iMovie: The Missing Manual

Chapter 17. QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player is a small, free program that comes with every Macintosh (it’s in your Applications folder). While you can use it to play back movies (duh), you can also use it to upload them to video-sharing sites, to record what happens on your Mac desktop as you mouse around, and to video your own antics using the iSight camera.

There are two reasons QuickTime Player is worth knowing about. First, if you save your iMovie projects as files (Chapter 15), you can use QuickTime as the playback program, and, second, the software serves as a mini-iMovie for quick-and-dirty edits.

This chapter covers QuickTime Player version 10.3, the one that comes with any Mac capable of running the newest iMovie.

Note

You may remember an older version of QuickTime called QuickTime Pro. That was a much more sophisticated (and complicated) piece of software, one that Apple stopped updating a few years ago. If you have it and want to put it to good use, previous editions of this book cover it in great detail.

QuickTime Basics

You can open a movie file in QuickTime by double-clicking its file name, by dragging it onto QuickTime’s icon in the Dock, or by opening the QuickTime Player and then choosing File→Open File.

Tip

If your movie file ends in the extension .M4V, then double-clicking its file name might open the movie in iTunes. To open it in QuickTime, drag it onto the Dock icon or choose File→Open File.

Once your movie is open, you see QuickTime’s streamlined, minimalist playback ...