QuickTime Pro provides an easy way to index your movie with chapters, this is done with a chapter track.

A chapter track is a type of text track that provides an index to chapters or sections of your movie. The list of chapters, each of which links to a part of the movie, appears as a title or a pop-up menu in the movie controller.

What kinds of QuickTime movies benefit from a chapter track?

• Compilations of movies, such as a film festival program
• Audio movies with multiple music selections or movements
• Recorded news events
• Educational movies
• Scientific and medical movies
• Any movie of significant length whose content can be divided into definite sections

Movies with alternate subtitle or sound tracks can have chapter tracks in the proper language for each alternate sound track.

Adding Chapters to your movie

Adding a chapter track is easy. You need a word processor that can save text-only files and QuickTime Pro. Here’s how:

Step 1

Type a list of topics or entry points in any word processor that can save a plain text file. Add a carriage return after each topic. Make each topic no more than two or three words in length.

Step 2

In QuickTime Pro, choose Open File from the File menu and select the text file. Click Open to create a text movie.

Step 3

Choose Export... from the File menu. Set the Export pop-up to Text to Text and set the Use: pop-up to Text with Descriptors. Click on the Options... button. In the Text Export Settings dialog, choose Show Text, Descriptors, and Time, choose Show Time Relative to Start of Movie, and set fractions of seconds as 1/30 (the default is 1/1000). Click OK. Click Save to create a text file with descriptors.

Step 4

You now need to open several windows so you can work with text, tracks, and movie controls at the same time. Open the exported text file in your word processor. Open the target movie in QuickTime Player. Finally, choose Show Movie info from QuickTime Player’s Windows menu. Your screen should look something like the picture to the left.

Step 5

In QuickTime Player, find the first place in the movie where you want to begin a new chapter. Use the frame controls to step forward or backward a frame at a time as needed. Note the current time in the Movie Info window.

Step 6

In the text file, find the first chapter title. It has a time stamp just before it that should look something like [00:00:00.00]. Change that to the time you noted in the Movie Info window. It might now read something like: [00:01:30.15], meaning that selecting the first chapter title will jump the viewer 1 minute, 30 seconds, and 15 frames into the movie.

Step 7

Repeat this process until you have identified all the places in the movie that correspond to the chapter divisions, and have edited the text file with the proper time stamps. Change the last time stamp, which appears after the last chapter title in the text file, to match the duration of the movie, which can be found in the Movie Info window.

Step 8

Open the text file in QuickTime Pro using Open File from the File menu. This creates a new movie with just a text track. Choose Select All from the Edit menu, then choose Copy from the Edit menu.

Step 9

Click on the movie you want to add chapter tracks to. Select All. Then select Add to movie from the Edit menu. This adds the text track to the movie and makes sure it is exactly the right length.

Step 10

Open Show Movie Properties from the Window menu, choose the new text track. Choose other settings then choose Text track in the Chapters popup.

Step 11

Choose Preload from the Properties pop-up and check the Preload checkbox. This makes the chapter track load first.

Step 12

Disable the new text track by unchecking the check box in the properties window, so it doesn’t display on top of the video. It will still function as a chapter track.

Step 13

Save as a self-contained movie.

Important: In the QuickTime plug-in, if the movie is not wide enough in pixels for the controller to accommodate the words of the chapter titles, the chapter pop-up will not be displayed. Keep the text as short as possible. If necessary, add a background still image that is as wide as needed, using the Add Scaled command.

Chapter tracks in streaming movies.

Chapter tracks do not stream, so in order to add chapter tracks to a streaming movie, you must create a local or Fast Start movie with a chapter track that references the streaming movie. Follow the steps above, with these differences:

Step 1

Save the streaming movie as a self-contained movie. This creates a tiny Fast Start movie with a streaming track—a pointer to the streaming movie. Create the chapter track in this movie.

Step 2

Use Add to movie, not Add Scaled (Ctrl-Alt or Option, not Ctrl-Alt-Shift or Option-Shift) when adding a track to a streaming movie.

When the movie plays over the web, QuickTime loads the chapter tracks immediately via HTTP. It attempts to get the stream from the server only when the movie is played or the viewer selects an entry point using the chapter tracks. Chapter tracks do not work with live streaming movies.