QuickTime for Language Instruction:
Examples

This page requires the free QuickTime plug-in.

These QuickTime movies were created by the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities staff as language learning aids. QuickTime was chosen for its flexibility, its extensive media file format support, and its cross-platform capability (see "Why QuickTime").

This first set of movies use QuickTime text tracks to provide captions. In addition, several of the movies employ a second text track as a "chapter track" to allow users to jump to specific places within each movie.

Note that the software budget for creating each of these movies is within the financial reach of almost anyone; each was made using the $29.95 QuickTime Pro Player and a free text editor (such as NotePad on Windows or SimpleText on the Macintosh).

Beowulf

The first eleven lines of Beowulf read in Old English by J.B. Bessinger.

In this movie, the text track, which uses a font containing several Old English characters, was "burned in" to the movie, turning the text into a series of graphic images that allow the movie to be played on computers that lack the Old English font.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ll. 1319-1352)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight read in Middle English, and showing Middle and Modern English captions.

As in the Beowulf movie above, the Middle English text (black characters) is a series of graphic images. In addition, the red characters are stored as actual text in the text track, which can be extracted easily from the movie itself for editing. Also note the chapter index on the controller bar; this chapter index is also a text track, and allows users to jump to specific lines in the text. All told, this movie contains four tracks: an image track, a text track, an audio track, and a chapter track.

Seinfeld Clip

This short clip from Seinfeld is used in an English as a Second Language course to help student's practice colloquial American intonations and mannerisms. The movie contains a video track, audio track, a text track for the captions, and a chapter track to allow the students to repeat the same line of dialogue easily.

This set of movies employs "wired sprites", a QuickTime track type that allows movies to contain interactive elements, similar to Flash. The software most frequently used to add wired sprites to QuickTime movies is LiveStage Pro from Totally Hip software.

These movies use wired sprites to hide and show various tracks, to start and stop play at particular times, and even to evaluate student responses to questions.

Horace's Ode 22

The movie contains a chapter track, audio track, wired sprite track, and two text tracks. The "Hide/Show Translation" button is a wired sprite that alternately conceals and reveals the English language text track; it also changes its appearance based upon whether or not the English track is visible.

Russian Alphabet Flash Cards

This introductory tutorial to the Cyrillic alphabet takes advantage of a QuickTime movie's ability to contain an arbitrary number of tracks. Three wired sprites provide "next card", "previous card", and "play sound" buttons; each sound (and each picture) is contained in a separate track.

French Intonation Exercise

This is one of several exercises developed to teach intermediate-level French students various colloquial intonation patterns. The student first hears a phrase and then has to identify the kind of intonation it uses. Once a correct answer has been given, the student can hear the phrase again and attempt to repeat it. Next, the student is shown the text of the phrase and then, finally, is shown a similar phrase to hear and attempt to pronounce.

This example takes full advantage of QuickTime's programmability with wired sprites. The sprites provide a variety of interactive elements to play various parts and various tracks of a QuickTime movie.