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QuickTime Player Changes

QuickTime 5 introduces a number of changes to the QuickTime Player application, including changes to the User Interface (UI). The appearance and behavior differ slightly for Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, and Windows. Changes are described as follows:

• The Mac OS X version of QuickTime Player, shown in Figure 1-1, features the Aqua interface. Clicking the top-left middle yellow “minimize” button moves the Player into the dock. If a movie is playing, it continues to play in the dock.

• The Mac OS 9 version (Figure 1-2) features the Platinum interface. Clicking the “minimize” box collapses the Player window so that only the title bar is visible. This pauses any playing movie.

• The Windows version (Figure 1-3) is similar in appearance to the Mac OS 9 version, but with the Windows menu bar attached to the Player window, which is a change from previous versions. It includes the standard Windows control and placement. Clicking the “minimize” box puts an icon of the Player in the Windows task bar.

• QuickTime VR also has redesigned controls (Figure 1-7), available on both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. One significant change is the “show hotspots” button, which now toggles between showing and hiding hotspots when clicked (previously, it showed hotspots only while being clicked). A new cubic playback engine is also provided in QuickTime 5, discussed in the section “New QuickTime VR Cubic Engine.” This feature enables the viewer to see all the way up and all the way down –– in effect, all six faces of a cube –– by clicking in a VR panorama.

A number of UI changes are common to both Macintosh and Windows:

• The Channel Drawer has been eliminated. Clicking the QTV button switches to a new scrollable window in the Player’s main display area, containing tabs for QuickTime TV channels and user Favorites.

• A “hot picks” movie now opens as the default content of QuickTime Player, if the application is launched without a selected movie, and if the user is connected to the Internet when the application opens. Note that there is no hot picks Tab. To bring up the hot picks movie, a user must double-click the QuickTime logo in the QuickTime TV channels window.

• When the user rolls the mouse over an icon in the QuickTime TV channels window or the Favorites window, the name of that channel or favorite appears in the LCD area below.

• The controls drawer has been eliminated from the Pro version of QuickTime Player. The video controls are superimposed on the main display area, while the audio controls appear in the timeline controller area, and are accessed by the menu item Show/Hide Sound Controls. The audio controls (Balance, Bass, and Treble) are shown in Figure 1-4.

• The step-forward and step-backward buttons that were in the controls drawer are gone, but the left and right arrow keys still perform these functions. To select and step simultaneously, hold the shift key down while using the left or right arrow key. Holding an arrow key down for more than 3 seconds causes it to go into “turbo” mode, allowing you to rapidly select a long section of a movie.

• There is a new Show Movie Info item in the Windows menu. This opens a single window containing summary information about the frontmost movie. The information displayed includes some subset of the following:

  • Annotations –– Information such as title and copyright

  • Source –– Filename or URL of the current movie

  • Format –– Data or compression format of each track, or the track type

  • Data Size –– Size of the movie file

  • Data Rate –– Average data rate of the movie, or current data rate if playing

  • Current Movie Time –– Current movie time in Hours:Minutes:Seconds.Thirtieths

  • Duration –– Duration of the movie in Hours:Minutes:Seconds.Thirtieths

  • Normal Size –– Unscaled height and width of the movie in pixels

  • Current Size –– Current height and width of the movie in pixels

  • Bitrate and Streaming Quality –– for Streaming movies

• The former Get Info dialog box has been renamed Movie Properties, and is now available only when QuickTime Player is registered (Pro version).

• If the current movie contains a Chapter List, it now functions as a pop-up menu in QuickTime Player, just as it does in the QuickTime browser plugin.

The Movie Properties dialog box and the Show Movie Info window are shown in Figure 1-5 and Figure 1-6, respectively.

If you are streaming a QuickTime movie, the bitrate will also appear in the Movie Info window shown in Figure 1-6.

In this section:

QuickTime VR Controls
New Player Application Capabilities

QuickTime VR Controls

When QuickTime Player displays a QuickTime VR movie, it provides users with a set of controls to manipulate VR objects and panoramas. A VR panorama lets the user stand in a virtual reality space, such as the church cathedral illustrated in Figure 1-7, and explore immersively the dimensions of a full 360 panorama –– panning across, as well as zooming in and out of the panorama.

In QuickTime 5, authors can create VR panoramas in which users also have the ability to tilt up and down a full 180, so that you can see the ceiling of the cathedral as well as the floor in Figure 1-7. The actual horizontal and vertical range is determined by the panorama itself. To look left, right, up and down, you drag with the mouse across the panorama.

In addition to navigating a QuickTime VR movie by holding the mouse button down and dragging inside the panorama, the user can manipulate the panorama by clicking various buttons:

• A go-back button. This allows the user to return to the previous node (a single viewpoint in a panorama). Clicking this button restores the previous static pan angle, tilt angle, and field of view. The button is enabled only for multinode (multiple viewpoint) panoramas.

• A zoom-out button. This allows the user to zoom out. Holding down the mouse button while the cursor is over this control causes the field of view of the displayed node to increase, thereby making the object or panorama appear to move away from the viewer.

• A zoom-in button. This allows the user to zoom in. Holding down the mouse button while the cursor is over this control causes the field of view of the displayed node to decrease, thereby making the object or panorama appear to move toward the viewer.

• A hot spot display button. This allows the user to highlight the visible hot spots. A single click toggles hot spots on; another click toggles hot spots off. This is a change in behavior from previous hotspot buttons, which displayed hotspots only while the mouse button was held down.

In addition to these buttons, there is also a label display area (not shown in Figure 1-7) in which helpful information can be displayed. For instance, when the cursor is over one of the buttons, the button’s name appears in the label display area. Similarly, when the cursor is over a hot spot, the hot spot’s name (if it has one) appears in the label display area.

New Player Application Capabilities

In addition to the user interface changes, QuickTime 5 introduces new capabilities to the QuickTime Player application. These are described as follows:

• If a complete installation is performed, QuickTime now includes the VR Flattener component. If a VR panorama is loaded in QuickTime Player, and the VR Flattener component is installed, the Export pop-up menu includes an item named Movie to Fast Start QuickTime VR Movie. Choose this item to export the panorama as a Fast Start VR movie with a preview. There will also be an item named either “Movie to QuickTime VR Movie 1.x” or “Movie to QuickTime VR Movie 2.x,” allowing you to convert your panorama from one format to the other.

• In addition to exposing many more of QuickTime Player’s features to AppleScript in QuickTime 5 (see “AppleScript Changes and Additions” for more information), the features of the Plugin Helper application are now accessible through AppleScript extensions to QuickTime Player. You still need to use Plugin Helper to set plugin attributes manually, but you can use AppleScript and QuickTime Player to automate the task.

• It is now possible to attach a “media skin” to a movie, which controls the appearance and behavior of the QuickTime Player 5 application when the movie is played. A media skin allows you to control the size and shape of the Player window, as well as the color, width, and texture of the frame (if any). It also eliminates the visible movie controller or VR controller, allowing you to design your own controls using wired sprites. This is discussed in more detail in the next section, “Media Skins.”

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