QuickTime Movies

A QuickTime movie is a video file you can play from your hard drive, a CD or DVD, or the Internet. Like any movie, it creates the illusion of motion by flashing many individual frames (photos) per second before your eyes, while also playing a synchronized soundtrack.

QuickTime Player

Thousands of Mac OS X programs can open QuickTime movies, play them back, and sometimes even incorporate them into documents: Word, FileMaker, Keynote, PowerPoint, Safari, America Online, and even the Finder (Figure 15-4).

You can play QuickTime movies right in the Finder. In Cover Flow view or column view, click the button, as shown here. The two buttons on the right end are frame-advance buttons.Or just highlight a movie item and press the Space bar to give it a Quick Look look.

Figure 15-4. You can play QuickTime movies right in the Finder. In Cover Flow view or column view, click the button, as shown here. The two buttons on the right end are frame-advance buttons. Or just highlight a movie item and press the Space bar to give it a Quick Look look.

But the cornerstone of Mac OS X's movie-playback software is QuickTime Player, which sits in your Applications folder (and even comes factory-installed in the Dock). It's designed not only to play movies, but also to show pictures, and to play sounds, in all kinds of formats.

Playing movies with QuickTime Player

You can open a movie file by double-clicking it. As shown in Figure 15-5, a number of controls help you govern the movie's playback:

  • Scroll bar. Drag the triangle to jump to a different spot in ...

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