iMovie '11 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Chapter 16. QuickTime Player

If iMovie is the video playback program that’s the master of DV and HD files, its sibling software, the corresponding master of traditional QuickTime movies, is QuickTime Player, a small, free program that comes with every Macintosh (it’s in your Applications folder). QuickTime Player does three things very well: shows pictures, plays movies, and plays sounds. If you have the latest version of the program, QuickTime Player X, you can also trim your movies, upload them to YouTube or MobileMe, and even record what’s on your Mac’s screen (or record yourself using the iSight camera).

If you’re willing to pay $30, you can get QuickTime Player Pro. Doing so grants you a long list of additional features, most notably the ability to export your QuickTime movies into just about any format you want.

There are two reasons QuickTime Player is worth knowing about. First, if you turn your iMovie projects into QuickTime movies (Chapter 15), you’ll probably use QuickTime Player as the playback program on your Mac. Second, the Pro version acts as an accessory toolkit for iMovie, offering you the chance to execute several tricky editing maneuvers that you couldn’t do with iMovie alone.

This chapter covers both versions of the program, using QuickTime Player version 10.0 and QuickTime Pro version 7.6 for illustration purposes.

Note

You read that right. The Pro version of QuickTime is behind the regular player. In fact, Apple has basically said that they’re not planning to continue ...