— to take best advantage, give Play it Cool a memory allocation of 512K RAM more than the movie’s size (allowing for any dependencies),
· set the main monitor to the best screen depth for this movie
— improves movie playback,
· change movie’s icon to that of Play it Cool
— double-clicking on the movie from now on will open it in Play it Cool.
Tip: Hold down option while choosing this command to show all files (not only movie files).
Tip: Hold down control while opening a movie from the desktop to let you choose the three options described above.
Close
• Closes the active movie window.
Save
• Writes the active movie file to disk.
Save As…
• Writes the active movie file to disk, asking for a new name.
• Leaves the original movie file unchanged.
Options
· save the movie normally (allowing dependencies)
— it will occupy much less disk space (≈ 4K)
— it will rely on other movie(s) from which it was created,
· save the movie as self-contained (flatten the movie)
— it may take up several megabytes on disk
— all required data is contained in the saved movie file.
If you save the movie as self-contained, you can make it playable on non-Macintosh computers (e.g. Microsoft Windows and Silicon Graphics).
Tip: Hold down option to turn this command into Save A Copy As….
— Save A Copy As… saves a copy of the current movie, but unlike Save As…, does not open the saved movie afterwards.
 
Revert
• Removes all changes made to the active movie since it was last saved.
Recompress Movie…
• Asks for a movie file to be recompressed.
Options
· The movie compression dialog lets you choose a QuickTime compressor, the number of colours or greys, image quality and motion settings (see diagram)
— click and drag the preview image to reveal other parts of it.
Tip: Press option while dragging the Quality slider
— the slider bar now changes the movie’s temporal settings (i.e. how much the compressor relies on differences between successive frames).
Tip: Press option while clicking in the preview to zoom in.
Tip: Press option and shift while clicking in the preview to zoom out.
 
Compress Picture…
• Asks for a PICT file to be recompressed.
Options
· The picture compression dialog lets you choose a QuickTime compressor, the number of colours or greys in the movie and image quality (see diagram)
— click and drag the preview image to reveal other parts of it.
Tip: Press option while clicking in the preview to zoom in.
Tip: Press option and shift while clicking in the preview to zoom out.
 
Build Application…
• Builds a copy of the active movie as a standalone application.
• The application can be run by any Macintosh with QuickTime installed.
• It runs independently of Play it Cool or any other QuickTime movie player.
• Movie-Applications are intended for presentations:
· they have no distracting backgrounds,
· they play at optimal playback rate.
Movie-Applications load into RAM as much of the movie as possible before playing. To load the complete movie into RAM, give the Movie-Application a memory partition of about 200 K more than the movie occupies on disk.
Options
· up to six lines of credits text may be displayed at the start of the movie
— to suppress credits text, ensure that all six entries are empty,
· the current movie window size and speed settings can be saved in the Movie-Application. Unfortunately, “play selection only” settings and loop settings cannot be saved.
Tip: To skip the credits, click the mouse button.
Tip: To quit the movie, click the mouse button.
Page Setup…
• Displays the standard page setup dialog box for selecting printer page layouts
— paper size, reduction/enlargement, orientation, …
Print…
• Displays the standard print dialog box for selecting print settings
— number of copies, paper source, …
• If the frontmost window is a movie window, prints the current frame of the active movie, scaled according to the movie’s window size.
• If the frontmost window is a movie info window, prints the movie information.
Preferences…
• Displays a dialog allowing preferences to be set:
· click the coloured box to change the background colour used in Stage,
· select the monitor you wish the movie to play on in Stage
— the “main monitor” is the monitor containing the menu bar
— if you only have one monitor, this option is disabled.
Quit
• Quits Play it Cool and returns to the desktop.
