OS X Mountain Lion Bible

Playing Media Files

QuickTime Player's most basic capability is to play supported audio and video formats, which include Apple's QuickTime movie (.mov) format, the MPEG-4 (.m4v and .mp4) video format, the MP3 audio format, and Apple's AAC audio format. To play a supported file on your Mac or on an attached disk, choose File⇒Open File or press +O, select the file from the Open dialog box, and click Open. You also can open media files from the web by choosing File⇒Open URL or pressing +U; enter the URL in the dialog box that appears or choose a previously opened URL from the Movie URL pop-up menu.

In either case, you get a playback window with the filename in its title bar.

Note

If you open a protected media file, you are prompted to open it in QuickTime Player 7 instead of QuickTime Player 10. QuickTime Player 7 has just playback controls similar to those in DVD Player (see Chapter 15). Also, you cannot launch QuickTime Player 7 directly (the file is hidden in OS X); it launches only if you open a protected media file.

QuickTime Player cannot work with protected media files and is meant mainly to be used with your own video and audio recordings, whether done on your Mac or through a video camera.

Click the Play icon button to play the file (it turns into the Pause icon button), and ...