QuicktimePro
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Split large movie files quickly on 10.6 with QuickTime Player 7
Updated to clarify that a split clip feature exists in 10.7's version of QuickTime X. Say what you will about the QuickTime X framework and player introduced in Mac OS X 10.6 -- it's crazy speedy on multicore machines, it provides the foundation for next-generation features, it lets you drag-and-drop to combine movie clips, all that good stuff. The fact is, for sheer Swiss Army utility it can't (yet) hold a candle to the veteran QuickTime 7 Player with the QuickTime Pro upgrade. While you can use the v7 player on Snow Leopard and Lion, getting access to the Pro features still requires a $29.99 license code. That's a shame, because it means many Mac users are missing out on most of the wonderful tricks QuickTime Player 7 can do to save you time and aggravation. Here's one example: splitting a long & large movie into segments for easier uploading or emailing. If you're running 10.7 Lion, you have access to QuickTime X's new Split Clip command; if you're running 10.6 as in the example below, you don't. (I'll tackle the step-by-step of getting Lion's version of QT X to do this in a subsequent post.) In QuickTime X on 10.6, we've got a visual and very fast Trim tool; it shows exactly where the video will be truncated with an easy, iMovie-esque scrubber bar, and it does indeed save wicked fast once you trim your clip. Nice and handy. While you can trim quickly this way, you can't actually split the file into two and match up frames so you don't lose anything in the middle (which you can do on 10.7). You'd have to go back, open the original movie, and try to figure out exactly where you trimmed it -- QuickTime X for 10.6 doesn't have a way to do this gracefully. Oh, well. Good thing there's QuickTime Player 7 (in the Utilities folder, by default, on Snow Leopard) with a Pro license key. In this case, you just open the movie and use the selector tools (below the timeline) to highlight the first half of the movie that you want to save as a separate file. Then, before you do anything else, go to File -> Save As... and save the file with a new name (ending in 'part 1' perhaps) to avoid mucking up the source file by accident. You could save the movie self-contained (all the movie data in the file; you could copy or move it to another machine or drive and it would work) or save it as a reference movie, QuickTime's version of an alias. Reference movies track your tweaks and edits to the movie without modifying the underlying data stored in the original file; this makes them extremely fast to work with and save, but you can't move them around between computers without their 'parent' files. It depends what you intend to do with the pieces; if you just want to give the movie sections separate file names to organize a long clip, reference movies will do fine. Now you're ready to make the split clip. Under the Edit menu, choose Trim to Selection. Boom: you've got the first chunk of my movie sitting there in the window by itself. Go to the file menu and choose Save (not Save As...) and your movie is half the clip it used to be. Here's the magic bit: head back up to the Edit menu and choose Undo Trim to Selection. Your movie is now reverted back the way it was before, first and second half, including your selection marks. Don't Save it, though! Go to the Edit menu again and choose Cut (or Delete, if you prefer). The second half of your movie -- right down to the frame where you cropped it earlier -- is now sitting in your player window. If you figured out that the next step is "Save As..." with a new name containing 'part 2,' well done. Now you've got two separate movie files that each contain half the original movie, exactly where you want them. Remember that you'll need to save as self-contained movies if you're planning to ship those half-size files around to other people. You can repeat the cycle as many times as you need to clip your movie into the appropriate number of smaller bits. It's worth checking out Apple's QuickTime 7 User Guide (PDF) if you're interested in more tricks you can do with QuickTime 7 Pro. Got a favorite? Let us know and we'll write it up for all to enjoy.
Rumor: Snow Leopard to include QuickTime Pro
At long last, Apple will (allegedly) stop charging customers for the "Pro" features of QuickTime by building them into Snow Leopard. Finally.You'll recall that Apple has been gradually increasing the options available to the free version of QuickTime, like full screen playback mode. Other features of the Pro version -- like simple editing and export options -- were unlocked with in a recent developer's build of Snow Leopard.Of course, this may be a way to let developers test all aspects of QuickTime, but we're hoping that's not the case. With the popularity of Apple's video editing software like iMovie and Final Cut, it seems that simple cut-and-paste should be free with QuickTime. Launching one of those apps just to complete a simple edit is overkill. Kind of like swatting a fly with a Buick.We've got our fingers crossed.
