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iMovie + iDVD
Borderless Quicktime Movies
July 02, 2007
Recently I read on Murphy Mac about how to create your own Quicktime skin. This is basically a border to go around your movie to replace the normal Quicktime window.
The thing I found more interesting than the skins though is that you can use the same idea to create a borderless Quicktime movie. What's even better is that you can make borderless movies with the regular Quicktime that comes with your Mac, unlike skins that require the extra features Quicktime Pro ($30 from the Apple Store).
Murphy Mac has a great screencast about creating Quicktime skins, but luckily it is a lot easier to create a borderless movie. It involves creating an image file and a text file to go with your movie, and then combining all three files into one borderless movie.
The first step is to find the dimensions of your movie. Double-click it to open it in Quicktime and press Command-I or choose "Show Movie Info" from the Window menu. The Movie Info window will show you the "Normal Size" of the movie in pixels. Make a note of this size.
Now you will need to crop it down to the size of your movie. Double-click on it to open it up in Preview. Here you can make a selection by holding the Option key and dragging a rectangle. Notice that a small box appears, telling you the size of the selection. You can keep adjusting the selection until you get it the same size as your movie. When you are done, Press Command-K or choose Crop from the Tools menu. Choose Save As from the File menu and save it in the same folder as your movie. Give it a name like "black.png".
The next step is to load up TextEdit and type the following lines:
Replace "movie-name.mov" with the actual name of your movie. Press Command-Shift-T or choose "Make Plain Text" from the Format menu and then choose Save As from the File menu. Here's the strange part - put the file name as "borderless.mov". Yes, that's a .mov file extension on a text file instead of .txt. Save it in the same folder as the black image file and the movie file. Now when you double-click on borderless.mov, it will load up as a borderless movie! Simply hit the space bar to play and pause.
Obviously it is a bit annoying to have three separate files to achieve this. The good news is that you can combine them into one file, but the bad news is that it requires Quicktime Pro ($30).
If you have Quicktime Pro, you can do this by choosing Save As from the File menu with the borderless movie open. Choose a file name and make sure you save it as a "self-contained movie", not a reference movie. The resulting file will still work fine if you delete the other files or move them about, meaning you can send it in emails or over the internet.
Murphy Mac has a great screencast about creating Quicktime skins, but luckily it is a lot easier to create a borderless movie. It involves creating an image file and a text file to go with your movie, and then combining all three files into one borderless movie.
The first step is to find the dimensions of your movie. Double-click it to open it in Quicktime and press Command-I or choose "Show Movie Info" from the Window menu. The Movie Info window will show you the "Normal Size" of the movie in pixels. Make a note of this size.
Next, you will need to create a solid back image that is the same size as your movie. There are lots of ways of doing this, but here's a method that should be available to everyone. Download this image to your hard drive by clicking one the link and then choosing Save As from the File menu. Basically its a really big black rectangle.
The next step is to load up TextEdit and type the following lines:
<?xml version="1.0"?><?quicktime type="application/x-qtskin"?><skin><movie src="movie-name.mov"/><contentregion src="black.png"/><dragregion src="black.png"/></skin>Obviously it is a bit annoying to have three separate files to achieve this. The good news is that you can combine them into one file, but the bad news is that it requires Quicktime Pro ($30).
If you have Quicktime Pro, you can do this by choosing Save As from the File menu with the borderless movie open. Choose a file name and make sure you save it as a "self-contained movie", not a reference movie. The resulting file will still work fine if you delete the other files or move them about, meaning you can send it in emails or over the internet.
Now why would you want to do this I hear you ask? Honestly, there's no big reason apart from your movie will take up a bit less space and look a whole load cooler!
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Ditch DVD menus
April 29, 2007
In iDVD it is possible to create a DVD that jumps straight into the movie without a menu that displays all the "Play Movie" and "Scene Selection" type options.
This is useful if you just have a single movie without chapters where the only option on the menu would be a rather pointless "Play Movie". It's also great for if you want to play a DVD in a kiosk and just have it loop over and over.
Start by launching iDVD from the Applications folder. Create a new project then click on the DVD map button, located right next to the Play button. In the map that appears, there is a box that says "Drag content here to automatically play when the disc is inserted". This area is normally used for the trailers and copyright messages, but you can just as easily drag your whole movie here.
Now the menu will only appear after the movie has finished. You can set an option here to play the movie again, or alternatively you can cut out the menu completely by setting the movie to loop.
Do this by clicking on your movie in the map view and choosing Loop Movie from the Advanced Menu. Burn your movie as usual. Now when you put the disc into a DVD player or your Mac, your movie will automatically play over and over again.
This is useful if you just have a single movie without chapters where the only option on the menu would be a rather pointless "Play Movie". It's also great for if you want to play a DVD in a kiosk and just have it loop over and over.
Start by launching iDVD from the Applications folder. Create a new project then click on the DVD map button, located right next to the Play button. In the map that appears, there is a box that says "Drag content here to automatically play when the disc is inserted". This area is normally used for the trailers and copyright messages, but you can just as easily drag your whole movie here.
Now the menu will only appear after the movie has finished. You can set an option here to play the movie again, or alternatively you can cut out the menu completely by setting the movie to loop.
Do this by clicking on your movie in the map view and choosing Loop Movie from the Advanced Menu. Burn your movie as usual. Now when you put the disc into a DVD player or your Mac, your movie will automatically play over and over again.
Stop Rippling in iMovie
July 30, 2006
Rippling is a type of editing that moves all clips along if you insert another clip before it in the timeline. This also means that if you trim a clip, all affected clips will move along to fill the space created. By default, iMovie ripples clips.
To temporarily stop rippling from happening, hold down the Command key while doing an edit. This will stop all other clips from moving, so any gap you create in the timeline will appear as blank space.
If you want to extend a clip and trim the next one along, you can do this in one process by disabling rippling. Hold down the Command key and drag one clip over the next one along. Normally this would push the next clip along, but with rippling disabled, it overwrites that portion of the underlying clip.
To temporarily stop rippling from happening, hold down the Command key while doing an edit. This will stop all other clips from moving, so any gap you create in the timeline will appear as blank space.
If you want to extend a clip and trim the next one along, you can do this in one process by disabling rippling. Hold down the Command key and drag one clip over the next one along. Normally this would push the next clip along, but with rippling disabled, it overwrites that portion of the underlying clip.
iDVD Tips
July 01, 2006