightness of the movie using the Video controls; choose Movie, Show Video Controls to display the Brightness bar. Click and drag the Brightness bar to the right to make the movie brighter or to the left to make it less bright; choose Movie, Hide Video Controls when you are done. NOTE When you minimize a movie, it moves onto the Dock and continues to play. That's about all there is to viewing movies. However, you can fine-tune your movie experience using some of the other playback commands listed in Table 17.2.
TIP If you use multiple monitors and choose the Full Screen option, you can select the monitor on which the movie plays in the Full Screen dialog box. NOTE QuickTime movies can also be inserted into many types of documents, such as Word files, PowerPoint presentations, and so on. When you view such a file, you will see a "mini" QuickTime controller that enables you to watch the movie that is embedded in a particular document. Applications can add or remove controls to customize the interface you see in that application, but when you understand how to view movies with the QuickTime Player, you won't have any trouble with these other controllers. Watching QuickTime Movies on the WebQuickTime is a major format for movies on the Web. Using the QuickTime plug-in, you can watch QuickTime movies from within a Web browser, such as Internet Explorer. When you do so, you use controls that are quite similar to those in the QuickTime Player application. One of the best places to view QuickTime movies is at Apple's Movie Trailer site. Here, you can view trailers for the latest creations from Hollywood. CAUTION If you use a slow Internet connection, watching movies, such as the movie trailers on the Apple Web site, can be an exercise in patience. High-quality movie files are big. Watching them on the Web, even with the streaming feature and the MPEG-4 format, can take more time than it is worth. If you use a dial-up account, try watching some movies to see whether you can tolerate the length of time that it takes to download enough of the movie so that you can begin watching it. If you can, great. If not, you might have to find smaller movies to watch or, even better, move up to a high-bandwidth connection. You can also use the Instant-On preference to configure the delay before a movie begins to play.
If you have upgraded to QuickTime Pro and click the QuickTime controls button, you will see a pop-up menu with some or all of the following commands on it:
NOTE If you aren't using QuickTime Pro, you will see only a subset of these commands. For example, you won't be able to save a QuickTime movie to your local disk. And, depending on the content you are viewing, some of the commands might be disabled. Exploring a QuickTime VR MovieQuickTime Virtual Reality (VR) enables you to interact with movies that simulate panoramic, virtual worlds. You can move around within a movie, and you can even closely examine objects within that movie. QuickTime VR is widely used on the Web so that you can examine products, museums, and other interesting things. If you have never used it before, you may not have any QuickTime VR files on your Mac. If you don't, go to www.apple.com/quicktime/hotpicks/ and look in the News & Entertainment area. There will no doubt be some VR movies for you to view. Find the movie you want to explore and click it. You won't see the usual QuickTime controls. Instead, you will see special cursors that indicate what you can do with the movie. The standard cursor is a small circle with a dot in the center. When you see this, you know that you are looking at a QuickTime VR movie. To move around the image, simply hold down the mouse button and drag (the cursor will show an arrow to indicate which way you are moving). The image will move accordingly, and you can explore to your heart's content. NOTE
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