Should I buy QuickTime PRO?

[midiw]

Is there any huge benefit or value to purchasing QUICKTIME PRO ?

If so what is the benefit over the standard QuickTime that comes with TIGER or PANTHER?

And, if I do purchase the current version for TIGER is it usable in PANTHER ?

[Shooshie]

Quicktime Pro 7.0 is the best version of Quicktime ever. For once, I finally feel glad that I spent the $30. (This is about the 5th time I've done that)

It is a professional-grade application now. It has a LOT more features in the interface, the movie properties window (huge improvements there!), and the editing features. They don't tell you about it, but now you get a great keyset for selecting down to the exact frame you want. Using the "I" and "O" keys to mark your "In" and "Out" points while playing your movie, you can then go back and click on a selection marker and use the arrow keys to move it frame-by-frame. No more carefully mousing along, trying to find that exact frame. (By the way, the selection starts on the first frame selected, and the NON-selection starts on the last frame selected. It's the inclusive-exclusive thing... the last marker marks the first frame of the rest of the movie, or the first frame "out" of the selection.)

The playback controls are greatly improved, and now you get a disappearing control panel for full-screen mode.

Of course, I'm not even mentioning the fact that the CODEC itself is dramatically improved. Quicktime videos are now sharper, more compact, and better streaming than ever before--by a factor of about 4 or something like that. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong about that)

Yes, QT 7.0 Pro is the best ever, and you immediately realize the improvements. I highly recommend it.

Shooshie

[Timeline]

I use it for quick audio file conversion.

My trigger needs aiff so it's handy for that but I use the previous version and have not upgraded to 7.x. I would like to know if you can edit a sound bite like you can video.

[sdfalk]

Worth every penny

[m2]

Is there any huge benefit or value to purchasing QUICKTIME PRO ?

If so what is the benefit over the standard QuickTime that comes with TIGER or PANTHER?

On the G5 we needed to use a Firewire device to output picture to replace the Aurora Fuse card which I had used in my G4s. QT Pro is a great and inexpensive way to convert any type of QT/.mov into the .dv stream that is neede for Firewire. QT pro is only like 30.00USD and is a download you can do in about 5 mins.

Aurora dosen't have a driver that supports OSX. [Not theie fault - Apple's] So I had to get a ADV-100 Firewire box to output picture.

[Morpheo]

Originally posted by m2:

Aurora dosen't have a driver that supports OSX. [Not theie fault - Apple's] So I had to get a ADV-100 Firewire box to output picture.

Why is it Apple's fault ? Drivers are not made by Apple. I don't particularly disagree, I'm just wondering.

[pastiche27]

if your into post production it is a must.... no more sharing WMP9 surround files ... YEAH!

surround - a must! bounce to quicktme movie is working great now . only for 5.1 sound though ;-( more soon to come i hope . the codec alløws up to 24 channels

im still trying to figure out if i can stream 5.1 or not .. anybody know?

[mhschmieder]

I hope no one minds a complete idiot asking what Quicktime Pro gives you over Quicktime or iTunes, regarding audio editing, audio conversion, etc. I know next to nothing about video technology as I have never owned any (I am strictly a still photographer, and rarely even go to movies much less own a television, VCR, Camcorder, etc.).

No problem if people are discussing video here vs. audio, but I'm bewildered by all the terms in this discussion and am wondering what I'm missing. Quicktime Pro is a very good price so I'm just trying to figure out how it would fit into the production workflow of an audio project.

I am doing soundtrack work for local independent movie makers, but these are all low budget deals that don't involve SMPTC time syncing, frame-level editing of audio to match visual scenes, etc. I will eventually need to get more sophisticated in this area if I move up in the soundtrack world, but at the moment I'm just trying to get over my confusion about what Quicktime Pro does.

I was confused enough when my iMac came with DVD Player, iDVD, iMovie and Quicktime. And I'm still not 100% clear on where their purposes divide. Not to mention whether DP is the best place to do frame-level editing of audio to match video, if I ever rise to that level of soundtrack work.

[chrispick]

Originally posted by Mark Schmieder:
I hope no one minds a complete idiot asking what Quicktime Pro gives you over Quicktime or iTunes, regarding audio editing, audio conversion, etc. I know next to nothing about video technology as I have never owned any (I am strictly a still photographer, and rarely even go to movies much less own a television, VCR, Camcorder, etc.).

