14.1. QuickTime Player (Free Version)The free version of QuickTime Player is designed exclusively to play movies and sounds. You can open a movie file by double-clicking it, by dragging it onto the QuickTime Player icon, or by opening QuickTime Player and then choosing File Open. As shown in Figure 14-1, a number of controls help you govern the movies playback:
Tip: Try minimizing a QuickTime Player window while a movie is playing. It shrinks to the Dockand keeps on playing. Do this enough times, and you'll know what it's like to be Steve Jobs on stage. 14.1.1. Hidden controlsDon't miss the Movie Show Video Controls and Movie Show Sound Controls commands. As shown in Figure 14-2, they let you fine-tune the video and audio youre experiencing. Tip: Clicking the tiny, grayed-out grid to the right of the scrollbar is a quicker alternative to choosing Movie Show Audio Controls. | |||||
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Nobody knows for sure what Apple was thinking when it created some of these additional featuresexactly how often do you want your movie to play backward?but here they are. Some of these features are available only in the unlocked Pro version of QuickTime Player, as indicated below.
Change the screen size. Using the Movie menu commands, such as Double Size and Fill Screen, you can enlarge or reduce the actual "movie screen" window. Making the window larger also makes the movie coarser, because QuickTime Player simply doubles the size of every dot that was present in the original. Still, when you want to show a movie to a group of people more than a few feet away from the screen, these larger sizes are perfectly effective.
Play more than one movie. You can open several movies at once and then run them simultaneously . (Of course, the more movies you try to play at once, the jerkier the playback gets.)
As a sanity preserver, QuickTime Player plays only one soundtrackthat of the movie you most currently clicked. If you really want to hear the cacophony of all the soundtracks being played simultaneously, choose QuickTime Player Preferences, and turn off "Play sound in frontmost player only." (The related checkbox here, "Play sound when application is in background," controls what happens when you switch out of QuickTime Player and into another program.)
Play the movie backward. You can play the movie backwardbut not always smoothlyby pressing -left arrow, or by Shift-double-clicking the movie itself. (You must keep the Shift button pressed to make the backward playback continue.) There's no better way to listen for secret subliminal messages.
Loop the movie. When you choose Movie Loop and then click Play, the movie plays endlessly from beginning to end, repeating until you make it stop. (Loop Back and Forth makes it loop backward again, from end to beginning.)
Play a selection (Pro only). Movie Play Selection Only, of course, plays only what youve highlighted on the scrubber bar.
Play every frame (Pro only). If you try to play a very large movie that incorporates a high frame rate (many frames per second) on a slow Mac, QuickTime Player skips individual frames of the movie. In other words, it sacrifices smooth motion in order to maintain synchronization with the soundtrack.
But if you choose Movie Play All Frames and then play the movie, QuickTime Player says, "OK, forget the soundtrackIll show you every single frame of the movie, even if it isn't at full speed." You get no sound at all, but you do get to see each frame of the movie.