Discovering QuickTime

Book excerpt: Written for programmers, multimedia designers, and everyone interested in the latest media technology, this book gives you a step-by-step introduction to QuickTime programming, from movies and animation to streaming video on the Internet. The CD-ROM in the back provides working applications, sample code, and the essential programming resources you need to get started. QuickTime sets the standard for worldwide distribution of multimedia content. An increasing number of Windows and Macintosh application developers use its extensive toolkit to bring time and action to their programs. If you're going to compete in today's multimedia world, you need to understand QuickTime. What can QuickTime do for you? QuickTime is a complete system for working with all aspects of digital media. With QuickTime, you can: * Build, play, and edit movies on both Windows and Macintosh computers. * Fill your movies with a wide range of video, audio, graphic, and animation data, using most popular formats and compression standards. * Create Windows and Macintosh movie files that you can stream over the Internet or deliver on CD-ROM. * Make animated graphics with interactive capabilities. * Compose and play synthetic sounds and music, using QuickTime's built-in MIDI synthesizer. * Create virtual reality environments and 3D interactive models. This book shows you how to harness the power of QuickTime. It doesn't take weeks of work to achieve sophisticated multimedia effects; fewer than a dozen lines of Java or C can bring the power of QuickTime into your application. * * Includes a companion CD-ROM packed with QuickTime support materials, reference materials, and examples