OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Using iTunes for TV Shows and Movies

iTunes plays much more than audio. It can display video as well, such as TV shows and movies in the MPEG-4 format that you download to your Mac or create on it using tools such as Apple's iMovie. The process for managing and watching video in iTunes is very much like that for music files, as covered earlier in this chapter.

Setting video preferences

There's very little in the way of preferences that you need to set for playing back video. In the Preferences dialog box's Playback pane (refer to Figure 15.1), you can control video playback:

• Use the Audio Language pop-up menu to choose the default language for your videos. Note that this option has an effect only if the videos support multiple language audio tracks and if the video has the audio track in the language chosen here. (If it does not, iTunes plays the audio in the language that matches OS X's default language, as set in the Language & Text system preference covered in Chapter 27.)

• Use the Subtitle Language pop-up menu to choose the default language for the subtitles in your videos (typically available in foreign-language videos). As with the Audio Language pop-up menu, iTunes uses OS X's default language if the video's subtitles are not available in the language chosen here.

• Use the Preferred Video Version pop-up menu to set the resolution for video playback. The three options are Standard Definition, High Definition (720p), and High Definition (1080p). If a video is available ...