Editing video

There are three new features in QuickTime for Lion when it comes to editing videos. The first is the ability to merge clips together, which is a feature a lot of users missed in the first version of QuickTime X. If you have a clip already open, you can click and drag another video file onto it, and QuickTime will merge the two together. It will even automatically scale or crop the added clip so the videos’ dimensions match.

Another new feature is the ability to rotate a video clip if it’s upside-down or sideways. Under the Edit menu are four options: Rotate Left, Rotate Right, Flip Horizontal and Flip Vertical. So not only can you rotate a video that’s the wrong way round, you can also flip a video. That’s useful if you use a built-in iSight camera to capture a video, since the iSight captures a mirror image.

The final new feature related to editing video is the Export Audio Only function. Found in the options once you click File > Export, this lets you save the audio from a video file out in AAC format, which can then be added to iTunes to sync with an iOS device, for example.

Screen recording

As well as new editing features, QuickTime has gained a couple of new abilities when creating a screen recording. The first of these is the ability to capture video from a chosen area of the screen, rather than having to record the entire screen and crop afterwards. When you click File > New Screen Recording, after you click the record button you’ll be prompted to either click to record the entire screen, or drag a selection to record a part of the screen.

The other new feature is the ability to have mouse clicks show up in the recorded video. When starting a new screen recording, under the drop down menu next to the record button is an option called “Show Mouse Clicks in Recording.” If you select that, any time you click the mouse during the recording, a black circle will appear around the cursor in the video.

QuickTime Player still doesn’t quite have all the features that QuickTime 7 Pro had (like the ability to open image sequences), but it’s gotten a bit closer with the addition of these new features. What are you still missing from the old version?

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To get an AVI into iTunes and then onto your iPhone, there are two methods you can use, both of which work equally well. However, both require downloading additional software.

Method One: Export from QuickTime

This method is fairly easy as you don’t have to learn to use a new program. On the other hand, I prefer to use method two below as it doesn’t take quite so long to process each file, in my case anyway. To use this method, you will need either QuickTime 7 Pro, which costs $30, or QuickTime X (part of the Snow Leopard package). You will also need to download Perian, which is a free preference pane and enables QuickTime to play AVI files, among other file types.

1. Once you’ve downloaded and installed Perian, open your AVI file using QuickTime.
2. QuickTime 7: To convert the file to a format which your iPhone recognizes, choose File > Export… then select a format from the dropdown list; MPEG-4 or iPhone are the best options to choose for this purpose. Choose where to save the new file and hit OK. QuickTime X: QuickTime X can send the file directly into iTunes, which saves a bit of time in the long run. Choose Share > iTunes… and you’ll be presented with three size options. Sometimes only iPhone will be available to select, but this is fine because that’s where we want to watch the AVI. Click Share and QuickTime will export the file directly into iTunes.
3. You only need to continue with this step if you used QuickTime 7 previously. Once your file has been exported to your hard drive, all that’s left to do is drag it into iTunes, where it will be added to your library and can be synced to your iPhone.

Method Two: Convert Using ffmpegx

As I mentioned before, I prefer this method over the other because I find it faster. Also, using specialist conversion software can get you all the customisation features of QuickTime 7, without the price tag. The application I use is ffmpegx, which is shareware, but can be downloaded for free for our purpose with no limits or expiration dates. It also offers many options for conversion, including a whole host of preset options.

1. Download and install ffmpegx and the additional files it needs to run.
2. Drag and drop your AVI file into the From box in the left pane to have ffmpegx locate and open the file.
3. Click Save As… and choose a file name and location for the converted file.
4. In the To box in the right pane, click the downward arrow to access a dropdown list of preset file options. Alternatively, use the tabs at the top of the pane to access full customisation options.
5. Click Encode and the program will do the rest. You can queue up additional files while that one is encoding if you wish.
6. When the file has been converted, drop it into iTunes to add it to your library and put it onto your iPhone.

So there you have it: two ways of adding AVI files to your iPhone. I encourage you to try out both methods to find the one which works best for your needs. Or, perhaps, if you know of a better way, post it in the comments below for everyone to try out.

Like a lot of folks out there, I run dual monitors on my Mac. In my home office where there’s no TV, it’s nice to occasionally dedicate one of the screens to playing movies while I continue working away on the other.

