Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Lion Edition

QuickTime Player

QuickTime is Apple’s preferred video file format (like WMV files on Windows). 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.

The cornerstone of Mac OS X’s built-in movie-playback software is QuickTime Player, which sits in your Applications folder. Despite the name, QuickTime Player lets you edit videos as well. You can chop them up, rearrange the chunks, tack on new movies, and trim the ends. In fact, you can even record new video, either using your Mac’s built-in camera or by recording screen activity. Finally, when everything looks good, you can post your masterpiece to YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, or another online site.

You can open a movie file by double-clicking it. When QuickTime Player first opens, you get a very cool, borderless playback window. Just hit the space bar to play the movie.

There’s a control toolbar at the bottom of the window (Figure 16-20), but it fades away after a few seconds—or immediately, if you move the cursor out of the frame. The toolbar reappears anytime your mouse moves back into the movie frame. These are the controls:

• Rotate or flip. The Edit menu contains commands for Rotate Right, Rotate Left, Flip Horizontal, and Flip Vertical. Those commands can be handy when a movie turns out to be flipped or rotated—or when you want to flip or rotate it for creative purposes.

• Volume slider (...). Click in the slider, or drag ...