Introduction

Introduced in OS X v10.4, the QTKit framework is a powerful, feature-rich Objective-C API for manipulating and rendering time-based media such as movies and audio files.

This tutorial explains how to build three different applications for playing, editing, and recording audio and video media. You build these applications using the QTKit programming interfaces and Apple’s developer tools, Xcode 3.2 and Interface Builder 3.2. This document describes QTKit for OS X v10.6.

Who Should Read This Document

If you are a developer who wants to learn how to integrate playback, editing and recording of media into your application, you should read the material in this document to get started. You don’t necessarily need to be a seasoned Cocoa programmer to take advantage of the capabilities provided in the QTKit framework, although you’ll find prior experience working with Objective-C, Xcode, and Interface Builder helpful to build and compile the different code examples described in this tutorial.

Organization of This Document

This tutorial follows a progressive, learn-as-you-go structure. To be most successful, work through this tutorial in the order presented.

What You Need

To build your QTKit media player and recorder projects, make sure you are running OS X v10.5 or later and have these Apple developer tools installed on your system:

Sample Code

The tutorial is based on the following three code samples, which you can download from the Apple Developer Connection website or view from within Xcode:

See Also

For more information on the technologies and tools you use in this tutorial, consult the following Apple documentation:

The various QuickTime and Cocoa mailing lists also provide a useful developer forum for raising issues and answering questions that are posted. To subscribe, check out the QuickTime-API Mailing List and the Cocoa Development list.