Quicktime - Using MakeRefMovie
Creating a reference movie for QuickTime files.
When using QuickTime, it is possible to prepare several different versions of a movie, set at different rates, and QuickTime will detect which version to use. The reference movie will point back at several versions of the same movie and QuickTime can figure out which is the best version to play based on connection speed.
To create a reference movie:
- Download MakeRefMovie. If you have a Mac, download from here. If you want to run it from Windows, download from here. These are free downloads from Apple.
- Create your alternate data rate movies and upload them to the streaming media server.
- Open MakeRefMovie and save the file, using the .mov extension.
- Go to Movie, Add URL and add the URL to a version of the movie. You can add multiple URLs.
- You can specify which movie should have the highest priority and speed rate.
- Save the reference movie.
- Upload the reference movie to your web server or WebCT. Then create an HTML page with a link that points to the reference movie and upload it to your web server or WebCT. When the link is chosen, it will make a connection to the streaming server and select the correct version based on connection speed.
For further information, go to the Reference Movie Tutorial on the Apple site.
