Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22
Appendix A | Appendix B | Appendix C | Glossary | Index | Legal Stuff | License


Chapter 8 - Playing and Previewing Movies

Opening a Movie | Source Movie Play Controls | Source Movie Data | Changing Movie Display Size | Closing Video Display | Minimize Preview | Before/After Preview

Opening a Movie

To open your QuickTime source movie, select "Open" from the File menu. Media Cleaner will analyze the selected movie, and open a Source Movie window.

NOTE: Media Cleaner can open QuickTime movies and AIFF files. It cannot currently open VDOLive or RealMedia movies - these two formats are currently for output only. If you wish to view a RealMedia or VDOLive file, we recommend you use the appropriate player application, both of which are included on the Media Cleaner 2.0 CD-ROM in the "Multimedia Technologies" Folder. For VDOLive and LiteVDO (Windows only), you must put your files on a VDO server in order for the player to properly access them.

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Source Movie Play Controls

The controls for the Source Movie window are the standard QuickTime controls. You can control playback volume, play, pause, frame rewind, frame advance, and use the slider to move to any point in the movie.



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Source Movie Data

Below the QuickTime controls is a data bar which contains information about the source movie. The movie's duration, size (in Kilobytes) and average total data rate are displayed.

Clicking on the "More Info" toggle will display more detailed information about the video and audio characteristics of the source movie, such as codec, data rate, sample rate of the audio, etc. Clicking on the "More Info" toggle a second time will close the extra information.

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Changing Movie Display Size

You can display movies at half their normal size by pressing "Command - 0" (zero), or choosing the "Half Size" option in the Windows menu. This option is useful if you have a large movie and a small monitor.

You can also double the display size of your source movie by pressing "Command - 2" or choosing the "Double Size" option in the Windows menu. This is often helpful for accurate cropping, or to see what your movie will look like if played at double size.

To display your movie at its normal size, press "Command - 1" or choose the "Normal Size" option in the Windows menu.

NOTE: The display size of the image has no impact on the final size of your movie. For example, displaying a movie doubled by pressing "Command - 2" will not make the final output movie twice as large. To alter the size of the output movie, use the "Scale" option in the Video tab.

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Closing Video Display

You may turn off the display of the movie by clicking on the toggle next to the video. This will "close up" the video window, so that the image is no longer displayed. This feature is useful for small screens.



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Minimize Preview

Media Cleaner can make the movie displayed in the Output Movie window smaller to speed up processing. To choose this option, select "Minimize preview while compressing" in the "Preferences..." dialog.

Minimizing the Preview will slightly improve the processing time, and is often used with batch processing.

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Before/After Preview

During compression, a Before/After slider appears underneath the output movie. The image to the left of the slider is the uncompressed original source with your filters and image adjustments applied to it. The image to the right of the slider is the actual compressed final movie image. The Before/After slider may be moved back and forth in real-time to see how any particular area looks before and after compression.

If you push the slider all the way to the left, you will be seeing your final compressed movie; all the way to the right and you're looking at your source movie with the filters and adjustments applied.

The Before/After preview lets you see exactly what the selected codec and your compression/processing parameters are doing to the image quality of your movie in real-time, which is often quite helpful. Being able to compare the source to the final movie "on top" of each other is much easier than trying to look at two movies side by side.

It may take Media Cleaner a little while to respond when you first move the mouse, since it must finish compressing the current frame before giving you control. While you are moving the Before/After slider, Media Cleaner will temporarily pause compression. When you stop moving the mouse for a few seconds, it will start compressing again.

NOTE: The Before/After slider is only available while you are actually compressing your movie. Once you suspend or finish a compression, you will not be able to use the Before/After slider.

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