There’s an inherent problem in running iTunes in this kind of setup, though, that has been a thorn in my side for a long time. Specifically, the lack of advanced support for full screen playback.

The Problem

Using iTunes to watch a video in full screen on a second monitor blacks out the first monitor as well, rendering it useless. This is a problem. The primary reason people extend their desktop to a second monitor is to increase productivity by giving them more screen real estate to manage more windows and applications. Some research shows that the boost to productivity can be as much as 42 percent. Not surprisingly, that number drops to zero when you want to use iTunes to watch full screen video on one monitor while you continue to work on the other.

Quicktime addressed this problem a while ago, as did a number of other OS X video players. I’ve no idea why Apple would leave this type of functionality out of iTunes. Perhaps it’s being planned as part of some future update, perhaps they’re worried about people hooking up their HDTV and eating into the AppleTV market. Either way, while we wait for Apple to sort it all out, I threw together a little AppleScript as a workaround.

The Solution

Since Quicktime already gives us some advanced configuration options when it comes to fullscreen playback, lets take advantage of those. Open up Quicktime preferences and deselect the option to show background color on all displays, then choose the default screen you’d like to use for playback.

Download this script and add it into your ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts folder. The script simply grabs the currently selected item in iTunes, hands it off to QuickTime, and tells it to start playing the file in fullscreen mode. Once you have the script added to iTunes, open up the Keyboard Shortcuts tab in the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane and create a new shortcut for the script. Choose iTunes as the Application and in Menu Title enter the name of the script (“dualscreen” by default), then choose a shortcut.

Once that’s done, you’re all set. Just browse to and select the movie you want to play in iTunes, hit your shortcut key and AppleScript and Quicktime will take care of the rest. You’ll have beautiful full screen video on one display and on the other you’ll have all the space you want to ignore the work you should be doing but aren’t because you’re to busy watching the movie on the other screen.

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VLC media player, an open-source application from the VideoLAN project, finally reached version 1.0 today. The software had its original start back in 1996 as a school project from engineering students at the Ecole Centrale Paris (though it wasn’t released as an open source project until 2001).

Through many point releases before today, VLC has continued to expand its capabilities, offering support for HD codecs, a diverse set of file formats, live recording, AirTunes streaming and more.

Crazy Formats, Got Ya Covered!

VLC is based on FFmpeg, which means it supports a wider variety of codecs and file formats than your typical QuickTime or Windows Media Player can handle, such as MKV, Og, or FLAC. (There are, of course, alternatives, such as Perian and other plugins to add additional support to QuickTime, but VLC has some more tricks up its sleeve.)

Since it’s a packet-based player, VLC supports playing content that could be partially corrupted or is incomplete. This reason alone makes VLC a popular media player for torrent lovers. VLC is a great addition to your system and is a recommended download for switchers who are used to viewing AVI files on the PC, since the AVI container supports a myriad of codecs that are not all supported natively on the Mac platform.

The 1.0 release of VLC, codename Goldeneye, is available for both Intel and PowerPC platforms (though it does require Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6) and can be downloaded here. If you’re using Mac OS X 10.4.x or earlier, you can download the previous build of VLC, version 0.9.9a, from here.

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Adobe’s recent earnings report revealed that version 10 of its Flash Mobile framework will be available this fall. This is great news — that is, it’s great news for phones running Windows Mobile, Palm Web OS, Symbian and Android, which Flash Mobile 10 will be optimized to run on.

Just as AT&T’s logo was so obviously absent from the tethering and MMS features revealed at the WWDC keynote a couple weeks back, so is the iPhone’s lack of inclusion in the Flash Mobile announcement (slide 13).

The iPhone’s media capabilities are excellent. Obviously with iPod features, there are plenty of songs and movies that can be played by the device. But third-party applications, such as SlingPlayer and TV.com and even the included YouTube app, make it an ideal platform for Internet-based TV. I’d personally love to see a Hulu client for my iPhone, or a wider array of YouTube content available — but wishlist items like these seem to be best handled (these days) by utilizing Flash technology.

Most logically, Flash is not supported on the iPhone based on hardware capabilities/limitations. The 2G and even the 3G iPhone hardware platforms were fairly light on processing power (at least relative to the new 3G S). But the newest iPhone model is on par with Palm’s Pre and is certainly as well, if not better, equipped than many of the other smartphones on the market today. Were Apple to work with Adobe on an iPhone hardware optimized version of Flash, I believe a killer solution would be the result.

