This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Working with Custom Skins
You can use skins in QuickTime Pro to control the user experience, displaying your movies in custom windows instead of the default QuickTime Pro window. But QuickTime Pro skins let you do more than just decorate the player window: You can create custom controls and, because QuickTime Pro is fully scriptable, you can create interactive environments that match the look and feel of your content.
You will need to create the custom graphics for your skins in an application like Adobe Photoshop, and you will need to wire custom controls in an application like LiveStage Pro.
Follow these steps to add a skin to your movie:
- Create the skin graphic and the two mask files in Photoshop.
- Create a transparent window where the video will play.
- Open both the source movie and the skin graphic in QuickTime Pro.
- Select the skin and choose Edit > Select All.
- Choose Edit > Copy.
- Select the source movie and choose Edit > Add to Selection & Scale.
- With the source movie selected, choose Window > Show Movie Properties.
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- To adjust the position and scale of the source movie track, select it in the Properties window and use the Transformation controls to make the adjustments.
- Save the movie as a new, self-contained file by choosing File > Save As. For this example, name the new movie Framed.mov.
- Open a text editing program and create a new plain-text document. Then enter the information shown here:
- Save the text document, but be sure to replace the .txt file extension with .mov. For this example, name the file SkinXML.mov.
- Open the SkinXML.mov file in QuickTime Pro.
- Save the movie as a self-contained file by choosing File > Save As. Choosing this command saves all media references by SkinXML.mov in one file.
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