Want a quick and easy way to make a video from a folder of images
March 7, 2020 9:08 PM Subscribe
I have several series of photos that I want to stitch into short quick-cut slideshow videos. Quicktime 7’s "Open Image Sequence..." function used to do exactly this, but for some reason it no longer works. Is there a small Mac app to convert a bunch of images into a video (with the ability to set the duration to show each image)?
I took a bunch of photos at my friends wedding and am putting together a slideshow of the best ones for her.
For a lot of the group shots, while I have a "best" photo I want to use, I also have a bunch of "getting ready" type of shots that I would also like to use.
What I want to do is stitch a bunch of these "not as good" photos together into little short a-couple-of-second videos that I would then insert into the slideshow, and that would then lead to the actual "best" image.
So like:
Now in the past, I have used Quicktime 7’s "Open Image Sequence..." function to make videos from images, but for some reason, that function seems to no longer work (on both of my Macs, I just get a video that shows about 3 images, instead of a video showing the couple of dozen images from the folder).
I bet if I spent a bunch of time, I could probably work out how to do this in iMovie, but I'd rather not spend so much effort (it feels like trying to use a backhoe to seal an envelope) on something that should be super drag-and-drop easy (like Quicktime was).
Does anyone know of a small Mac app that I can just point at a bunch of images, have it ask for a duration to show each image, and then output a video file?
I'm a visual learner/GUI kind of person, so I would like to avoid Terminal/UNIXy stuff if at all possible.
I took a bunch of photos at my friends wedding and am putting together a slideshow of the best ones for her.
For a lot of the group shots, while I have a "best" photo I want to use, I also have a bunch of "getting ready" type of shots that I would also like to use.
What I want to do is stitch a bunch of these "not as good" photos together into little short a-couple-of-second videos that I would then insert into the slideshow, and that would then lead to the actual "best" image.
So like:
[normal photo] ➟ [normal photo] ➟ [quick bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop-bop video of "not as good" group photos] ➟ [best group photo from that series]...You can perhaps best understand the idea of what I'm trying for by viewing this 30-second clip from an episode of the UK’s Shameless (series 1, episode 3)
Now in the past, I have used Quicktime 7’s "Open Image Sequence..." function to make videos from images, but for some reason, that function seems to no longer work (on both of my Macs, I just get a video that shows about 3 images, instead of a video showing the couple of dozen images from the folder).
I bet if I spent a bunch of time, I could probably work out how to do this in iMovie, but I'd rather not spend so much effort (it feels like trying to use a backhoe to seal an envelope) on something that should be super drag-and-drop easy (like Quicktime was).
Does anyone know of a small Mac app that I can just point at a bunch of images, have it ask for a duration to show each image, and then output a video file?
I'm a visual learner/GUI kind of person, so I would like to avoid Terminal/UNIXy stuff if at all possible.
I don't think apple has done one iota of work on QuickTime for over a decade...it's basically abandonware at this point. All of it's functions are in iMovie now. "Slideshow in iMovie" just turned up a bunch of results.
posted by sexyrobot at 8:59 AM on March 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by sexyrobot at 8:59 AM on March 8, 2020 [2 favorites]
Best answer: For the benefit of future searchers, I did some further Googling and found this page that gave some good suggestions of different apps that would meet my GUI app needs:
There was an AppleScript-based application called Sequimago, but it's no longer available.
There's an old PowerPC app called Framed which, while still available to download, won't run on intel Macs.
There's a program called ImageJ (which I haven't yet tried) that can be downloaded here.
And then there's an app called Time Lapse Assembler that seems exactly what I want and is available for download here.
Thanks axiom and sexyrobot for your input!
posted by blueberry at 7:08 AM on March 10, 2020
There was an AppleScript-based application called Sequimago, but it's no longer available.
There's an old PowerPC app called Framed which, while still available to download, won't run on intel Macs.
There's a program called ImageJ (which I haven't yet tried) that can be downloaded here.
And then there's an app called Time Lapse Assembler that seems exactly what I want and is available for download here.
Thanks axiom and sexyrobot for your input!
posted by blueberry at 7:08 AM on March 10, 2020
Mod note: Final update from the OP:
UPDATE: December 2021posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 9:05 PM on December 6, 2021
It appears that the Time Lapse Assembler app that I mentioned earlier no longer works with modern M1 Macs. I have found a new app that does the job very well, and even seems a more-polished app with more control.
The app is call Persecond
and is available at https://flixel.com/products/mac/persecond/
Unfortunately, it's a "subscription-based" app, but if you have the need, it's nice to know there's still a way to get this done.
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ffmpegis my go-to tool for these kinds of things but it's a UNIXy thing, which I know you said you didn't want but honestly what you want to do is pretty easy and described here: FFMpeg Slideshow. It's likely just a single command like (here a 1/2 framerate will make each photo last 2 seconds; adjust accordingly for your desired speed):ffmpeg -framerate 1/2 -pattern_type glob -i '*.jpg' output.mp4posted by axiom at 9:48 PM on March 7, 2020 [4 favorites]