Hinting For Quicktime And MPEG4

Creating hinted movies
Remember, hinting is only necessary for true streaming of QuickTime and MPEG4 files from a streaming media server. If you’re using FastStart or otherwise downloading your movies from a Web server, you don’t need it. No harm is done when you play back a downloaded file that's been hinted, that track is simply ignored. However, since hinting does increase the size of the file, you don’t want to use it if you don’t need it.

All you need to hint a QuickTime movie is Apple’s QuickTime Pro, a $30 upgrade from the basic QuickTime player. QuickTime Pro also is included with some QuickTime reference books, such as the excellent and authoritative QuickTime for the Web, part of Apple’s QuickTime Developer Series. Detailed instructions on how to hint using QuickTime can be found among Apple’s QuickTime documentation.