QuickTime Pro 4 for Macintosh and Windows, Second Edition (Visual QuickStart Guide)

Remember to buy some other books about general video compression theories, MPEG encoding, color theories ... so you'll handle codecs better. This book is not the whole thing.

I give you an example - "Creating Video from Many Images. 1. From the file menu, choose Open Image Sequence. 2. In Open dialog box, locate and select any one of the sequentially named files and click Open." etc. etc. As I said, QTPro isn't rocket science. I followed this guide and had a problem. I clicked on the sequentially named files and it wouldn't load more than 2 images. Why? The book didn't give me any clues. I found out from trial and error, it's dependant on file names. Sorry, but this book is pointless. It's like a 360 page book on the DIR command.

This small book reveals the true depth of QuickTime, from the differences between the Standard and Pro versions to how to use other media, such as Macromedia Flash movies, as layers in a QuickTime movie.

Some of the best chapters describe how to add features to your QuickTime movies, like adding searchable text tracks, music, and MIDI tracks, or creating QuickTime movies for Internet streaming delivery.

Like other books in the Visual QuickStart series, this accessible little reference volume is easy to read and filled with tips and tricks for just about anyone using QuickTime--passive viewers and content creators alike.

There's no companion CD-ROM--one of the ways the publisher keeps the cost down--which is unfortunate because QuickTime movies demonstrating some of the examples in the book would have been more than worth the extra few dollars.

Even without a CD-ROM, though, this is a recommended book. There is plenty of information here for users of this pervasive technology. --Mike Caputo