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MPEG Compression in QuickTime

Q What hardware and software are required to compress and save a QuickTime movie using MPEG?

A At present, QuickTime won't do MPEG compression, so you have to create MPEG-compressed files using something else. However, you can extract information from an MPEG-movie file and place it in a specific MPEG track.

The Movie Toolbox adds binary information to the data of the original MPEG file by adding text-track information. but this changes the configuration of the MPEG file. To keep MPEG files pure and intact, you should build new movie files that contain references to the MPEG file and the actual text-track information. These movie files can also contain other QuickTime-related information, tracks, and media.

Here's the way to do this:

1. Use CreateMovieFile() to create the new movie file on disk.

2. Create and set up the needed tracks and media in the new file.

3. Open the MPEG file as a separate movie.

4. Select the entire MPEG movie.

5. Call AddMovieSelection() to add a reference to the MPEG movie in the new movie.

Note that this does not work under QuickTime for Windows 2.0x, as this version does not yet support file references.

[Aug 01 1995]

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