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Road Map to QuickTime 4

Introduction to Wired Movies, Sprites, and the Sprite Toolbox

This chapter provides you with a general introduction to QuickTime wired movies, sprites, and the sprite toolbox. It also discusses some of the new wired movie features added to QuickTime 4.

If you are a content author or tool developer, you'll want to read this chapter to grasp the fundamentals of how wired movies, sprites, and the sprite toolbox work together in the QuickTime software architecture.

Wired movies were originally introduced in QuickTime 3 and have been enhanced in QuickTime 4. These interactive movies can be played in any Web browser using the QuickTime plug-in, and in all applications as long as they use the QuickTime movie controller API.

QuickTime Wired Movies introduces the concept of wired movies, QuickTime events, actions, targets, parameters, expressions, operands, and operators.

• Adding Actions
• QuickTime Events
• Actions and Their Targets
• Action Parameters
• Expressions
• Operators
• Operands
• External Movie Targets for Wired Actions in QuickTime 4

QuickTime Wired Movies introduces you to the fundamentals of sprite animation and the sprite toolbox. Sprites were new to QuickTime 2.5 and have been enhanced in QuickTime 3 and QuickTime 4. This section also discusses the ways in which sprite animation differs from traditional video animation.

• Sprites and the Sprite Toolbox
• Sprite World Characteristics
• Sprite Tracks
• Sprite Animation
• Sprite Spatial Concepts
• Sprite Properties

QuickTime 3.0 Reference gives a brief overview of QuickTime Atoms and AtomContainers in the context of sprites and wired movies.