MoviePlayer is a utility & demonstration application for QuickTime. It displays many of QuickTime's capabilities as a container for mixed media. Use MoviePlayer (with extra plug-ins in the same folder) for access to movie data and movie & sound translation features.

This page just hints of QuickTime's capabilities. Apple's QuickTime plug-in for Netscape Navigator lets you embed linkable QuickTime movies and QuickTime VR Panoramas and Objects directly into web pages. Here is the complete documentation for Movie Player 3 for
Macintosh or Windows; and information of all manner of authoring instructions. Information on the QuickTime plug-in for Netscape Navigator 3.x can be found on QuickTime WebMasters' Page. A later iteration of QuickTime, "QuickTime Interactive", will offer scriptable control (Hypercard, Java ?) over QT tracks.

The Little Quicktime Page is the best source for QuickTime news and MoviePlayer tutorials (they do the ones for Apple). The QuickTime Gazette, and QT3 site also offer QuickTime news. Terran Interactive's site includes several good pages on tips and codecs. See Digital Video Basics for a condensed overview of DV basics: frame size, rate, compression, etc...

MoviePlayer Basics:

Note: This page refers to MoviePlayer functionality included with QuickTime Pro 3.0. Macintosh users can use MoviePlayer 2.5 (available on application, OS or game CDs) with QT3, which can access the same functionality.

1) Open a movie with MoviePlayer.

2) Play or stop the movie by:
* hitting the spacebar or clicking the vcr play control
* double-clicking the frame starts; clicking the frame stops
* to play backward -- shift double-click the frame, command-click the step back button or command-click left arrow
* advance a frame by clicking on the arrow buttons or the r-l arrow keys
* option-r or l arrow keys skip to the beginning or end of the movie
* control click on the arrow buttons to access speed control -- slow or speed your movie!
* to play every frame -- option click the play button or hold the r-l arrow keys
* shift-drag the sizing box (lower right corner) to constrain to aspect ratio
* command-option-size box steps resize in 25% increments
* use even multiples of the aspect ratio (command-0, etc.) for best performance
* go to file: Present Movie to play the movie against a black background.

3) To control audio:
* click on the speaker icon & drag slider
* shift-click on the speaker icon to access audio "overdrive"
* up & down arrows adjust volume
* option-click on the speaker icon to mute audio
* to set audio level & panning - drag the green bars in the volume control window of the sound layer in the get information dialog.

4) Choose Movie + Get Info to get info on the movie...you'll see 2 pop-ups...on the left is access to movie & video, sound and other tracks...the right popup accesses a variety of info and controls for each track: most important are format (codec), size, length...you can set a color look-up table but for now only MoviePlayer can use it (Director cannot see it!)... Be careful not to change your movie's attributes indiscriminately!

5) For more complete movie information including graphics of each frame size use Premiere's movie analysis & data rate analyzer...Media Cleaner Pro 3 also includes data rate analysis ...MovieAnalyzer, an unsupported QT 1.0 app from Apple, gives the most complete information...

6) Other new features of QT include new codecs including motion-JPEG transcoding, vectors, and support for Photoshop-like graphics modes, new graphics and audio format filters for imports, sprites, text, timecode, 3D support, a new clock component to improve audio/visual sync, & others. There's an an effects architecture with film noise, fire and cloud filters that are available through MoviePlayer export. Stuff for developers can be found on the at Apple and at Quicktime FAQ site. Even if you find the documentation you want, it may be some time until some features are supported in 3rd party applications.

7) You can copy & paste here just like word processing!... copy & paste between MoviePlayer and Photoshop...use shift to select more than one frame...click on arrow buttons on right to advance one frame at a time...

8) You can drag & drop between files & between applications, even into the Get Info box, if the Clipping Extension or Macintosh Drag and Drop is installed.

9) You can extract & delete tracks from the edit menu...This comes in very handy in post-production because it's fast...Remember to save as an indepedent file if you are manipulating or moving the files.

10) If you want to add a sound or video track to your movie hit option before you paste (see menu change from paste to add when you hit option)...option also changes clear to trim, so that everything but the current selection is trimmed away...hitting the shift key changes paste to replace, so that the clipboard contents replace the current selection...

11) Capture audio-CD...just open the audio-CD from MoviePlayer & hit open/convert...use options to select bit-depth, sample rate and time...capture at 16/44.1 for best results (use a sound editor or WaveConvert by Waves to "dither")...if there is noise the recording was probably analog and/or poorly mastered...use Disc-to-Disk to batch capture...

12) Use import or export to open or save in MIDI, AIFF, SND, WAV (Windows), au (mu-law; Sun/Java)...use options in export dialog to access cool space-saving audio compression ...IMA 4:1 decompresses with QT Mac & Windows, and yields decent enough quality to be popular for CD-PLUS; avoid MACE!

13) MIDI enhancements now allow you to import standard MIDI files to the QT Music Architecture (with the QT Musical Instruments extension installed). You can export QTMA files as sound files or standard MIDI files! Get the Quicktime Developer's CD from Apple for utilities to create your own QTMA MIDI instruments.

14) Use import or export to open or save in PICT format. You can also import a number of formats including GIF, JPEG, SGI & Photoshop...

15) Save files as aliases (data references) or as independent files...On QT 2.5 Mac, make a habit of flattening movies (keeping resource, data forks and references together) for cross-platform playback...movies created with QT 3 contain only one fork and don't need to be flattened. To workaround the 2GB file size limit, paste several movies into a MoviePlayer document and save "normally" (as an alias).

16) MoviePlayer can compress files on export (good for conversion between still sequences and movies), but better compression methods can be found in Media Cleaner Pro -- great for suspend rendering feature & batching. Or use Adobe Premiere -- the jack of all trades QT application. Adobe After Effects is the professional's choice because of its power & elegance, but it does not provide detailed information or real-time previews.