Child Movies
Child movies are an under utilised and very powerful feature of QuickTime. Any resource that QuickTime can read, for example images, sounds or video, that is available via HTTP, can be dynamically loaded within another QuickTime movie on the basis of programmed (scripted) actions. These actions may be based on user interaction (typically realised via mouse or key board events) but could as well be based on external values such as date, time, IP address, platform, or by reading external data via XML.
This makes it possible to build a parent movie that is basically a ‘container’ for considerable other content that is only downloaded and played if and when it is requested by the parent movie. It ought to be obvious that this provides significant advantages for any video blogging practice that attempts to consider video as granular and porous to the network.
Such affordances are shown in the second and third video prototypes.
note: This page forms a part of a hypertext essay by Adrian Miles. The homepage for this essay is located at:
http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=74
A long version of this paper (containing some but not all of the text contained in the hypertext version) is available at:
http://incsub.org/blogtalk/?page_id=76
