Technical Q&As


QTW 72 - Live MIDI-input Sequences (07-Dec-95)


Q Is it possible to synchronize the playback of a QuickTime movie to incoming time code of one sort or another? An example application might be to cause a movie to speed up or slow down in response to a changing clock from a MIDI sequence.

A Sounds like you're talking about a live MIDI-input sequence. While your application processes the MIDI input, it can call MCDoAction/mcActionPlay and adjust the playrate on the fly. This will adjust the playback speed of all enabled tracks.

If you are only interested in synchronizing a video track to an external clock source, you can make calls to MCDoAction/mcActionStep or /mcActionGoToTime. This method, however, overrides QuickTime's intelligent frame-dropping algorithm, which could be a problem if a system cannot handle the playing of every frame at the current rate.

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