QuickTime 4 Reference

Video Effects User Interface

If your application creates QuickTime movies with video effects, you need to provide the user with a way to choose an effect, adjust its parameters, and preview the results. Although you are free to write your own code for these user interface tasks, you are encouraged to use the APIs that QuickTime provides.

QuickTime provides a standard dialog box (called the standard parameters dialog box ) that allows the user to select an effect, choose values for its parameters, and preview the effect. Using this dialog box means that your users see an interface that is standard across applications. In addition, if effects parameters change in the future, your application will not need to be rebuilt to use them.

In most applications, it is appropriate to show the standard parameters dialog box to let users choose and customize effects. QuickTime provides a set of high-level API functions that you can call to do this. "Displaying the Effects User Interface Using the High-Level API" explains the use of these functions.

In some cases, you might need greater control over the effects user interface than these high-level functions provide. You might, for example, want to add the controls from the standard dialog box to one of your application's own dialog boxes. QuickTime provides a set of low-level APIs that let you do this. They give you greater control and flexibility than the high-level functions, but they are more complex to use. These low-level functions are discussed in "Adding Video Effects Controls to an Existing Dialog Box" .

Displaying the Effects User Interface Using the High-Level API

Adding Video Effects Controls to an Existing Dialog Box