I turn to you, Teeming Millions, for help with something with my work:
I have a set of about 100 still images, that I want to convert into a movie. Each image should be a single frame of the movie, just exactly as it is. The stills are currently in PNG format, though I can convert them to any standard format if needed, and I’d prefer the output to be in MPG or some other standard, non-proprietary format.
So, of course, what I need is a tool that will do this, either something I’d already have on my computer (OSX 10.6) or that I could get for free. I’d prefer something with a GUI, but command line is fine if necessary. Any suggestions?
I have it and I tried it, but it seemed to want to do that thing where it pans each image across the screen, rather than each image being converted directly to a frame. How do I make it do what I want?
In iMovie 09 (not sure how it works on earlier versions), click on an individual photo. Then click on the Crop tool in the middle. Over the picture window on the right is now three tabs: Fit, Crop, and Ken Burns. It’s set to Ken Burns for you. Change it to “Fit”.
I’m not sure if you need to do it for each photo separately, or if you can select all of them and do it at once. But that’s what you want to do to stop the dreaded Ken Burns effect.
I’d say that last part is very significant, though. It makes it look like things just suddenly jut out of the sphere. Assuming the images themselves look fine, you probably need to experiment with different rendering and bitrate settings. And perhaps making each frame a keyframe or something.
Since I don’t have iMovie, I can’t tell you exactly how to do this. If you need it, someone else will have to help.
I would have preferred mpg format, but I couldn’t see any way to export that in iMovie. I also find it interesting that the movie file is larger than the sum of all the still images, and lower quality to boot (the still images don’t have the rendering artifacts or the banding structure, just a smooth gradient).
I’m sure you know this already but 100 frames gives you a movie of about 4 seconds.
BTW: Here’s a music video shot with each frame individually taken with a stills camera. For me. What’s striking about this is the power of the strobes normally used in photography but seen in a video format.
