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Perhaps Apple will restore some of the more advanced functionality down the road in a future update to QuickTime X, but for now it’s certainly nice to have the option to run the older, feature rich, and still very functional, 7.6.6 release.QuickTime is an Apple software primarily used for multimedia playback, even for objects that offer some degree of panoramic function and interactivity. Many of the features of 7 like screen recording, audio recording, and trimming have been brought into version X, while simple conversion, encoding, and export features have been adopted by OS X Finder instead, which is great, but having a single video playing and editing app is preferable for many Mac users, and often iMovie doesn’t quite fit that bill. In some ways, using QuickTime Player 7 is actually easier to use than iMovie for making simple movie edits and adjustments to videos, which makes it disappointing to have lost many of the 7 features in the transition of the app to version X.
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It’s a lot like the adjustment tools that are built into the Preview image editor in OS X, but obviously they’re for video instead, allowing you to make viewing and sound edits without any complexity at all. My personal favorite aspect of version 7 is the AV panel, accessible from the Window menu by selecting “A/V Controls”. For those familiar with the older version, you’ll instantly know and appreciate the differences, though to unlock it’s full potential you really need the Pro version. Go ahead and launch the QuickTime Player 7 app, you can even run it alongside QuickTime Player X if you want to. Open up /Applications/Utilities/ to find “QuickTime Player 7” – it installs separately from QuickTime Player X and does not conflict with the new version at all.Download and install QuickTime Player 7, you can get it here directly from Apple Support (technically it’s version 7.6.6).If you’re interested in this, getting the old version of QuickTime Player in new versions of Mac OS X is really easy: How to Download & Run Old QuickTime Pro on New Macs
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Even if you didn’t go Pro years ago, you still may benefit from some of the added abilities that the older version of the app. Additionally, if you happened to have bought QuickTime Player Pro some time ago, the app still accepts those Pro registration numbers, and is then able to use all of the excellent editing, trimming, and exporting features that modern versions of QuickTime Player would greatly benefit from.
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