Simulating QTVR Scenes on the Web Using PlugInHelper or ConVRter

A QTVR Scene is a stand alone QTVR movie that consists of two or more pano and/or object movies connected via hot spots. When you click on a link hot spot, a new QTVR pano or object (called a new node) loads instantly in the same movie window. QTVR scenes have larger file sizes because the actually consist of several QTVR movies combined into one file. This makes them problematical for web delivery where media file sizes should be kept to a minimum.

It is possible to simulate the effect of a QTVR scene on a web page, where clicking on a URL hot spot on one QTVR movie loads a new QTVR movie into the same window on the same web page. The technique relies on embedding EMBED tag parameters such as HOTSPOT, TARGET, and TARGETCACHE in the QTVR movie data using either Apple's free application, PlugInHelper, or Jon Summers' excellent QTVR tool, ConVRter. PlugInHelper is available for both Macintosh and Windows computers.

Before you can create the QTVR Scene web simulation, you will need to create all of the QTVR panos and objects for your scene and add URL hot spots that will enable the navigation of the scene. You will need to know what each hot spot ID number is and what node a hot spot should load when clicked. As with regular QTVR Scenes, each QTVR movie that makes up the web scene simulation will need to have the same pixel dimension, because they are all loading into the same window on the web page. For complicated scenes, you may want to map out the scene on paper.

Once you decide how all of your hot spots should perform, you are ready to add the plugin data to the QTVR movies in your scene using Apple's PlugInHelper or Jon Summers' ConVRter. Here we show how this is done using PlugInHelper.

1. Open one of your QTVR movies in PlugInHelper.
2. Click on the "Add..." button to add one plugin parameter at a time.
3. Add each parameter to the "Edit User Data" window and click "OK." If you want to change one of the parameters that has already been added, simply highlight the line and click on "Edit..." The data that should be added to simulate a QTVR scene are as follows:
   • TARGETCACHE="true" This puts the movie that is loaded using the TARGET parameter in the browser's cache, so that the QTVR movies that have been visited once in a scene (a fairly common occurrence) will reload quickly from the browser cache on the user's hard drive.
   • CONTROLLER="true" You should add this if the first movie in your scene uses a the controller bar and has had the 16 pixels added to the HEIGHT to accommodate it. Use CONTROLLER="false" otherwise (or nothing--"false" is the default value).
   • HOTSPOT##="QTVRmovie.mov" You will add the HOTSPOT parameter for each hot spot in the QTVR movie. Replace ## with the ID number of the hot spot. Replace "QTVRmovie.mov" with the name of the movie that should load when this URL hot spot is clicked. Note that there are NO SPACES in this parameter. Also, notice that this example uses relative addressing. IMPORTANT: For QTVR hot spots, relative addressing is relative to the movie with the hot spot, NOT the HTML document with the EMBED tag. If all of your QTVR movies for the scene are in the same folder, then no path is required in for the QTVR movie loaded by the hot spot.
   • TARGET="myself" This is the crucial plugin parameter that makes the simulated scene work. It is essentially saying, "load the new node in the same window I am in."

4. When you are finished adding all of the plugin data to your movie, click on "Export..." to export a version of the movie with the data added. IMPORTANT: Do not attempt to save the movie in the same folder as the original. PlugInHelper will not replace a movie when being saved, though it may seem to do so.
5. After you have embedded the plugin data into all of the QTVR movies in the your scene, you need only write one EMBED tag for the first movie in your scene. For the 3-node example below the EMBED tag reads as follows:
   <EMBED SRC="Movies/LPPoint.mov" HEIGHT=256 WIDTH=320 CONTROLLER=TRUE></EMBED>

A Tour of James Island on the Quileute Indian Reservation, La Push, WA

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