QuickTime Kit Programming Guide - filibeto.org

C H A P T E R 6
Adding Multimedia Playback Capability
In this chapter, you’ll add multimedia playback to your QTKitPlayer, working with the tools available
to you in Interface Builder and Xcode 2.0. The goal is, as in previous chapters, to build on the code
you’ve written and the interface you’ve constructed, so that you can enhance the capabilities of the
QTKitPlayer—with a minimum of programming effort.
When completed, the results will be dramatic and visually exciting: a multimedia playback engine
capable of simultaneously playing in real time as many as six different QuickTime movies, QuickTime
VR panoramas and object movies, streaming audio and video, animation and wired sprite movies,
and other content that QuickTime can import and display. The user experience will be enhanced and
require some degree of interactivity with the multimedia content that is displayed. Just controlling
multichannel sound or interactive VR movies will alter the user experience.
Note: Multimedia is an often misused term, with different meanings, implied or otherwise. To
developers of digital media, “multimedia is defined by a set of standards that enable media to be
acquired, represented, compressed, delivered and displayed,” according to Phillip John McKerrow,
a computer scientist and teacher of multimedia programming, in a recent article in the journal IEEE
Multimedia. “For a production to be considered multimedia it must include a provision for the user
to interact with the content and influence the course of the presentation.”
In the completed project, you’ll add a new menu title, Studio, to the QTKitPlayer and a menu item,
Present Movies. You’ll also add code to open and display all six QuickTime movies in a window,
with multiple—and resizable—views of each movie.
Clicking a button in the Play Multimedia Content window will open a dialog box from which users
will be able to select any movie or media type of their choice (Figure 6-1). After each movie is chosen,
a new dialog box appears, prompting the user for another selection until the user has populated the
window with all six QuickTime movies, as shown in Figure 6-2.
2005-11-09 | © 2004, 2005 Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
99