1. Getting Started with QuickTime Pro

QuickTime is much more than a digital media player. It’s also a software architecture that other applications, such as Final Cut Pro, can use to drive multimedia functions. As a software architecture QuickTime comes with its own suite of applications, including QuickTime Player (with browser plug-in), QuickTime Pro, QuickTime Broadcaster, QuickTime Streaming Server, MPEG-2 Playback Component, and Darwin Streaming Server. Together they let you create, deliver, and play multimedia content. Additional components from third-party developers extend the capabilities of QuickTime even further.

This book focuses on how to use QuickTime Pro for a broad range of multimedia tasks. Whether you’re an experienced media producer or a QuickTime newcomer, you’ll learn everything from producing content for the web and portable devices (such as iPods, Apple TV, and cell phones), to exporting movies from one format to another (transcoding), to prepping content for live broadcast. (For a primer on using QuickTime Player, the version of the software that’s preinstalled on Macs and available for free download for PCs, see Appendix A.)