QuickTime is a multimedia technology developed by Apple Computer that is capable of handling various formats of digital video, sound, text, animation, music, and immersive virtual-reality panoramic images.

QuickTime Learn more about QuickTime on Apple's QuickTime website. www.apple.com/quicktime/

GoLive's QuickTime Authoring Environment
GoLive® has a full-featured QuickTime editing suite built right into the application. Using QuickTime objects, the timeline editor, and the Inspector palette, you can add sprites, import images, apply transparent looping video effects, and add HREF tracks, text, and even SWF tracks to QuickTime videos.

The movie viewer contains a preview tab for previewing a movie and a layout tab for editing the spatial attributes of a movie visually (for example, size and position). The timeline editor lets you assemble movie tracks, control their behaviors over time, and manage their interaction. The QuickTime “set of objects” toolbox provides icons for the tracks you use to assemble movies. The Inspector palette lets you edit track properties and behaviors.

QuickTime Scripting
Adobe’s QuickTime wired action programming language lets you create sophisticated, interactive movies. Adobe created the QuickTime wired action programming language to expand the functionality of Apple’s QuickTime wired actions (the set of predefined actions QuickTime recognizes) and to automate the scripting process in GoLive.

The QuickTime wired action programming language is based on JavaScript syntax and described in XML. The QTScript.xml file, located in the GoLive/Settings/QuickTime folder, describes the actions, operands, targets, expressions, operators, and constants of the language. If Apple releases additional wired actions, you can add them to this file.

Create a QuickTime Media Skin
With QuickTime media skins, you can completely customize the appearance of the QuickTime player window. In GoLive, you can quickly create a media skin by importing a three-layer Photoshop® file. Each layer of the file defines a different part of the media skin. In Photoshop, create a three-layer file with the following layer contents and structure:

• Background layer with a graphic of the media skin
• First layer with a window mask — black areas should reflect the outline of the media skin, defining the edges of the player window
• Second layer with a drag mask — black areas become draggable, allowing the viewer to reposition the player window; white areas define controls and the movie box
• In GoLive, choose File>New, select Web>Multimedia>QuickTime Skin, and open the Photoshop file
• Specify a filename and location, and then save the media skin

Importing Photoshop Layers as Sprites
Using the sprites tab of the sprite track inspector, you can import a Photoshop file and automatically create a sprite for each layer in the file. With this method, you can design and lay out sprites in Photoshop (including mouse-over images and so on), and then quickly import the images into a QuickTime movie. It's easy to design a great-looking interface in Photoshop with all the behavior in the image, and then bring it to life automatically in GoLive without the need to reposition all of the images or assign the behavior to the images manually. By setting up the layer names in advance in Photoshop, you can also automatically assign different rollover behaviors to each sprite at the same time you import the Photoshop file.

You can also use Photoshop as a prototype tool to create the initial appearance of images, and then import the images into GoLive and set up the interactive actions. When you’re ready, you can use Photoshop again to create the final artwork, and then replace the images assigned to the sprites without losing the sprites’ interactive actions or any other work you’ve done in GoLive to create the movie.

QuickTime’s XML Support
You can use an XML database to dynamically provide content for QuickTime movies and to control their behaviors. QuickTime can access data from an external XML file or from XML data that are stored in the movie itself. Typically, you’ll use an external XML file — an external file lets you update the movie by simply updating the external file.

QuickTime’s XML support is property-driven instead of attribute-driven; you can create tags (for example, the source tag: <src>), but the tags don’t have attributes. To add data to a tag, add the data as a property (for example, <src>mymovie.mov</src>).

Learn more about QuickTime's capabilities on Apple's QuickTime developer website.
developer.apple.com/quicktime/