While Adobe has extended an olive branch in the past to develop for the iPhone platform (Why not? That iPhone, it’s so hot right now), Apple doesn’t seem to have jumped at the chance in the past nine months. Of course, Apple is known for not tipping its hand, but if we were going to see or hear anything on the Flash/iPhone topic, surely it would have been revealed at the WWDC this month.

One of the potential points of interest we did glean from the WWDC Keynote however, is Quicktime X. It’s feasible that Apple has neglected to play in the Flash arena because of its update to its longtime media player application. Is it possible that Quicktime X will bring new functionality that will compete with Flash? I really don’t see it happening, but the continued absence of discussion from Apple on the topic of bringing Flash to the iPhone makes me wonder.

So for now, while the iPhone 3.0 software update and the new iPhone 3G S are excellent advances to our favorite smartphones, we’ll still have to look on as other device platforms get all Flash-y.

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QuickTime has been around since well before OS X, dating back to 1991, but this old dog gets new life in the next version of the Mac OS. QuickTime X, as the new release has been named, follows the theme of Snow Leopard by incorporating both refinements and new technologies. QuickTime player has a new interface that simplifies playback and new capabilities that enhance performance and allow you to create and share video content.

Black Bezels Are the New Black

The new QuickTime X features a simplified and “uncluttered” interface for playback. The playback controls have been removed from the bottom bar and have been moved to an on-screen layer when you mouse over a video. The general effect is that you only see the black title bar in Snow Leopard and the rest of the interface disappears so you can focus your attention on the video itself. A nice little touch and I think very easy for most people that are used to the keyboard controls from previous incarnations of QuickTime Player or iTunes.

Video Killed the Radio Star

Or maybe video created the next YouTube star? In QuickTime X, the player application has been expanded to include video capture, either from the built-in webcam in your Mac or from a USB-tethered camera. QuickTime includes simple controls for trimming video so you can get just the right amount of lead-in for your next YouTube masterpiece, and then cut the lead-out just before your neighbor pops in to ask if they can borrow a cup of sugar. Just drag the yellow handles left and right to set the clip that will be exported.

Sharing these videos to YouTube, MobileMe, email, or your iTunes library is a one-click affair.

Technological Enhancements

QuickTime X is optimized for the critical HD codecs H.264 and AAC with a new foundation that should provide stutter-free playback on current computers. The player allows using hardware acceleration for H.264, which should help with HD video in that format. Also new is support for HTTP streaming, which allows QuickTime to stream content that is delivered by a web server, rather than just content from a specialized streaming server. This should help improve playback of videos from web accounts like MobileMe galleries. QuickTime X can also take advantage of new technologies in Snow Leopard like 64-bit addressing and Grand Central Dispatch to speed up performance.

Whither QuickTime Pro?

Absent from yesterday’s announcements was any mention of QuickTime X Pro. I am going to indulge my optimistic side and declare that the Pro version is no more and Apple is going to provide all the features of QuickTime Pro as part of the standard app in Snow Leopard. This is a welcome change in an age when multimedia playback, and even media creation, has been standard on the Mac platform for a good many years.

What About DVD Player?

I can’t help but wonder if DVD Player is going to get the same H.264 accelerated love from Apple, or if this feature is being folded into QuickTime Player. There is a new chapter navigation interface in QuickTime Player that would be great for DVD movies, too. Frankly, DVD Player needs to get caught up to the Blu-ray age and the H.264 improvements in QuickTime would be welcome in an HD-capable DVD Player.

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iTunes 8.2 became available for anyone and everyone with a Mac, not just developers, late yesterday. A pre-release version of the update has been available to registered iPhone developers since the release of iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 a few weeks ago, and is required for those hoping to run the 3.0 software on their Apple handheld devices. The release at this time strongly suggests that iPhone OS 3.0 will go live very soon, possibly immediately following the WWDC keynote speech taking place next week.

Aside from adding support for the upcoming firmware revision, the iTunes 8.2 update also brings the usual stability enhancements and bug fixes, including a security patch involving “itms:” links used to open iTunes locations from the web. Parsing the URLs could lead to a stack overflow or arbitrary code execution, which would allow an attacker to completely take over the iTunes process.

