For a preconference tutorial, I chose to go to the Quicktime Pro (QT Pro) seminar, partly because I have been working with a lot of video material lately. The thing I like about Quicktime Pro is that it has a lot of basic functionality (trimming, extraction, rencoding, captioning, etc) but it costs only $30. I’m not a video professional, but I do sometimes have to go in do some basic media edits. From a budget point of view, it’s much easier to justify a license for QT Pro than say for Premiere or Final Cut Pro (although I hear there is Final Cut Express out there….)
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In addition to the basics edits, I learned some interesting tricks. As I was so recently reminded, video takes up a heck of a lot of file space, so anything you can do to reduce file space is always a plus. One auch application was a basic slideshow which is basically a built-in script to show a series of JPEGs. The file then is only slightly larger than the sum of the JPEGs – very handy.
I also learned a whole lot about the mechanics of captioning. I’ll still leave captioning to the experts, but for a quick fix, know that you may only need to adjust a text file and reimport it could be very handy down the road.
I understand that QT Pro also uses sprites to support custom skins, interactive buttons and so forth. Our instructor even mentioned a solitaire game. QT Pro won’t be replacing Flash anytime soon, but at $29.95, it may be a very handy tool for some instructional designers with serious budget issues.