Re: QuickTime GS movie of jet fighter uploaded to ground

["Anonymous" <x.y@tennis.net>]

Please don't flame if I ask a question that has already been answered.....My
news server doesn't pick up all messages.

After scrolling throught several pages of matches in HOTBOT, I found the
following program:

MainActor for Windows 95

The program can be found at:  http://mediabuilder.com/2380.html    (You
have to follow a few links before you get to download, but I did not write
down the actual download site.  It allows you to convert several video
formats to
different graphics and animation formats.

It supports:

Quicktime,
.AVI,
FLI,
.gif,
GIF anim,
FLC, .bmp, jpeg,
MacPICT,
MPEG audio, MPEG-I, MPEG-I/II,
PNG, PPM, PGM, PBM, TGA,
Video Data, WAV

I converted an .AVI file to several GIF images......It does it
automatically, you can change the Height and Width of the output images!
This is ShareWare, and you have to wait for the CREDITS screen disappear
between every 10 frames converted.

It went very quickly.  Now I'll go try the GS conversion.

I now have about 35 GIF images on my GS hard drive.

I have only 1 GIF viewer that supports SAVING of the GIF images in GS
format.....

I could go through each one, OPEN with the GIF viewer I have, SAVE (you
have to rename first).  OPEN....SAVE  (rename before save)  35 times!!!

Is there a Graphic conversion program that will let you select many files
(via SHIFT-click or another method) when the OPEN file dialog window
appears?

How about Renaming the files correctly.  How about removing the .GIF from:

picture01.gif

And changing it to:  picture01.APF

Please forgive me if Convert 3200 has this function!  I don't own the
program.  What the program "needs" to do is open multiple files, convert
*all* of them to GS format, rename them (remove gif suffix), and save all
of them (retaining sequence numbers)

Mitchell Spector mentioned (as a possible program.) a Paintworks Animation
player that would display animations as they are loaded from disk.

There is a GS program for AUDIO called LongPlay.  It (supposedly, I've
never tried it) plays Audio files that are too big to fit in memory, which
from what I remember from reading the documentation, the program loads the
audio file as it is playing the same file.

I think that an entire screen may be too much for the GS to be
loading/displaying at the same time.  How about a smaller animation?  50 X
50 pixels?

Can synchronization of Video/audio be done without HyperStudio?   I don't
own the HyperStudio program.

Before you start telling me to go buy some software, go Check out the
marketplace.....

Scott G, could you provide some more information about the Audio
recording/synchronization please?  How did you extract the Audio from the
Quicktime Movie you copied/converted?

What programs are availble to view PaintWorks animation files?  (besides
Paintworks which I already own).  I also have Finder View, which allows you
to double click PaintWorks animations from the finder.   Are there programs
to adjust playback speed, FWD and REV, pause?

I would be neat to make GS videos standardized.....

1) Have a Paintworks animation file with a special flag that tells the OS
or MOVIE PLAYER PROGRAM that there is an audio file to go with it,
including the name of the audio file to be loaded (or maybe have the Audio
file have the same name as the video file)

or.....

2) Have a Paintworks animation file with a special flag that tells the OS
or MOVIE PLAYER PROGRAM that an audio file is tagged onto the end of the
Paintworks file.

A "Movie" player program would be neat, so you could view this type of
file (video and audio)

An INIT or NDA could be developed that would let you:

Double click the VIDEO file from the Finder....and you have a movie
playing on the GS....

I don't know much about the File formats for the GS...I am just thinking
out loud.  It doesn't seem like there would be much programming involved.

This GS video idea has me quite interested.  Some really cool demos,
Hyperstudio stacks could be made.....How about a "setting up your GS"
Stack, with video of cords and cables being plugged in, etc?  (not useful
to me...I am just thinking about what could be done)

Or a "GS Video Stack!" with 16 videos playing (taking up equal spaces on
the screen)  They wouldn't all be playing....But If you cut and pasted the
converted 1/16th screen size images onto the same page, then
animated....It would create quite a neat video