QuickTime 7.6.2, which became available alongside the iTunes update, also patches security flaws…10, in fact, all of which involve crashes or arbitrary code execution resulting from viewing malicious content.

A third update, GarageBand 5.0.2, improves the artist lesson purchasing experience, and allows access to installed jam packs in the loop browser. As with most Apple updates, it also includes various security fixes and bug squashes.

The iTunes update has arrived a little early, considering Apple has yet to release or announce the official release date of iPhone OS 3.0, but it’s probably just being smart about a major software update and spacing things out so that its servers can better handle the load when the millions of iPhone users rush to download the firmware revision at the same time. Hopefully, by staging releases, it will avoid the kind of frustrating experiences that accompanied the release of iPhone firmware 2.0 last year.

Some users are already reporting issues with the new updates, including odd behavior from iPhones running the latest firmware beta and iTunes 8.2 final, and a bug wherein a considerable number of songs went missing from one person’s library.

I actually have yet to install the iTunes 8.2 update. While the other updates show up for me without issue, I can’t get Software Update to find the iTunes update. I thought maybe this was because I had the latest pre-release version already installed, but others with the beta seem to have been able to install. My MacBook, which hasn’t been updated with the latest test build, detected and installed the new version without problem. Let us know if you’re having any issues with any of these updates.

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Snow Leopard is starting to settle down into a relatively stable piece of software that will likely resemble the final release version, according to Engadget. Some speculate that it could receive retail release alongside iPhone OS 3.0 as soon as WWDC, which takes place in early June.

Like iPhone OS 3.0, Apple is now giving developers the go-ahead to develop Snow Leopard-specific apps without fear of major feature changes or revisions, since they just announced that the operating system’s APIs are now frozen. That should also mean that the feature list we’re seeing reported now from devs with access to the Snow Leopard beta is an accurate representation of what the new OS will ship with.

Some of the highly popularized features of Snow Leopard are the inclusion of QuickTime X, the long awaited update to the resident OS X media player software that will finally take it beyond version 7.xx. Another recent addition is Chinese character handwriting input recognition, a feature it borrows from its portable cousin, and a finished version of the Grand Central architecture, which lets devs use multiple processor cores without necessarily having the advanced programming knowledge usually required.

MacRumors points out yet another new feature they’ve spotted, which is the ability to access HFS+ formatted drives in Windows using drivers built into the new version of Boot Camp that will ship with Snow Leopard. The only people not pleased about that are probably the developers of MacDrive, a third-party Windows program which currently allows you to do the very same thing, but for a price. So long as Apple includes drivers for accessing NTFS drives in OS X, the circle will finally be complete.

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For years, Mac users have been annoyed by Apple’s refusal to just give in and offer these features as part of the free version of QuickTime that packages with OS X. Perhaps most useful among these features, at least for most users, is the “Save” function that allows you to download QuickTime files that you’ve played from your browser, including movie trailers and other content normally locked away on the web.

According to MacRumors, Apple may have finally decided that the time is right for the Pro features of QuickTime to come without a price tag. That’s because users working with the latest Snow Leopard builds are reporting that all the features are enabled out of the box, so to speak. No more grayed-out menu items with little, teasing “Pro” icons next to them, trying to make you feel inferior.

This is a great move on Apple’s part, if it makes it through to Snow Leopard’s full release. Even though I argue above that most people don’t generally miss the Pro features, they are definitely very nice to have when and if you find yourself needing them. My favorite use is to save and replay later for others HD movie trailers and Apple ads, so really they’re only helping themselves and their partners by helping more people do that for free. Let’s hope they don’t go and lock it down again when Snow Leopard goes retail.

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Get ready QuickTime junkies — Apple is taking care of you. If you check Software Update, you’ll notice a new flavor of QuickTime is available today.

From Apple’s support document, here is what we can expect in this update.

Video:

• Improves single-pass H.264 encoding quality
• Increases the playback reliability of Motion JPEG media

Audio:

• Improves AAC encoding fidelity
• Audio tracks from MPEG video files now export consistently

Application Support:

• Improves compatibility with iChat and Photo Booth

You can download the new version right now via Software Update. Just note that you’ll have to Restart upon completion of installation, as QuickTime is a system component.

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