Borderless Quicktime Playback
ShareMaking your movie play back without borders is a little simpler than creating a skin. All you need is a solid black image file, at least as large as your movie. And a text file. And your movie.
Why would you want to do this? That’s a good question. Maybe you want to play a movie back while you’re working and screen space is tight. Maybe you’re using a computer for some kind of demo kiosk and you’d like the video playing back as part of your demonstration. Maybe you’re a minimalist. Maybe you don’t want to do this…
To be honest, Murphy stumbled into this Quicktime behavior when developing the screencast for creating a Quicktime skin.
In the screencast you’ll see the text file is the glue that holds the movie and the image file together. To make your production portable you’d have to export it into a self-contained movie.
If you want to take this a little further see the screencast on Quicktime skins.
You can also download the files used in the screencast.
30. May 2007 at 4:25 pm :
This is a great use for the QuickTime skins. You’re the first person to tell me this is even possible.
What i’d like to know is if its possible to have Quicktime stay like this by default so theres no need to constantly edit the text file
30. May 2007 at 7:58 pm :
I think a little droplet or something could be made. I haven’t looked at it yet. But there are all kinds of uses. It provides lots of options in terms of how people show slideshows too.
2. June 2007 at 2:21 am :
Nice effect; but you can do the same thing with Nice Player.
2. June 2007 at 1:33 pm :
Thanks Bosco. I have this thing about trying to do things without adding other software. Within reason.
5. June 2007 at 8:27 am :
Gr8 screencast morph!
But what about making this window a floating window so it will always stay on top?
2. October 2007 at 11:11 pm :
Hello Murphy
I’m very interested in being able to play a quicktime movie without borders. I’m surprised this isn’t an option in Quicktime Pro. Is it?
I’m using Logic Pro 8 to playback a stage show i’m doing using audio and video. In logic 7 there was an option that allowed me to right click the quicktime movie and select “best size without borders”
Now Logic 8 came with this option not available. So choked.
If your way of doing this keeps the quicktime file as 1 .mov then it would work for what i’m doing.
I’m still confused on how to do this. Is there a full description step by step somewhere?
Thanks for the help.
Steve
3. October 2007 at 4:04 pm :
Hey Steve -
Did you watch the screencast and check out my post on Quicktime Skins? Can’t tell you much beyond that.
I think you could export to a single file to get the result you’re looking for. I know you can export a skin to a single file, so I don’t see why borderless wouldn’t work too.
5. October 2007 at 12:37 am :
Hello Murphy
I completed the borderless video and it worked nicely. The only problem is there seems to be tiny dots that change color depending on the background all over the screen spread out evenly. If the screen is black they show up as light spots when the video is bright they show up as black spots.
Any idea how to get rid of this?
Thanks
Steve
23. October 2007 at 10:42 pm :
Arrrg. I never could get rid of the spots and had to go back to using Logic 8 without the borderless function that they should of left in there.
Now i have to go into theatres and when the crew asks why i’m taping a business card to the bottom of my video projector i have to explain that logic 8 removed the “best size without borders” function. Then i have to get them to lower a curtain from the top to cut out the top of the quicktime border.
24. October 2007 at 3:00 am :
I wonder if it has something to do with how you created your mask? What kind of file is it? It should probably be something other than jpg, like png.
29. October 2007 at 8:42 pm :
Thanks Murphy for the nice clear tutorials. I used this Borderless Quicktime Playback technique with the feeds from a television station to make Quicktime files which open into little ’tiles’ on the desktop (which even worked on a windowbox at work).
7. July 2008 at 1:41 pm :
hi everyone, maybe you have a second to read this and give me some tips! i used to use logic pro 7.2 to compose and sync music to video. so i have backing track/sound track for a movie that load up in logic 7.2. using the handy ‘best size without borders” I was able to perform the music and have the border less video sent to a projector using my dvi to vga cable. worked like a champ actually. However, I wanted to upgrade to 8.0 to get rid of the xskey because of the liability, risk etc. with taking this out live. Imagine my shock when I realize this very handy little function is no more…..control click on the qt movie in logic 8 and no setting for border less viewing. I am using QT PRO 7 and when the movie plays, it is border less….but when I load it in Logic I can’t get rid of the cheesy border!
Any and all help greatly appreciated as I contemplate downgrading back to 7.2 land of the dongle to get my much needed functionality back!
Steve has similar problem so I fear no solution is available beyond going back to version 7 of logic.
Thanks
Mal
8. July 2008 at 4:39 am :
Just fyi for anyone following this thread – logic 8 does not remove the borders on imported movies. Period. So my solution was simple: go back to logic 7.2…… works fine now……maybe one day they will fix this probably simple fix in logic 8.0.
Mal
4. May 2009 at 12:12 pm :
In response to the post about little white dots all over the screen. I used to get those when creating the black in Photoshop but then I tried going back into it and rasterizing the shape that I created, flattening all layers and saving it as a PNG. This seemed to work in Quicktime.
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26. May 2009 at 3:24 am :
hi ..nice tutorial…Do you know how to make greeter on website? that the backround is erased etc…
13. August 2009 at 6:15 pm :
This works great, however I notice some added contrast and a lot of added saturation to the movie once the black mask is applied. Has anyone else experienced this and found a way around it?
26. February 2010 at 12:22 am :
You could just update to the free Quicktime Player 10.0 that does this by default. Or would that be too easy? It has all the same features as the old Quicktime Pro, too.
26. February 2010 at 1:52 pm :
@James Smith –
No – QT 10 does NOT have all the same features as the old Quicktime Pro. And not everyone has QT 10. So no, that would not be too easy. Nice try though.
30. August 2010 at 7:32 am :
Any way to do this on Windows?
9. August 2011 at 7:04 am :
To get rid of the little dots make sure its solid blac in RGB… push all sliders in photoshop color menu to the left… then save as PNG
21. August 2011 at 1:38 pm :
Total novice here. Could you please tell me how/where you created the text file?
Thanks!
21. August 2011 at 6:48 pm :
Johnny –
Take a look at the other screencast, it might have some more detail. But basically you type the text file in a text editor, like TextEdit which comes with your Mac. Search for it in spotlight at the top right corner of your Mac.