Introduction

Not many years ago, the process of video production and editing was mainly the preserve of an exclusive priesthood of professionals working with expensive equipment, and even more expensive software, usually in the hallowed studios of television and movie production companies. How things have changed! It seems that almost anyone with a handheld DV camera and a home computer is now an aspiring video editor, capable of transforming those hours of insipid poolside footage (you know the kind: little Jack on the waterslide; little Jill on the waterslide; Jack going down the waterslide head-first, upside-down, backwards; Jack being ejected by the pool attendant ) into gripping hour-long episodes peppered with special video effects and captions. Millions of grandparents will happily attest to the soporific effects of their output.

While dramatically lowered hardware size and cost have undoubtedly contributed to this democratization of video production, advances in video-editing software have been no less significant. In recent years Apple has led the way, both with its professional-grade, yet affordable Final Cut Pro and, at a more basic level, with iMovie, the home video-editing package. It shouldn t come as a surprise to learn that both of these applications draw heavily upon QuickTime.

While few of us will aspire to creating video production applications as sophisticated as these, the underlying video creation and editing capabilities of QuickTime do provide a powerful platform for developing both commercial and in-house content production applications. In this chapter we examine the editing and content...