QuickTime Tutorials
By Gary Ferrington
QuickTime is a file format used for the delivery of audio, video, animation, text, graphics and even 360 degree panoramas over the Internet. It is a cross-platform product that can be used on both PC and Macintosh computers. The principle advantage of QuickTime is the ability to efficiently compress sound and video for use on web pages.
The following is a set of links to various QuickTime Tutorials. They range from a basic introduction to implementing more comprehensive applications. See the June 15, 2003 Proscenia Newsletter discussion section for an extensive overview of QuickTime Virtual Reality (VR).
Comprehensive:
Apple Computer Quicktime Tutorials. The mother of QuickTime sites provides a set of comprehensive tutorials that let you harness this application's power. The site is divided into three sections — basic, interactive and delivery.
QuickTime Tutorial This Case Western Reserve University site covers: Basic Commands • Basic Movie Editing • Separating Audio and Video Tracks • Merging Audio and Video Tracks • Adding Text Tracks and Still Images. The site is well designed and informative.
cbtcafe: Computer Based Training.This is an informative site with five well written tutorials including: Picture In Picture Effect that informs you on how to insert a smaller movie into the main, larger movie. Hiding Your Movies provides instruction on how to have sound only. Slide Show helps you create slide shows of still images in QuickTime. Display your QT Movie Controller Correctly - facilitates the correct display of your Quicktime controller on an HTML page. And, Disabling "Save As Movie" helps you protect your online movies by disabling the "Save As Movie" feature.
QuickTime Developer This is Apple's developer technical support section. The site includes tutorials on: Asynchronous Movie, Fast-Start Progressive Downloads,Streaming Components, Graphic Importer / Exporter Components, Movie Data Exchange Components, The Sequence Grabber, Video Output Components, QuickTime Atom, Containers,Sprites, Effects, Cross Platform Development, Developer Resources,Sample Code and other topics.
Interactive:
Article: Interactive Presentations with QuickTime by Kevin Fraser with Web Monkey. "With a little preparation and a dash of creativity, you can create compelling full-screen video presentations that make use of your varied multimedia powers while entertaining your audience, however slow a person's connection to the Internet may be."
Integrating Flash and QuickTime for Dynamic Media Delivery. "Flash and QuickTime can be an incredible combination to visually enhance your streaming video presentation and provide more immediate interaction for your audience." Barb Roeder walks you through the steps of creating some dynamic media of your own.
Wired QuickTime Examples. Proscenia's Ken Loge has provided this informative introduction with examples. "A wired movie is a QuickTime movie that has smarts. It may know how to locate the URL of a web page, or it may be a game or slide show. A wired movie can be almost anything that can be concocted with LiveStage Pro by TotallyHip Software. Working with LiveStage Pro is like talking directly to QuickTime and all of it's components and capabilities, but with a slick user interface and an easy to learn programming language called "QScript," which is integrated into the LiveStage environment."