No problem if people are discussing video here vs. audio, but I'm bewildered by all the terms in this discussion and am wondering what I'm missing. Quicktime Pro is a very good price so I'm just trying to figure out how it would fit into the production workflow of an audio project.

I am doing soundtrack work for local independent movie makers, but these are all low budget deals that don't involve SMPTC time syncing, frame-level editing of audio to match visual scenes, etc. I will eventually need to get more sophisticated in this area if I move up in the soundtrack world, but at the moment I'm just trying to get over my confusion about what Quicktime Pro does.

I was confused enough when my iMac came with DVD Player, iDVD, iMovie and Quicktime. And I'm still not 100% clear on where their purposes divide. Not to mention whether DP is the best place to do frame-level editing of audio to match video, if I ever rise to that level of soundtrack work.

Hopefully, this'll set you straight on Quicktime Pro: Apple site on QT Pro

In short, Quicktime Pro will give you greater video editorial abilities than standard Quicktime. It'll also give you some other nice A/V goodies. It's handy for truncating and/or "low-rez-ing" clips -- something helpful when importing video in DP for scoring.

Hell, it's 30 bucks. Dive in.

[mhschmieder]

Thanks; that clears a lot of things up. So rather than exporting DP material to QT it's the other way around, for less CPU drain while syncing music to video. And QT Pro itself will come in handy on its own for completing a video demo of my cover band.

Visiting the Apple link crashed my Firefox browser and brought my WinXP box to a standstill, when I tried to print the webpage. This is repeatable . Maybe when I try this at home on my iMac it'll work.

I find DVD-Player cumbersome and don't know why it is the default vs. QT when you load a DVD. This is why I'm still confused about overlap of the four products. I thought iMovie and iDVD were primarily for editing and creating content. QT only seems to pop up if I double-click on a MIDI file (unless it was saved directly from DP, of course). I have an OS 9 third-party app called "Type Changer" which doesn't work on OS X and I never boot in OS 9 anymore. Is this all related to Apple's bizarre "app creator" attribute and how it's dealt with?

It looks to me like QT Pro would be a nicer app for viewing DVD's than DVD-Player.

[BKK-OZ]

Originally posted by pastiche27:
if your into post production it is a must.... no more sharing WMP9 surround files ... YEAH!

surround - a must! bounce to quicktme movie is working great now . only for 5.1 sound though ;-( more soon to come i hope . the codec alløws up to 24 channels

im still trying to figure out if i can stream 5.1 or not .. anybody know?

sorry, can't answer your question, but can you confirm what I understand about your post, - do you mean that DP's new QT bounce feature supports a clean output of 5.1 AIFF files synced to a .mov file?

[chrispick]

Originally posted by Mark Schmieder:
This is why I'm still confused about overlap of the four products. I thought iMovie and iDVD were primarily for editing and creating content. QT only seems to pop up if I double-click on a MIDI file (unless it was saved directly from DP, of course).

You're correct; iMovie and iDVD are primarily content creation apps.

In case you don't know: You should be able to right-click over file and get an option window giving you all apps that can open the file (provided the OS is wise to that info). That way, you're not stuck with default apps.

Right-click capability is so handy. Why doesn't DP incorporate it?

I know this is sort of a running bitch of mine, but you can absorb so many of an app's lesser-apparent features so much faster once you learn to right-click over any-and-everything to see what menu items pop up. Your hand's already on the mouse anyway.

<small>[ July 15, 2005, 05:29 PM: Message edited by: heavypick ]</small>

[sdfalk]

I know this is sort of a running bitch of mine, but you can absorb so many of an app's lesser-apparent features so much faster once you learn to right-click over any-and-everything to see what menu items pop up. Your hand's already on the mouse anyway.

Keep bitching (seriously)
I've sent some emails to Motu on the very same
subject.
It's one of the very few gripes I have about DP
in fact is its' lack of contextual menus.
Back to our regularly scheduled program.

[BKK-OZ]

anyone know of a way of getting QTpro without a credit card?

seems to be the only way that Apple will accept payment, and I gave up my cc ages ago now...

[pastiche27]

bkk - yes you can bounce a 5.1 surround file to a quicktime movie using dp 4.6 . it is working great but you will have to update to os10.4.2 for it to work correctly .