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Interactive QuickTime Authoring, Part 4
There's QuickTime Authoring Built Into What?
Have you ever been to one of those diners, maybe a greasy dive on the side of the highway, that has some variation of the time-honored slogan, "come for the (whatever you came for), stay for the (whatever they want you to stay for)" plastered on their roadside sign? You know, like, "come for the pie, stay for the down-home atmosphere," or "come for the chili, stay for the only bathrooms for 200 miles in any direction because you just had the chili." That particular bit of good ol' American kitsch kept running through my mind as I looked over Adobe's GoLive 6, but with a geeky twist: "Come for the visual site editing, stay for the QuickTime authoring." There are probably very few, if any, users who will end up buying GoLive 6 solely for it's built-in interactive QuickTime editor, but it's definitely a useful feature makes GoLive worth a serious look if you're in the market for a visual site editor.
What It Does
Admittedly, this part of our ongoing series on interactive QuickTime authoring will probably be one of the more superficial efforts we put out, if for no other reason than the fact that we're effectively going to ignore approximately 98.643% of GoLive 6's features and focus on the whatever percentage is left over that constitutes the QuickTime authoring capabilities. I mean, after all, GoLive's primary raison d'etre, as the Russians would say, is to serve as a visual site editor. Plus, GoLive's QuickTime authoring environment is very similar to another product we've previously covered, LiveStage Professional, so I'm going to do a bit of the shameless self-promotion I love so much and point you at Part 3 of this series. What's particularly relevant in that feature is the overview of the various QuickTime tracks LSP gives you access to, because GoLive's track-based interface (fig. 1) is very much the same. Now, that's not to say that if you go ahead and slap your cash down for GoLive that you're going to be able to put together QuickTime movies with all the bells and whistles LiveStage Pro has, but the underlying concepts and the way each program is set up are comparable. So go on; I'll wait.
Figure 1: The GoLive QuickTime authoring interface.
How It Uses QuickTime
Now that you're back from brushing up on LSP like I oh-so-politely asked you to, let's review what GoLive gives you in the QuickTime department. First, as I already mentioned, is the authoring environment. Let's take a look around, shall we?
In GoLive, you work with QuickTime content by either creating a new movie (through the New Special menu), or simply by opening an existing QuickTime movie and working from there. GoLive shows you the movie on a tabbed stage (fig. 2). The first tab allows you to preview the movie as it would appear in the QuickTime Player application, while the second tab is where you can position and size your tracks by dragging them around. You'll also probably notice that GoLive works directly with native .mov files (rather than an intermediate, proprietary project file type from which you build your movie later), so it's worth warning you that it's entirely possible to cause some real screwups to movies you might otherwise wish to keep pristine.
Figure 2: The stage window, which offers a tabbed interface.
Once you have your blank (or not-so-blank, as the case may be) canvas to work from, you'll probably want to add some tracks to your movie. GoLive has quite conveniently provided a QuickTime button on its object panel, where various icons represent the various types of QuickTime tracks GoLive offers access to (fig. 3). Tracks are added to the movie either by double clicking their associated icon or by dragging an icon directly into the Timeline window.
Figure 3: QuickTime authoring gets its very own button in GoLive's object panel.
And speaking of the Timeline (fig. 4), I might as well explain what you do there. As soon as you have some tracks on the stage, you can use the timeline to adjust how long each track plays, where each track shows up in the movie, organize the layering order, add/delete/change/reorder samples (for track types that support samples, such as the Image track), add markers, and access the play controls for the movie. It's all pretty straightforward, and users already familiar with After Effects or even LiveMotion will be pretty comfortable in GoLive's Timeline window.
Figure 4: GoLive's Timeline window. Well, part of it, anyway.
Now, let's move over to the Inspector (fig. 5), where you'll go when it's time to fine-tune track parameters. The Inspector is a context-sensitive panel, meaning that it provides access to different controls based on what type of track you have selected on the stage or in the Timeline window (fig. 6). And since a series on interactive QuickTime authoring wouldn't be much good without mentioning how you would add actual interactivity to your movies, the Inspector is also the panel where you can wire up sprites, Flash movies, and other triggers to actually provide some measure of user control. Interaction is added through a simple behavior panel (fig. 7), and while GoLive's wiring features aren't nearly as complete as the full QScript environment you'll find in LiveStage Professional, there's a nice set of canned functions that actually give you pretty flexible control over the interactive parts of your movies.
Figure 5: The Inspector. (Let's see...Gadget, Clouseau, any others? Let's make a game of it.)
Figure 6: Selecting a different track will make the Inspector automagically reflect the options for that particular track.
Figure 7: GoLive's QuickTime behaviors are pretty easy to add, and give you quite a few options as far as interactivity goes.
The second, but less unique, piece of GoLive's QuickTime puzzle is the ability to interface with Apple's QuickTime browser plug-in. Frankly, this feature isn't any better or worse at writing all the object and embed HTML code you'll need than its competitors, so the token mention and a quick overview will definitely suffice here. Back in main tab of the Object panel, you'll see that QuickTime has it's very own icon (fig. 8), so adding a QuickTime movie to a web page is as simple as clicking and dragging. Once you've got the QuickTime placeholder in your page, you can then use the Inspector to set all of the various QuickTime-specific plug-in parameters (fig. 9) so the page displays the movie just the way you want.
Figure 8: The QuickTime plug-in icon, highlighted for your viewing pleasure.
Figure 9: Ooh...lots of options for the plug-in.
So Now What?
While not the most efficient interface for authoring interactive QuickTime content, GoLive's QuickTime features nonetheless fit into the existing workflow and interface pretty well. If you're already familiar with GoLive, it's not much of a stretch to begin making some relatively complex interactive QuickTime movies. If you're one of those who happen to be in the market for a visual site editor, the QuickTime authoring features GoLive offers may be what makes the sell for you, since I'm not aware of any other similar program that has this feature. In any event, as always, I encourage you to go online grab the fully functional, 30-day demo of GoLive at Adobe's web site and find out for yourself.
NEXT TIME - Part 5: QuickTime Authoring and Macromedia's 800 lb. Gorilla
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