Sending QuickTime movies with Entourage
They say that necessity is the mother of invention, but personally I'd nominate frustration instead. Lots of the time, the things you need to do, or think you need to do (get more exercise, pay your taxes) get pushed off or procrastinated into irrelevancy, but the things that frustrate you -- even if they're below the radar -- will drive you to the point of saying "I'm going to fix this @!#*& problem no matter what it takes!" Inventions motivated by frustration tend to be quick hacks that provide at least a momentary sense of achievement, if nothing more.If I wasn't deeply frustrated with the QuickTime Pro feature that lets you quickly email a movie, but only if you use Mail.app as your email client, I wouldn't have spent the time and energy to whomp up this Applescript. Entourage users can throw it into the Entourage script menu, or stash it in a quick-run location or under a hotkey if you want. All it does is export the frontmost movie from QuickTime Player (standard or Pro), then it encloses the exported file in a new Entourage email. Nothing too fancy, minimal error checking, and it will not respect odd/widescreen aspect ratios... but it does seem to work. If you are recording quick video clips with your iSight and emailing them off, or doing mini-screencasts, this may be something that finds a home on your machine. Download it here.Please note that the script is placed in the public domain, in readable form, and is provided with NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER. Use at your own risk. Any ill consequences to you, your computer, your videos, your sanity or your interactions with friends & family who are now bombarded with your video snippets are your own problem and in no way the responsibility of me, TUAW, Weblogs, Inc. or AOL. In case of a water landing, your seat cushion serves as a flotation device. Exits are under the lighted signs. Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for it makes them soggy and hard to light.
SimpleMovieX: QuickTime Pro replacement
As should be clear from our many posts about it, QuickTime Pro offers some pretty nice basic editing features for $30. Nonetheless, you might think there is room for another low-end video editing application for the Mac, precisely because QuickTime Pro is so centered around the MOV container and Apple favored codecs like H.264. In a cross-platform world much of the video you might run across, and want to edit, won't be in Apple favored formats. Though QuickTime Pro may be able to handle many of these through separate codec plugins, SimpleMovieX has the advantage of having native support for the common MPEG and AVI formats, which allows you to edit, split, and merge AVI files encoded with DivX. The SimpleMovieX developers have a comparison page that lays out the differences to QuickTime Pro. SimpleMovieX is well worth a look for simple video editing needs, particularly without the need for transcoding.SimpleMovieX is the same $30 as QuickTime Pro, but unlike the latter a demo is available for download.
HOWTO: Rotate your video in QuickTime Pro
Today with so many of us using our digital cameras to shoot short video segments, it's especially easy to forget that we're dealing with videos and turn the camera on its side for a portrait orientation. Unfortunately, most video programs are not set up to handle portrait video. The video ends up displaying on its side. QuickTime Pro makes it easy to recover from this kind of shooting calamity and restore the orientation you intended. Here's a gallery showing you how. %Gallery-2515%
Apple adds Xvid to QT Components site
Our own David just texted us to let us know that Apple has added Xvid to its online QuickTime Components list. The Xvid-for-QuickTime component, which you can download here, allows you to play and encode Xvid video. As the writeup mentions, Xvid follows the MPEG-4 standard.
Create 5.1 audio with Quicktime and EyeTV
TUAW reader Dave has posted a tutorial at his site on using Quicktime to create video files with 5.1 sound. Taking video files he captured with an Elgato EyeTV, he uses mAC3dec and Quicktime Pro to separate the sound into the six channels of 5.1 sound. It looks pretty straight forward, but I don't have an EyeTV, so I couldn't try it out. Thanks for sharing, Dave!PS-Did you really hang out with Lewis Black? We're jealous.
