Inside Macintosh: QuickTime

Using the Movie Toolbox

The Movie Toolbox provides functions that allow applications to control all aspects of movies in Macintosh computer applications. There are Movie Toolbox functions that provide basic operations for opening and playing movies as well as more complex functions for the creation and manipulation of the data that makes up the movie's media.

This section discusses a number of the more common operations your application may perform with the Movie Toolbox, and it has been divided into the following sections:

"Determining Whether the Movie Toolbox Is Installed" describes how to use the Gestalt Manager to retrieve the version of the Movie Toolbox that is installed
"Getting Ready to Work With Movies" describes the steps you must take before you can work with QuickTime movies
"Getting a Movie From a File" discusses how to load a movie from a movie file
"Playing Movies With a Movie Controller" shows how you can use a movie controller component to simplify playing a movie
"Playing a Movie" describes how to play a movie using Movie Toolbox functions
"Movies and the Scrap" discusses how your application can place movies onto the system scrap and retrieve movies from the scrap
"Creating a Movie" shows how you can create a new movie
"Saving Movies in Movie Files" describes how to save movies into movie files
"Using Movies in Your Event Loop" discusses how to grant time to the Movie Toolbox to allow your movies to play
"The Movie Toolbox and System 6" discusses using the Movie Toolbox on Macintosh computers that are running System 6
"Previewing Files" describes how to create and display file previews
"Using Application-Defined Functions" describes how your application can retrieve information about long Movie Toolbox operations and perform custom display processing
"Working With Movie Spatial Characteristics" shows how to create a track matte

Many of these sections include sample code that demonstrates how to use the Movie Toolbox.