Go ahead and post comments or criticisms

Mitchell Spector wrote in message <27MAR199819430419@vax2.concordia.ca>...
>In article pubpc1@library.ucla.edu writes...
>
>>Anonymous wrote:
>>>
>>> Sorry if these questions have already been answered!  I just did a
DejaNews
>>> search,  and I did not find very much information.  I was wondering if I
>>> could convert Quicktime videos for viewing on the GS!
>>
>>You can easily convert Quicktime videos for viewing on the GS.
>>It is not difficult to do, just somewhat time consuming.
>
>    Not necessarily. I was rather intrigued by your efforts at
>converting movies, but it sounded much too time consuming, so
>I thought there must be an easier way. There is, and I just
>tested my theory by doing my own test conversion immediately
>after reading your post. Total time? Oh, about 10 minutes. :)
>
>>What you need to do is open the QT movie and go through it frame by
>>frame, converting each frame to a separate GIF or TIF file. On
>>the GS, they need to be converted to APF or SHR and saved
>>together as a PaintWorks animation.  The sound track is converted
>>separately and HyperCard is used to synchronize the two.
>
>    Better to let the computer do the work for you. I just did
>quick search with Yahoo and found a program that will separate
>the movie frames, and output each frame as a GIF image. This
>one program only seems to support Windows 'AVI' format, but I'm
>sure you could find similar programs to do the same with Mac
>QuickTime and possibly even MPEG format. The conversion process
>was automatic--it built all the GIF files for me in a couple
>of seconds without requiring me in front of the machine.
>
>>I recommend Corel PhotoPaint on the PC or Mac side
>
>    To try the example I gave above, get the shareware program
>called GIF Construction Set. The non-registered versions is at
>the URL below, and yes, it will convert AVI->GIF automatically.
>
>http://www.mindworkshop.com/alchemy/gifcon.html
>
>>HyperCard is used to combine the audio and video.  Just play
>>the synthLAB sequence or sound clip followed by the Animate
>>command to start the PaintWorks animation.
>
>    Oh yes, I forgot to mention automating the conversion
>process on the Apple IIgs side. For that just use Convert
>3200, there is a function within the program to convert
>one picture format to another (in this case GIF to Apple
>Perferred Format). After I copied the GIF's onto an MS-DOS
>floppy disk, I inserted it into my SuperDrive and let
>Convert 3200 read the files off disk, convert them, and
>then save them onto my hardrive.
>
>    The third and final step, I loaded up DreamGrafix and
>told it to 'Compress' all the converted APF images into a
>PaintWorks animation (I perfer DreamGrafix as you can tweak
>the animation speed afterwards). This of course is also an
>automated process, so I once again sat back and relaxed
>while the computer did all the work for me.
>
>>> How long did it take to convert the Su-27 video to GS format?
>>
>>Several months.  That's because I did it in my spare time,
>>converting 10 or 20 frames at each sitting.  If you spend a
>>night or two in front of the computers, you can do it faster.
>
>    Heh, well hopefully I've discovered a faster method for
>you to try. What took several months should be doable in a
>mere matter of minutes (we just need to find a PC program
>that does the same for QuickTime and MPEG, but I'm fairly
>sure such programs do exist. In the meantime IBM *.AVI
>format movies are a snap to do).
>
>>> Im already on the subject of GS video, so might as well ask a few more
>>> questions:  How were those MINI-movies created?  (the ones that are not
>>> full screen.  Theres one with a jet flying, the intro to the Dr. Who TV
>>> show, and a few others)
>>
>>I don't know how those mini-movies were made.  Anyone?
>
>    I was in contact with Ronald Mercer back in the fall, in
>fact that is how I managed to collect all the existing Mini-
>Movies to upload to Ground. I believe he used an AST Vision
>Plus digitizer card (the Visionary GS and VP Enhanced are
>the identical board, just with minor fixes). I would have
>to ask, but I think he actually started work on a program
>that would capture the frames using that card and turn it
>into Mini-Movie format.
>
>    There was also the DreamVision movie format that had
>picture and sound. I spoke to Steve Chiang about it about
>6 years ago in an e-mail conversation, and he explained
>a couple of details about how that worked (I think I have
>my old mail archived around here somewhere, I should go
>dig that up if it still exists).
>
>>If you make any movies, please upload them.  :)
>
>    Speaking of creating movies, the little test I did grew
>in size from 511K to well over 1.3 megabytes (I downloaded the
>smallest AVI movie I could find for the test, it was 22 frames
>that were 320x240 each. I converted them to 320x200 greyscale).
>It worked quite well, and not bad considering I did it in a
>couple of minutes with very little effort just a few moments
>ago. :)
>
>    Writing a program to separate QT/AVI frames and convert
>them into APF and then into PaintWorks format (either in 1
>or 2 steps) should be doable. The only catch how large just
>the movie alone becomes (nevermind sound). I suppose you
>could also write a PaintWorks $C2 player that could play
>the frames as it reads it, but you'd need a very fast SCSI
>interface and hardrive to keep it from getting choppy.
>
>Mitchell Spector
>spec@vax2.concordia.ca