Quicktime - Metafiles/Playlists

Metafiles are typically text files that contain instructions for a media player application. Metafiles typically tell the browser which media player application to launch. They can also point to the clip(s) to be played. For this reason, reference movies and playlists are considered types of metafiles. There are two types of text files that you can use to create metafiles/playlists for QuickTime: RTSPtext and QuickTime Media Links.

RTSPtext

QuickTime supports RTSPtext metafiles. The simplest RTSPtext file is a reference movie file. This file contains just a URL of the clip to be played. For example:

This file must be saved with a .mov extension (i.e. cliprtsptext.mov).

QuickTime Media Link (.qtl)

You can also create a reference movie for Quicktime creating a Quicktime Media Link (.qtl) file. There are two ways to do this. If you have Quicktime Pro, you can export media links (.qtl files) by following these directions:

1. Open the movie you want to link to in the QuickTime Player.
   
   
2. Select Export from the File menu in QuickTime Player.
   
   
3. Choose Movie to QuickTime Media Link.
   
   
4. You can either click Save, which creates an XML file with the default settings, or click the Options button to specify the settings yourself.

If you do not have Quicktime Pro, you can modify the code below as needed. Save it into a text file with a .qtl extension and link to it from your website.

For more information on QuickTime Media Links, see Apple's reference page.

Binary Reference Movies

QuickTime also supports binary reference movies that can only be created with Apple's MakeRefMovie application (only available for OS X). MakeRefMovie allows for more capabilities and options than RTSPtext and .qtl files. Please see our tutorial on MakeRefMovie for more information.