Surprises that the QuickTime video player hides on your Mac

One of the most powerful innovations in QuickTime, introduced many years ago, was the ability to create recording functions. That is, in addition to playing the video, you can create it directly. First of all, you can record audio and/or video directly from QuickTime. To do this, you can use the built-in microphone, your Mac’s camera, or external microphones or cameras. If you want to record audio and/or video with QuickTime just go to Archive or use keyboard shortcuts Option + Command + H (for video recording) or Shift + Command + H (for sound recording).

But there is another novelty. You can also record your Mac’s screen. File > New Screen Recording or with a keyboard shortcut Control + Command + N. You will then see an intermediate screen that allows you to set up the recording. You can record the entire screen, just the open window, or your own screen fragment.

You can also decide where to save the video with recordings if you want a countdown before recording starts (no, 5 seconds or 10 seconds), if you will also be recording audio from a microphone, and finally if you want to enable the mouse cursor.

Compared to the previous QuickTime feature, the latest version allows interact with your iPhone or iPad to record a video of what you are doing. And then you can edit this video. A way to record how you play on your device or using a mobile application. You just need to connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac via USB cable and open QuickTime.

After connecting by cable in QuickTime, we are going to File > New Video Recording. By default, your Mac’s built-in camera is selected as the video source, but we’ll make a few changes in the Options drop-down menu. In Camera, we will mark the connected iPhone or iPad. In the microphone, we can do the same or use a different microphone. This will depend on what kind of sound you want to record. Finally, we can choose two recording qualities: high and maximum. Both offer H.264 video. difference in sound quality.

Otherwise, the recording works by pressing the button Red button. You can pause and/or stop recording at any time. And when you’re done, you can save a video of what was recorded with File > Save.

QuickTime is not only a video player and screen recorder of your devices, but also acts as video editor. It doesn’t offer as many features as final editing or Premierebut is used to perform normal editing tasks without installing additional applications.

With QuickTime you can split video for multiple videos or clips, remove video fragments, reorder those fragments, merge multiple clips, extract audio and/or video, and finally rotate or flip the video. Come on, not bad for a “simple” player.

To view clips or video clips, simply open the video in QuickTime and then navigate to View > Show Clips or with label Team + E. This way you will see a timeline with video thumbnails. You can place the playhead in the right place and apply scissors. From Edit > Split Clip or with label Command+Y.

With these cuts, you can divide the video into fragments. With the mouse or trackpad, you can drag and drop the pieces in the order you want or delete them directly with the key Erase. If what you want is shorten video removing start or end you can do it from Edit > Clip (or with keys Command + T). A yellow selector or crop handle will appear, which you can enlarge or shrink by dragging the sides.

If you want to merge clips from multiple videos, open them at the same time in QuickTime and activate the option show clips (Team + E). You can then cut, delete, and/or highlight specific sections or clips. Once selected, we do the classic copy and paste. Team + C to copy the source clip and in the destination video we put the playhead in the right place and click Team + B glue it.

More useful features for edit video with quicktime. When opening a video from Version we can remove the video or audio from the file to keep the rest. To add audio and/or video, we need an external application. Finally, for rotate or flip the videowe activate the function show clips (Team + E) and then to Versionwe choose Rotate Left (Shift + Command + L), Rotate Right (Shift + Command + R), Flip Horizontal (Shift + Command + H), or Flip Vertical (Shift + Command + V).

In addition to video editing, with QuickTime you can also create video from collection images. An easy-to-create slideshow that will bring your vacation photos to life. You can then upload the video to your social networks or share it privately. Plus, it’s an alternative to PowerPoint presentations or macOS Preview presentations.

To create a video from a sequence of images, we open QuickTime and go to File > Open Image Sequence. You can select the contents of a folder or a set of specific images. then you can customize presentation.

First of all, Permission. This way you will give a uniform size to all photos or images. Then frame frequency to see more or less images per second. Finally, there are three output formats to choose from, depending on compatibility (H.264), compression (HEVC), or quality (ProRes).

Apart from video editing, let’s say you have a video and you want to share a picture the same. With QuickTime, this task is as easy as play video and place cursor where is the image we need. The next step is to simply press the copy keys, Team + C. We already have a saved image.

now we’ll go to Preview and we will create a new document from the clipboard. You will find this option in Archive or with keys Team + N. Satisfied with the picture? Now you can save it. Or, if not, select another image and take the photo again. Quick and easy.