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By Barb Roeder Apple's QuickTime (QT) architecture has been the backbone of countless multimedia projects and is the underlying architecture for many media authoring tools. As a streaming media provider, delivering QT can land you some really interesting projects. And as a video producer or Web designer, your creativity will be sparked by the rich features of this streaming media format. Need a business plan? How about interactive, hyperlinked video streams for a product catalog? If your business is streaming media, you need to take a look at what QT can do for you. In order to get started authoring in QT, you will need the professional version of the player, available for $29.95 on Apple's site store. In this article, we'll focus on powerful features that can be implemented easily using basic QT tools found in the player. At the end of the article, you'll find references to more advanced QT applications and links to some really cool content created using these QT features. QT is unique in that you can combine elements for true streaming and progressive download in one file. In the next few sections, we'll discuss several key features of QT and how they can best be applied to progressive download or true streaming media. Building Text and URLs into QT Movies One of the most under-utilized components of QT is the text track, but usage of this feature will gain momentum as Web developers realize its benefits. You can set up a long movie with Chapter points, a useful technique for organizing a distance-learning course. You can also put a URL in the text track, hide it and then have a separate frame pop-up with more information based on the content of your movie. Once you see how easy it is to build text tracks into your movies, your creativity will open up new ways to add interactivity and interest to your streaming media. Creating a Basic Text Track Movie 1. Using SimpleText on the Mac, or Wordpad on Windows, create a list of text descriptions for the interactive points in your movie. Items need to be separated by a carriage return. 2. Import that text file into your QT Pro player application using the File menu command. QT will bring up an Open dialog box, and when you hit the Convert button, it will be replaced by a Save converted file as, dialog box. 3. If you click on the Options button, you can set the formatting options for your text in the text description dialog box as shown in Figure 1. These can also be modified later. Formatting Tip 1: Anti-aliased text generally looks better, but takes up CPU cycles when played. On the other hand, anti-aliased text scales better, so if you think your viewers will be enlarging the movie window, you'll want to check this option as well as the Auto-Scale feature. Formatting Tip 2: If you are looking for a basic titling feature, you might want to select the Drop Shadow effect and/or the Keyed Text checkbox. Keyed text will be displayed with a transparent background, so it can be overlayed with your video image. 4. When you enter a file name in the Convert dialog and hit OK, QT creates the Text Movie from your text file, with each line of text in a separate, two-second movie segment. 5. Using the Export command under the File pull-down, you will create a text descriptor file for your text track. Select the Text to Text options in the Export pull-down at the bottom of the Export dialog. Then, when you click on the Options button, the Text Export Setting dialog comes up as shown in Figure 2. Here you need to select the Show Text, Descriptors and Time radio button and choose how you want the time stamps to be interpreted. Choose 30 in the "Show fractions of seconds as:" pull-down so it's easier to translate the time code of the movie into the time stamps for the text track. 6. Click OK, choose a name for your text descriptor file and save this new text file for editing. Figure 3 shows the text movie and its associated text descriptor file.
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