Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

DVD Movies

Using DVD Player, newly enhanced in Leopard, your Mac can play Hollywood DVDs as though it was born to do so.

Watching movies on your Mac screen couldn't be simpler: Just insert the DVD. The Mac detects that it's a video DVD (as opposed to, say, one that's just filled with files) and, unless you've fiddled with your preference settings, opens the DVD Player program (Figure 11-9). (It can take awhile.)

If DVD Player doesn't start up automatically when you insert a DVD movie, you can open it yourself. It's sitting there in your Applications folder. (Then fix the problem, using the CDs & DVDs panel of System Preferences.)

Playing a Movie

Once DVD Player starts playing your movie, you can use the "remote control," which is deconstructed in Figure 11-9. Or just use the keyboard controls:

• By far the easiest way to start and stop Playback is to press the Space bar—once to start, again to pause, again to start again.

• Press Shift-⌘-→ to fast-forward; press that combination repeatedly to cycle from twice to 4, 8, 16, or 32 times normal speed. (Or just choose a speed from the Controls→Scan Rate submenu.)

  Similarly, press Shift-⌘-← to scan backwards. Click Play (or press the Space bar) to resume normal playback.

• You can make the movie louder or quieter by repeatedly tapping ⌘-↑, or -↓. That's a good keystroke to remember when you've hidden the remote control itself.

Figure 11-9. Top: DVDs ...