This program was designed to be a fast QuickTime movie player. It contains special options such as Preload movie and No backgrounding. Preload movie loads the movie from the disk into RAM. Preload movie gives the greatest performance increase and results in smother playing movies, especially with slow drives and remote volumes. No backgrounding is an option to play movies without having to quit other applications which may cause jerky playback.
FastPlayer is not fat binary. My code runs very little during movie playback so there would be no speed gain in recompiling.
Speed Tips:
• Have as few as possible movies open at a time.
• For multiple movies to play well simultaneously they must have been created with sufficient key frames.
• Movies always play better when completely visible.
• Boost the “Preferred size:” in Finder’s Get Info window to preload larger movies.
Things That Are Great:
• Has features for fast and smooth playback.
• With adequate RAM, movies can be played from even the slowest networks and drives.
• Display is suitable for electronic movie and slideshow presentations.
• Creates single fork movies for use on non-Mac computers.
• Program is small, compact, and pure.
• Intelligent CPU usage.
• Free!
Things That Could Be Better:
• Having several movies open at once may degrade playback.
• If a movie does not play correctly, Fast Player may be out of memory. Try unchecking Preload movie on movies or closing windows.
• Fast Player does not print.
• Editing is a mess! The problem lies in changing the movie size.
• Error reporting lacks any detail. It either warns you or quits.
• No preferences file yet.
• Movies are dragable without title bars but they can be dragged off the screen and become inaccessible when title bars are returned. Drag and drop editing, if installed, makes borderless window moving very confusing.
• This version isn’t tested much!
Notes:
• Preload movie will not work well if the movie loads into virtual memory.
• Under no circumstances should you ever “Force Quit” or debugger-kill Fast Player; always quit by normal means. QuickTime needs to be shut down properly to avoid a system crash. If Fast Player ever survives a “Force Quit” immediately save all open documents and then restart.
• Movies can still be dragged when Movie Borders is selected; drag by the outline.
• As of QuickTime 2.0 there is no support for fast dithering at 2 bits per pixel or double size below 8 bits per pixel.
How to use menus:
About Fast Player - It says I made it.
File
Open - Opens a QuickTime movie.
Close - Closes the frontmost movie.
Save - Saves the frontmost movie. Does not use self-contained format.
Export as single fork movie… - Saves the frontmost movie in single fork, self-contained format. Use this format for uploading movies to public archives. Flattened movies are required for all non-Macintosh QuickTime players.
Quit - Quits. You will not be prompted to save changes.
Edit
A standard editing menu except it doesn’t work as nicely as it should. (Hey, it's only a player!) Drag&Drop seems to work too.
Movie
Play selection only - The movie will only play the portion selected in the slider control.
Loop - Movie will loop linearly.
Preload movie - Attempts to load the movie into Fast Player’s memory for smoother playback. If no check appears next to the menu item after selection, it was not fully loaded and parts may play from disk. It may also be unchecked to free up memory for another movie. Try unchecking this to free up memory when playback problems occur.
Antialiased sound - Antialiasing will be used if the movie’s soundtrack needs to be resampled to match playback hardware. This option may slow down playback.
High quality display - High quality dithering and decompression will be used. High quality display is for viewing still images only.
Allow interlace - I don’t know what this does but it may help for something.
Normal size - Plays the movie at its normal size.
Double size - Plays the movie at exactly twice its size.
Options
No backgrounding - Stops other programs from running while movies are playing. Since this isn't a normal thing to do, your Mac will act strangely. Interrupt level tasks, such as networking, sound, speech, and some Extension installed tasks, can not be stopped.
Black desktop - Blackens the entire area behind the movies. To allow access to Finder desktop icons, this option deactivates while Fast Player is in the background and no movies are playing.
Movie Borders - Shows or hides the borders and controls around the movie. You may still drag the movies by their window outline while their title bar is gone. Toggling this option will cause some flickering while all windows are destroyed and recreated.
Hide others - Hides all but the frontmost movie. Use the Windows menu for selection of movies.
Windows
Shows a list of movie windows to choose from.
How to use movie controller:
The movie controller is the standard Apple QuickTime movie controller. Apple’s “MoviePlayer” gives, in great detail, instructions on how to use this.
The leftmost icon is sound volume. With Sound Manager 3.0, the SHIFT key will allow volume overdriving.
The second icon is play/pause. The movie may also be paused by a single click on the movie, cmd-period, or space bar and played with a double click, Space Bar, or cmd-left/right arrow.
The slider (a box on a strip) is the movie position. It may be dragged with the mouse.
Use the SHIFT key to select frames while playing or dragging the slider.
The arrow icons on the right side are forward/backward steppers. Using the OPTION key moves all the way to the beginning or ending. Using the CONTROL key brings up a small slider for playback speed. Arrow icons are not available on very small movie windows.
Revision History:
5/19/94 Version 1.0.1 - Fixed a bug in opening movies when the frontmost window was not the last one opened. Fixed some minor bugs of the movie controller not activating/deactivating along with its window. Improved code for faster playback of the frontmost movie when several movies are open. Simplified this document.
6/2/94 Version 1.1.0 - Now creates flattened movies for use with non-Macintosh QuickTime players. Reformatted this document for people who hate to read instructions.
?/?/94 Version 1.2 - Hacked to run with QuickTime 2.0 but could crash or draw pretty colors with QuickTime 1.6. Not really released.
11/23/94 Version 1.3.0 - Zero width movies, such as sounds, are now opened properly. Window sizing works with both QuickTime 1.6 and 2.0. Movies can be played without any border. Movies can be shown alone without closing all other movies. More command keys for the Options menu. Editing works slightly better. FastPlayer now has a default color palette so movies with and without color palettes don’t interfere. Not really released.
11/26/94 Version 1.3.1 - Both movie data and a PICT are exported into the clipboard now. Added control of the options Antialiased sound, High quality display, and Allow interlace. Movies start without delay or jerking. Movies which are fragmented from editing will play smoother without the need to entirely load it into RAM. The default palette now works better with 16 and 4 color displays.
