QuickTime Interactivity
“Interaction can be defined as a cyclic process in which two actors alternately listen, think, and speak. ” ––Chris Crawford, computer scientist
This chapter introduces you to some of the key concepts that define QuickTime interactivity. If you are already familiar with QuickTime and its core architecture, you may want to skip this chapter and move on to “Chapter 2, QuickTime Sprites, Sprite Animation and Wired Movies,” which discusses the fundamentals of QuickTime sprites, with conceptual diagrams and illustrations, as well as an introduction to the basics of QuickTime wired movies. However, if you are new to QuickTime or need to refresh your knowledge of QuickTime interactivity, you should read this chapter.
Interactivity is at the core of the user experience with QuickTime. Users see, hear, and control the content and play of QuickTime movies. The process is indeed cyclic––using Crawford’s metaphor––in that the user can become an “actor” responding to the visual and aural content of a QuickTime movie. In so so doing, QuickTime enables content authors and developers to extend the storytelling possibilities of a movie for delivery on the Web, CD-ROM or DVD by making the user an active participant.
From its inception, one of the goals of QuickTime has been to enhance the quality and depth of this user experience by extending the software architecture to support new media types, such as sprites and sprite animation, wired (interactive) movies and virtual reality (QuickTime VR), which makes it possible for viewers to interact with virtual worlds. Interactive movies allow the user to do more than just play and pause a linear presentation, providing a variety of ways to directly manipulate the media.
If your development efforts are focused on programming with QuickTime VR, you should refer to the companion volume to this book, Interactive Movies: QuickTime VR, which is available at
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Quicktime/QuickTime.html |
There are a number of ways in which developers can take advantage of these interactive capabilities in their applications, as explained in this and subsequent chapters.
The chapter is divided into the following major sections:
“QuickTime Basics” discusses key concepts that developers who are new to QuickTime need to understand. These concepts include movies, media data structures, components, image compression, and time.
“The QuickTime Architecture” discusses specific managers that are part of the QuickTime architecture: the Movie Toolbox and the Image Compression Manager. QuickTime also relies on the Component Manager, as well as a set of predefined components.
“QuickTime Player” describes the three different interfaces of the QuickTime Player application that are currently available as of QuickTime 5: one for Mac OX that features the Aqua interface, another for Mac OS 9, and another version for Windows computers.
“Sprites and Sprite Animation” describes sprites, a compact data structure that can contain a number of properties, including location on the desktop, rotation, scaling, and an image source. Sprites are ideal for animation.
“Wired Movies” discusses wired sprites, which are sprites that perform various actions in response to events, such as mouse down or mouse up. By wiring together sprites, you can create a wired movie with a high degree of user interactivity. Flash, a vector-based graphics and animation technology designed for the Internet, is also discussed in this section.
“QuickTime Media Skins” discusses how, in QuickTime 5, you can customize the appearance of the QuickTime Player application by adding a media skin to your movie.
“SMIL” discusses how you can import SMIL documents into QuickTime and play them using the QuickTime browser plug-in or QuickTime Player.
“QuickTime VR” describes QuickTime VR (QTVR), which simulates three-dimensional objects and places. The user can control QTVR panoramas and QTVR object movies by dragging various hot spots with the mouse.
Last updated: 2002-10-01
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