• Terms necessary for the understanding of QuickTime:
- A time coordinate system contains a time scale marked in time units. The number of units that pass per second quantifies the scale [the units/sec value]; that is a time scale of 26 means that 26 units pass per second and each time unit is 1/26 of a second. A time coordinate system also contains a duration, which is the length of the movie or media in numbers of time units it contains. Particular points in a movie can be identified by a time value, the number of time units to that point [the unit #].
IMPORTANT NOTE: when specifying which unit to display, be aware that the numbers are ONE based; that is, the first unit in the movie is referred to as unit # 1.
• The chosen frame to be opened is displayed in the small preview box in the upper right corner. To turn off this display, click in the little checkbox at the upper left corner of the preview box.
•"In Open Dialog Preview" popup menu allows you to chose one of the following options for displaying the movie in the Open/Preview area (the large gray area): • Don't play the movie; • Play the movie once, stop, and display the chosen frame; • Repeat the movie from beginning to end until the user presses the mouse button or any key; • Play forward and backward continuously until the user hits the mouse button or hits any key. Note that the movie will not play when you do a regular Open. It only plays in the Open/Preview Dialog box.
• Open Poster Frame: check this button if you want to always open the Poster Frame ( the frame chosen to represent the movie by the movie maker). The unit # of this poster frame is displayed.
• Open unit #: check this button and enter a unit number to open a specific frame in the movie.
Be sure to enter a number from 1 through the # of units indicated by "Duration" (above).
• For next open:
- Step to next interesting frame: check this to step to the next unique frame.
- Step unit by: enter the number by which to increment the unit # for the next open. For example, if a movie has 80 units and you want to open every tenth unit, enter 10. To open every unit, enter 1. Note that this only affects multiple openings of a file.
- Don't go past unit X: enter the last unit to open. This only affects multiple openings of a file. For example, if a file was listed in a batch list that had 20 units, and you enter "Don't go past unit 10", after unit 10 was opened, the batch processor would move on to the next file.
• Skip this dialog [OPTION overrides]: check this box to skip this dialog the next time it would appear. This is especially useful in two situations:
- running a batch in which you are opening all the images in a file and you don't want to click OK for every frame. You simply set the parameters and click the "Skip this box" and it will run through all the images in the file for you without your intervention.
- previewing several images in the file: check this box, then in the Open/Preview Dialog, click the preview checkbox on and off and back on, and the next image in the file will appear.
- to see the dialog again, hold down the Option key when it would normally appear and it will appear. Or choose the "Misc:Preferences:Cancel All Skip Boxes" command
• Interesting Frame checkboxes: these are for advanced users only. Normal users should check the top 2 boxes (the ones with the leading •) and uncheck the lower 4.
• To stop movie playback in the Open/Preview Dialog, hold down the mouse button or hit any key.
