Movie Toolbox Fundamentals

The Movie Toolbox provides the functions that applications use to create, edit, and play QuickTime movies. This chapter (Fundamentals) describes the methods your application can use to initialize QuickTime, to open and play movies, and the primary functions used to create and convert movies.

Determining Whether the Movie Toolbox Is Installed

Inside Macintosh describes how to use the Gestalt Manager to identify the version of QuickTime that is installed.

Getting Ready to Work With Movies

Inside Macintosh describes the steps your application must take before it can work with QuickTime movies.

Initializing the Movie Toolbox

Inside Macintosh describes the functions every application must use to establish a working QuickTime environment.

Getting a Movie From a Mac OS File

Inside Macintosh shows how to load a movie from a Macintosh HFS or HFS+ disk file, using the OpenMovieFile and NewMovieFromFile functions. Windows programmers will need to perform an additional step, described below.

Getting a Movie From a Windows File

QuickTime 3 for Windows Programmers shows how to convert the data returned from a standard Windows file dialog into a format that can be used with NewMovieFromFile. Windows programmers should read this section.

Loading a Movie

QuickTime 3 Reference shows how to load a movie that does not reside in a movie file. Read this if your application will be loading movies from other sources, such as a data handler for an external device.

Determining Movie Creation and Modification Time

Inside Macintosh describes the functions used to read the creation date and most recent modification date for movies, tracks, and media.

Movie Functions

Inside Macintosh describes the functions used to create, access, and convert movie files. QuickTime 3 Reference describes functions that are new or have changed since the publication of Inside Macintosh. The functions listed below as "Original" are defined in Inside Macintosh. The functions listed as "New" are defined in QuickTime 3 Reference. The functions listed under "Changed" are defined in Inside Macintosh, but have enhancements that are documented in QuickTime 3 Reference.

New:

Changed:

Original:

Playing Movies With a Movie Controller

Inside Macintosh shows how you can use a movie controller component to simplify playing a movie. Read this section if your application will play movies, and you are considering using a QuickTime movie controller. Sample code is included.

Playing a Movie

Inside Macintosh describes how to play a movie using low level Movie Toolbox functions. Read this section if your application will play movies without using the movie controller. Sample code is included.

Controlling Movie Playback

Inside Macintosh describes the basic functions your application will use to play movies.

Managing the Video Frame Playback Rate

QuickTime 3 Reference describes two functions you can use to determine the playback rate for each video frame. These functions are useful for debugging.

Using the Full Screen

QuickTime 3 Reference describes two functions you can use to display movies using the full screen.

Using Movies in Your Event Loop

Inside Macintosh briefly discusses how to grant time to the Movie Toolbox to allow your movies to play. A short code sample is included. Read this section to see how to structure the event loop in your program so that QuickTime movies can be displayed. QuickTime 3 for Windows Programmers shows the correct event loop to use under the Windows operating system.

Movies and Your Event Loop

Inside Macintosh describes the functions your application must call inside your event loop to allow movies to display. Also documented are functions for redrawing a movie that has been uncovered, determining if a movie is done, detecting whether a point lies in a movie or a particular track, and functions for testing the status of movies and tracks. QuickTime 3 Reference adds a new function to this list. This information is needed by all developers.

New:

InvalidateMovieRegion

Original:

Working With Sound Volume

Inside Macintosh describes the functions used to set and read the audio volume level for a movie or track.

Preferred Movie Settings

Inside Macintosh describes the functions your application can use to read and set a movie's default playback rate and audio volume.

Enhancing Movie Playback Performance

Inside Macintosh describes functions that can be used to improve playback performance, typically by preprocessing or loading some portion of the movie into RAM before playback. QuickTime 3 Reference adds new functions to this list. Refer to the definitions of these functions if you need higher performance during movie playback.

Important: The functions listed as obsolete no longer perform any useful service, and should not be called if you are writing new code.

New:

Original:

Obsolete:

Disabling Movies and Tracks

Inside Macintosh describes the functions your application can use to enable and disable movies. Only enabled movies are serviced by MoviesTask.

Movies and the Scrap

Inside Macintosh briefly discusses how your application can place movies onto the system scrap and retrieve movies from the scrap, using the PutMovieOnScrap and NewMovieFromScrap functions.

The Movie Toolbox and System 6

Inside Macintosh discusses using the Movie Toolbox on Macintosh computers that are running System 6. This is of interest only to programmers with a need to provide backward compatiblity with older Macintosh computers.

Error Functions

Inside Macintosh describes the functions your application uses to examine result codes generated by Toolbox functions.