This information was obtained from http://quicktime.apple.com/dev/devweb.html#convert and has been modified to add Claris Home Page 2.0 specific information.

Converting QuickTime Movies for the Internet

NOTE: DO NOT use Internet Movie Tool on QuickTime VR movies or information might be lost. Use QTVRPlayer instead. See below.

The Internet Movie Tool prepares QuickTime movies to be readable by all platforms and to enable the use of the QuickTime Plugin's "fast-start" feature.

• Internet Movie Tool "flattens" the file by taking any information that may be located in the resource fork and copying it to the data fork so that all computer platforms may be able to access the data.
• Internet Movie Tool also moves certain information (meta data) from the rear of the file to the font of the file so that the QuickTime Plugin has access to this data before the file is completely read. (Needed for the fast-start feature.)

How to convert a QuickTime movie:

1. Launch Internet Movie Tool.
2. Select a movie from the dialog box, and click on "Open" to convert the movie.
3. Convert more movies, or click cancel to quit.
4. To insert a QuickTime movie in Claris Home Page, place your cursor in your document where you would like the movie to be inserted. Choose QuickTime Movie... from the Insert menu. Select the converted movie in the dialog. To change attributes of the movie (whether the Controller is visible, etc.), use the Object Editor.

Flattening QuickTime VR Movies

QuickTime VR movies should be "flattened" for use on the Internet so they will be readable by all platforms. This is easily accomplished with the QTVRPlayer.

How to flatten and embed a QTVR movie:

1. Launch QTVRPlayer.
2. Select "Open" from the "File" menu.
3. Select a movie from the dialog box, and click on "Open."
4. Select "Save as" from the "File" menu.
5. A dialog box appears. Check the box "Playable on non-Apple Computers." If this selection is grayed-out, the movie has already been flattened.
6. Type in a new name for the movie. For best compatibility the name should end in the suffix ".mov".

   BUG Warning: Never use "Save as" to save the file to the same name when choosing "Playable on non-Apple Computers" or data will be lost.

7. Click on the "Save" button.
8. Convert more movies, or click cancel to quit.
9. To insert a QuickTime movie in Claris Home Page, place your cursor in your document where you would like the movie to be inserted. Choose QuickTime Movie... from the Insert menu. Select the converted movie in the dialog. To change attributes of the movie (whether the Controller is visible, etc.), use the Object Editor.
10. Test your flattened QTVR movie for satisfactory playback.

Creating QuickTime Content for the Internet

There is a big difference between QuickTime movies that work well over the Internet and the QuickTime movies you may be used to seeing on CD-ROMs. This section explains the reasons for the difference and some tips and tricks you can use to optimize your movies for playback over the internet.

Many people still have 14.4 or 28.8 modem links to the Internet. A 28.8 modem can download a movie at about 2.5 kBytes per second maximum, so a 10 second, 500k movie can take several minutes to download.

Even if you are creating content for an intranet-only T1 or T3 connection you will find yourself limited by bandwidth. A T1 line can transfer about 100K per second so under the best conditions, a 500k movie may appear almost instantly - but in practice anything more than 50Kps is tremendously unlikely, and 10Kps is much more realistic).

Unfortunately, digital video movies tend to be large. A typical 30-second sound and video QuickTime movie designed for CD-ROM delivery can be several megabytes in size and can take minutes to download even over a fast connection.

As a webmaster you don't want to keep your audience waiting or overload your site. So if you have existing content prepared for CD-ROM delivery, you will want to take short clips of the movie and probably re-compress them at a smaller size and lower data rate. A good tool for this purpose is Movie Cleaner Pro 1.2, available from Terran interactive (http://www.terran-int.com/). Movie Cleaner Pro has built-in setting for compressing movies for transmitting over the internet and pre-processing features (such as adaptive noise reduction) that make movies look better at low data-rates.

The QuickTime plug-in can play many kinds of QuickTime movies. It currently supports all Quicktime 2.1 track types, including text tracks, MIDI tracks etc. Using these kinds of movies, you can add compelling features to your pages without significantly affecting the time they take to download. Some examples:

• Background music - import a standard MIDI file into QuickTime using Movie Player and save it as a QuickTime movie (make sure you select the "Make movie self contained" and "Playable on non-Apple computers" options) . The resulting file will be very small and can be used with the looping and autoplay settings to act as background music for your page. Animation - You can use any of the numerous QuickTime movie editing applications, or use Movie Player for simple editing. Many animation tools such as Cinemation 1.1 allow you to you to create animations and save them as QuickTime movies. QuickTime VR - QuickTime VR Objects and Panoramas can be relatively small and highly compelling.

If you really want to put a large movie up on your site for download, it's best not to embed the movie directly on the page. Rather, save a frame of the movie as a PICT using Movie Player, convert it to GIF and use that image as a map to the actual movie. Or make a postage size short clip of the movie with a "download fullsize" option.

Finally, try not to put too many movies on a single page. The download times add up and this can keep users with modems waiting.

Known Bugs and Limitations

- MACE audio compression is not supported by QuickTime for Windows. Audio-only moves compressed by MACE will crash QuickTime and you will have to reboot your system.

- There is a slight inconsistency with traditional HTML syntax and the EMBED tag. The syntax is EMBED SRC="movie.mov" WIDTH=xxx HEIGHT=yyy - do not put quotes around the values for xxx and yyy, even though according to strict HTML syntax you should be able to do so.

For More Information

Direct your Plug-in feedback and bugs to: Plug-in Feedback ( http://130.43.6.7 )

General QuickTime support for both Mac and Windows is available at http://www.info.apple.com where you can find both discussion groups and FAQs.