• Insert your Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Install DVD.
• Open the Optional Installs folder and double-click "Optional Installs.mpkg".
• Select the QuickTime 7 option and click Continue.
• QuickTime Player 7 will be installed in your Utilities folder.

• Autoplay movies on open
• Allow multiple simultaneous recordings
• Always hide title bar
• Autohide titlebar/controller
• Autoshow titlebar/controller
• Automatically show subtitles and closed captioning on open
• Exit fullscreen when switching apps
• Use square corners

While Front Row's integration with iTunes and iPhoto provides a nice, seamless experience, there are times when your needs demand a not-so-integrated approach -- say, for example, if you have an external hard drive full of videos that you'd like to watch on Front Row, but don't necessarily want to import into iTunes or copy into your Movies.

One solution to this is to create an alias that points to said external hard drive or any other folder on your computer or network. For new PC-to-Mac converts, an alias is the equivalent of a "shortcut" on Windows. To create an alias, right-click on the file or folder (in our case, folder) and select "Make Alias." Now, place said alias in the your Movies folder, which is located in /Users/username/Movies.

Now, you'll be able to browse and play movies of the folder that the alias points to. And if QuickTime can play the file, then so too can Front Row.

While being a useful tool for several years now, VLC has finally reached that first pinnacle of software development: 1.0.

VLC is an alternative media player for Mac, Windows and Linux that handles a wide variety of media file formats without requiring additional software (like Perian) to be installed on your system. It can also be used as a server to stream video on higher-bandwidth networks.

Personally, I think it's handy for things like making still frame images of DVDs, or capturing video from your EyeTV tuner. Anytime I have to send QuickTime or MP4 video to PC or Linux users, I recommend they download and install VLC to watch it.

The software isn't for everyone: If you're already familiar with VLC, the upgrade is a solid one. Performance is good, and the feature list is tough to beat. If you've never used VLC and you're happy with QuickTime Player (thank you very much), then feel free to pass this one by.

Binaries for VLC 1.0 are available for Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X Leopard (and developer previews of Snow Leopard). Source code and other, older packages for PowerPC and earlier versions of Mac OS X are also available.

Thanks, Chris!

So you got a shiny new 3GS (no more space!) and are looking for new ways to play with the new videos you've recorded? If the iPhone's built in YouTube uploading functionality isn't quite enough for you, Pixelpipe has stepped in to fill the void and allow you to send that video (or photo) to over 40 services quickly and easily.

I set up the application to send to Twitter and Picasa, and the uploads went exactly as advertised. It should be noted that when sending video to services that don't support direct uploads (such as Twitter), the video is sent to Pixelpipe's servers and linked from your account. On the Pixelpipe site, the video is displayed in its native .mov format, so PC owners may have a hard time viewing the video if they don't have QuickTime installed.

Pixelpipe (iTunes link) is a free download and supports uploading video to 40 services. Sorry, iPod touch users, this one is an iPhone-only application.

If you have a photographic memory, you may recall an article I wrote for TUAW about a year ago describing how to use AppleScript to make it easier to transcribe QuickTime movies and audio. In the comments for that piece, a program was pointed out to me (thanks imnotjesus) which has become a valuable tool in my toolbox. Transcriva is a single-purpose program for transcribing video and audio clips with a rich set of features certain to make your life easier. If you're doing professional transcription, recording audio notes in a class or a meeting for later reference, preparing sub-titles for a movie, or anything which involves copying what's being said or shown into text form, Transcriva has tools to fit, and pricing I find very reasonable.

The main window of Transcriva offers a library view of your transcriptions, a media playback bar and your current transcription. With user-configurable keyboard shortcuts, it's possible to comfortably operate during a transcription without your hands ever needing to leave the keyboard. It even works with a foot pedal, if you're set up with one. You can control playback speed and set it to match your typing speed, as well automatically jump back a configurable number of seconds when you pause and resume playback.

Of all of the features available, Follow-Along is my favorite. It allows you to play back your audio after you've transcribed it, and highlights the appropriate sections of the transcription as the playback head moves through them. More importantly, clicking on an area of the transcription jumps to its related point in the playback, allowing you to quickly review the audio associated with a note or transcription. This is important because that's exactly how I use Transcriva, taking notes from audio recordings or even during a recording when I'm using the built-in record features. Then I can review my hastily typed notes and immediately hear the audio that was happening at the time I took the note.

