Movie Toolbox: Previews

This chapter describes the functions your application can use to create and display movie posters and previews, and also to extract still pictures from movies. A poster is a single image from a movie, while a preview is a short excerpt (sometimes as short as a single image). A preview is normally displayed as part of an Open File dialog, and may be something other than an image, such as a sound.

This chapter also documents functions of the Movie Toolbox used to create QuickTime pictures from movies, tracks, or posters.

Most QuickTime developers will use at least some of these functions.

Previewing Files

Inside Macintosh describes how to create and display file previews shown as part of the Open File dialog. Some sample code is included. Read this if you would like to include preview thumbnails of movies.

Movie Posters and Movie Previews

Inside Macintosh describes the functions your application can use to work with posters and previews. A poster is a still frame from a movie, while a preview is a short excerpt.

Functions for Creating File Previews

Inside Macintosh describes the functions provided by the Movie Toolbox that allow you to create file previews. A file preview is typically a thumbnail image taken from the movie that is displayed in an Open File dialog.

Functions for Displaying File Previews

Inside Macintosh describes the Movie Toolbox functions that let you display file previews within your application.

Generating Pictures From Movies

Inside Macintosh describes functions that can be used to create QuickTime pictures from movies, tracks, or posters. QuickTime 4 Reference mentions a change: when low on memory, the GetMoviePict function now returns an out of memory error, rather than an empty picture.