MacMost: Video

QUickTime Player is a lot more than just a simple video playback app. You can record video too, record and play audio, do some basic editing, grab frames, combine images and much more.

You can use Picture-In-Picture to watch a video on your Mac while you do other things. It places the video in a small window that floats on top of other windows. You can use Picture-In-Picture on web videos, the TV app, and other places.

There are times when you want to produce square-shaped video, such as for social media feeds. You can't do that with iMovie, but you can take video into Keynote and export it as true square video. You can zoom in to a portion of the video in the square, or include the entire width of the video with text and graphics above and below it.

iMovie offers limited setting for exporting videos. You can use Apple's Compressor app to take high-quality iMovie videos and compress them however you like. You can also create stand-alone droplet apps to make repeated conversions quick and easy. You can do the same with audio files creating in GarageBand and elsewhere.

If you want to trim some video from the beginning or end of a movie file, you don't need to use a video editing app. You can do it right in QuickTime Player. Trimming is lossless and can be done with precision. You can also cut sections out of the middle of your video and export a new copy. You can trim in the Photos app as well, though the original full-length video is always available if you wish to revert.

You can turn any video into an animated GIF using the latest version of Apple's free Keynote presentation software. A new feature of Keynote is the ability to export as a GIF. To convert a video, you can create single-slide presentations using the video and export. You can also easily crop and trim the video, as well as add text or even combine several videos into one GIF.

You can record a simple video diary on your Mac using your built-in camera and the QuickTime Player app. When you save the video, you can export it as a lower-resolution video to save space. You can use the comments field for the file to add comments and keywords. Save these to a folder and you can easily view them in a list by date.

If you need to rotate video a small amount to correct a camera tilt or create a special effect, you can't do it with iMovie or QuickTime Player. However, you can use Keynote to rotate video. This involves a small Keynote project with just the video, plus a rotation, and then an export. You need to make adjustments to avoid leaving blank corners.

If you have video recorded in the wrong orientation, you can rotate it after you add it to the iMovie timeline. You can also change the original file by opening it in QuickTime Player, rotating it, and saving a new version. If you need to rotate video in Photos, you'll have to export the video, rotate it in QuickTime Player, and then import the new version back into Photos.

You can export a still frame image from a video many different ways with the software that comes with your Mac. If you are already in iMovie, you can use the sharing function to export an image from the current frame in the timeline or a library clip. In Photos you can save a frame in a video to your Photos library as a picture, and you can also copy the current frame and paste it into another app. The easiest way is with QuickTime Player where you can copy the current frame and then paste it into Preview or any other app that handles images.

Today's iPhones can record up to 4K video resolution and the new Apple TV can play back 4K movies. What is the difference between 4K and 1080 HD? How about older standards like 720 HD and SD video? Learn the difference and how it can affect video quality. Learn how to set your video recording resolution on your iPhone.

You can use the Photo Booth app on your Mac to simulate a green screen with any stable background. You can use some preset replacement backgrounds, or your own image. The key is to use your Mac's built-in camera and have a stable background and surface for your Mac.

A new video compression setting available in macOS High Sierra will help you save file space while not compromising on video quality. The High Efficiency Video Coding setting, also known as H.265, can save up to 50% in file size. However, since this is a new type of video compression, those files cannot be played in older versions of macOS or iOS.

If you ever come across video files that won't open in QuickTime Player, you can use the free VLC Player app to view them. This popular app has been around for a long time and can also be used to convert videos to a more standard format.

The ability to move video into a picture-in-picture overlay with macOS Sierra is a great new feature. However, it doesn't appear to work with YouTube videos. You can get YouTube videos to do this, however, if you know how.

If you accidentally record video on your iPhone in vertical mode, you end up with two ugly black bars on either side of the video when viewing it on a TV. You can use iMovie to fill in those sides with an animated background, or a blurry copy of the same video. Take a look at a variety of techniques for dealing with vertical video in iMovie.

You can use QuickTime Player for very simple video editing without setting up a whole project in iMovie or Final Cut Pro. With QuickTime Player, you can combine trimming, appending more clips, and splitting clips to arrange and export edited movies.

Sharing videos via email, file transfer or using old technology like DVDs can be impractical. Uploading your videos to a service like YouTube that almost anyone can access is easy and useful. You can set these videos to be unlisted or private if you aren't interested in the general publicseeing them. YouTube videos can be viewed on computers, set-top boxes, TVs, tablets, phones. Plus, they can be high definition, giving them a big advantage over DVDs.

If you take a lot of HD video, you may end up with massive video files that you can't keep, but don't want to delete forever. You can compromise by compressing them. This will trade quality for file size, but in many cases this trade-off is the best way to keep your old video footage around. You can use Apple's Compressor app to do this quickly and easily.

People ask me about the camera I use to record these tutorials. I have been using the C920 for the last two years and find this inexpensive webcam to be better than some other expensive and more cumbersome solutions. It uses H.264 compression in the camera to allow it to send 1080p video over USB2. It works with any Mac and most apps. See a quality comparison between the C920 and the MacBook's built-in FaceTime HD camera.