I want to post many of the movies I take on the web. Lion has messed with my workflow. In the pre-Lion days I could:
1) Open the movie in Quicktime
2) Move the playhead to the “poster frame” I wanted to represent the movie
3) Select File / Export for the web
4) Select the options I wanted and hit return
Quicktime would export a web-ready file along with the poster frame into a folder. While Quicktime would include additional files, none of them were required to get the video working.
That changed in Lion. The new format Qucktime uses to export no longer works in browser. Now you must upload and point to a reference movie. This reference movie (along with a bunch of JavaScript code that you have to clutter your pages with) will choose the appropriate movie format to display. This is all great if everything you want can be accomplished using Apple’s many assumptions. But, alas, it can not be used for my WordPress podcasting plugin of choice PodPress.
But worry not…
1) Instead of exporting for the web… first export it into iTunes by chosing Share / iTunes. (Simple really.)
2) Once it is in iTunes, choose File / Show in Finder
3) Now you can open follow the rest of the steps to get Quicktime to create a poster frame for you.
4) Grab the .jpg poster frame and the iTunes .m4v and upload them to your PodPress directory.
While it involves a few more steps, none of them are difficult.
Oh Happy Day!