It's great for recording meetings and annotating recorded Skype conversations. I imagine it would be an amazing tool in class, if you were in a situation where recording and typing were allowed. I haven't been to school for a while. The functionality is similar to Pear Note, but at $29.99US, Transcriva comes in $10US cheaper and packs more features.

Transcriva can handle just about any type of audio or video you can play on your Mac. It uses QuickTime, and with Flip4Mac and Perian installed, you can extend the possibilities to include WMV, AVI, DIVX, FLV and more. When you're done with a transcription, you can export it to RTF or Word formats for sharing, publishing or continuing editing externally. I use Transcriva to recap interviews I do over Skype, and take my notes in an "outline" format which I can, with a little finagling, turn into a mind map or outline for an article.

Transcriva has made my life exponentially easier and is a tool I'd gladly recommend to anyone with similar needs. My direct experience with the developer has also been great, with quick response times and a single bug report resulting in a new build within a couple of days. Transcriva is free to try, $29.99US to buy. You can download the trial at the Bartas Technologies site. If you hurry, it's even discounted to $19.99US in the MacUpdate Promo today.

Apple issued a press release this morning, saying that Worldwide Marketing VP Phil Schiller would lead a "team of Apple executives" to deliver the Worldwide Developer Conference keynote June 8 at 10:00 a.m. Pacific (1 p.m. Eastern).

According to the press release, attendees will receive a developer preview of Snow Leopard, the next major version of Mac OS X. The developer preview is designed to show off a new version of QuickTime, QuickTime X, multi-core and GPU processor support, and accessibility enhancements.

"At WWDC, we will be giving our developers a final Developer Preview release so they can see the incredible progress we've made on Snow Leopard and work with us as we move toward its final release," said Bertrand Serlet, senior VP of Software Engineering.

During the conference, iPhone developers can also attend over 100 technical sessions and meet with more than a thousand Apple engineers about iPhone OS 3.0, the release says.

WWDC runs from June 8 to June 12 at Moscone West in San Francisco. The conference is sold out.

New nightly builds of Safari's bleeding-edge doppelgänger, WebKit, are getting some new support for CSS animations -- support that's already available in MobileSafari.

The animations, which include a falling leaves effect, a way to simply animate objects sliding across the screen, and a "pulse" effect (described as "the new <blink>") are all supported by WebKit. The WebKit blog shows code examples about how to use these behaviors in your own sites.

MacRumors's Arnold Kim suggests that Apple may be looking to obviate the need for Flash on the iPhone and iPod touch through the implementation of web tools like CSS Animation. I would argue that while CSS is powerful, getting Flash on the iPhone is about one thing and one thing only: Games.

QuickTime 7.6 is in the wild. Released today via Software Update and on Apple's support site, the new version "includes changes that increase reliability, improve compatibility and enhance security." It also makes your whites whiter and your brights brighter while helping you avoid embarrassing social situations.

More details via the update page:

Video: Improves single-pass H.264 encoding quality; Increases the playback reliability of Motion JPEG media

Audio: Improves AAC encoding fidelity; Audio tracks from MPEG video files now export consistently

Application Support: Improves compatibility with iChat and Photo Booth

As far as the security updates are concerned, the word from Ryan Naraine at ZDnet is that this patch closes several potentially serious holes that could have been exploited by malicious URLs or custom-payload movie files to execute code on target machines. Four of the seven issues addressed in this update were reported to Apple via the Zero Day Initiative, which encourages responsible disclosure of vulnerabilities by providing cash bounties for the researchers involved.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

• Enabled Indeo 2/3 decodecs
• Added external idx/sub (VobSub) support
• Added support for H.264 and H.263 in FLV containers
• Apple's decoder now handles Baseline/Main Profile H.264
• Fix inconsistent importing for multi-channel audio
• Reduced memory usage for packed streams
• Added sanity checks on all preferences
• Enabled hack to show subtitles in Front Row
• Fixed negative values in SSA \frz tag
• Fixed VSFilter bug-compatibility for \an