Working with Movies

In this lesson for iTunes on the Mac, we look at viewing movies in iTunes and the different options we have when we view videos.

Playing Movies
To play a movie, you’ll see a Play icon above the movie thumbnail when you move your cursor over the thumbnail. When you click on the play button, the movie will open in a new window and start playing. If the last time you played a movie you played it in full screen, it will open in full screen again. This also works the same for videos in Music and Podcasts.

Viewing a Video Full Screen
When you move your cursor over the playing movie, in its new window, you will see a number of icons. If you click on the icon in the lower left part of the window, the icon with two arrows, the video will go full screen. To go back to a window, you click on the X in the upper left corner, or you tap the Escape key on your keyboard.

Floating the Movie above your other Windows
If you want to float your movie above all your other windows, you click on the picture in picot icon to the left of the two arrows that make it go full screen. When you click on this, your movie will move to one of the corners of your display and float above all your other windows. This means that even you have Safari or Pages open, and you are working in that app, the movie will float above the window you are working in. You can resize this window by dragging any of the corners. You can also move it to any of the other corners by just dragging it to the corner you want it to play in. To stop it, you click on the X and to move it back to a standard window, you click on the picture-in-picture icon.

Marking as Watched or Unwatched
If you want to mark a movie or video in iTunes as Watched or unwatched, you just hold down the control key while clicking on it, You’ll see the option to mark it as watched or unwatched. This can come in handy if you are viewing your unwatched videos or you want to sync only your unwatched movies to your iPad or iPhone.

Viewing Video Information
You can also view and change the information related to a movie or video. Again just control-click on it, and you’ll see in the menu that appears ‘Movie Info’ Select this, and a new window will open, and from there you can change the information related to the movie. This includes the name, director, and release date.

Changing Movie or Video Kind
When you add a movie or video to iTunes, it can be categorized as a Music Video, Movie, TV Show, Podcast, or even Home Movie. The movie will show in its appropriate category in iTunes. As an example, Music Videos show in Music, Movies show in Movies, Home Movies show in Movies under Home Movies, and TV shows show under TV Shows. When you import a movie, it imports as a standard movie by default. Maybe you want to change it to a Home Movie or TV show. To change where it is shown in iTunes, you need to change the Media Kind. This is located in the Movie Info Window under Options. To access it you control-click on the movie and select Movie Info. From there you click on the Options tab, You’ll see Media Kind, just select what the kind of media it is, and it will show in the appropriate category in iTunes.

Settings for Movies
iTunes does have a few settings for viewing movies. To view these settings, you need to go to iTunes Preferences. This is under File in the menu bar when in iTunes. Select Preferences and a new window opens with the iTunes Preferences. The first setting in located in the Playback tab. You can set the video quality for movies that are streamed.

Under the Advanced tab is another setting for Movies in iTunes. If you always want to float the movie window above all your other windows, you’ll see ‘Keep movie window on top of all other windows.’ Just select this, and whenever you are viewing a movie in a window through iTunes, it will float above all your other windows.

See this Lesson in Action
If you want to see this lesson in action, take a look at the video above.

Lesson tags: Mac Tutorials
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