iPhoto 5: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition

Burning a QuickTime Movie CD

If your QuickTime slideshow lasts more than a minute or two, it’s probably too big to send to people by email. In those situations, the ideal distribution method for your masterpiece may be a CD that you burn yourself. Here’s how the process goes:

1. Prepare your QuickTime movie.

   Since file size isn’t as much of an issue, you can make your slideshow dimensions 640 x 480, 720 x 480, 800 x 600, or any other size that will fit on the computer screen. There’s no need to throttle down the music quality, either.

   Tip

   To make things easy for the audience (even if it’s only you), you can turn on the Auto Play feature, which will make the movie play immediately after being double-clicked. (Savings: One click on the triangular Play button.)

   To turn on Auto Play, start by opening the movie in QuickTime Player Pro. Choose Movie → Get Movie Properties. In the Properties dialog box, choose Auto Play from the pop-up menu on the right, and then turn on the Auto Play Enabled checkbox. Save the movie as usual.

2. Put a blank CD in your burner.

   A few seconds after you insert the CD-R (recordable) or CD-RW (rewritable) disc, it appears on your desktop as “untitled CD.” You can rename it by clicking its name and then typing away.

3. Drag the QuickTime movie(s) onto the CD’s icon.

   These are, of course, the slideshow movies you’ve exported from iPhoto or the video clips from your digital camera.

4. Click once on the CD icon and then choose File → Burn Disc.

   A confirmation dialog box appears ...