Effects

QuickTime provides built-in support for the 133 standard video effects defined by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMTPE), plus another 24 effects created by Apple. For a complete description of the available effects, see the reference at the end of this section.

You can use these effects to dress up the transitions between QuickTime movie frames or still images. The inputs to an effect or transition can be frames of a QuickTime movie or they can be graphics worlds containing images of any type.

QuickTime provides three basic kinds of video effects:

• Filter effects (tinting, embossing, blurring)
• Transition effects (wipes, irises, dissolves, etc.)
• Generator effects (flames, rippling water, etc.)

Because visual effects are calculated and executed at runtime, they are compact to download. Also, you don't need to predict the exact appearance of the movie when they execute.

Video Effects In Movies

Video effects are implemented as QuickTime components. To use an effect component in a QuickTime movie, you add an effect track to the movie. Each effect track has two parts: an effect description and an input map. The effect description specifies which effect component will be used; the input map specifies which of the movie's other tracks will be used as content sources for the effect.

For each built-in effect, QuickTime provides a dialog box that you can display to let the user set its parameters. This dialog box is shown in the diagram below.

Applications can use the QTCreateStandardParameterDialog function to display the standard parameters dialog box and allow a user to choose an effect, adjust the settings for that effect, and see a preview of the effect with the selected settings.

Effects Outside Movies

You can also apply a video effect outside a movie - for example, a pair of still images. To do this you define a transition between two graphics worlds.

Besides setting up the effect, you must provide code to run it. Because effect components are varieties of image decompressors, the code to execute an effect outside a movie is the same code you would use to decompress and display an image.

References

Built-in QuickTime Video Effects

Introduction to QuickTime Video Effects