I need to concatenate ~32000 jpg files into a movie. Impossible?

February 9, 2005 4:10 PM

I need to concatenate ~32000 jpg files into a movie. Impossible? [mi]

I can do this either on PC or Mac, but the issue is time. The iphoto -> iMovie conversion looks like it will take about a day (literally), and I need to do this much quicker (if at all possible). Obviously, the problem is memory - the jpgs add up to a gig or two. In any event, I'll need to be able to turn sequentially labeled files into a movie at 10fps, with minimal user interaction once I've set up the process.

I'm happy in shell or (ha!) DOS, but I can't figure out what to use - mplayer? Premier? Thoughts? If y'all are curious, I'm reconstructing the molting of a caterpillar from our video tracking system. This will tell me how well they molt in different, um, circumstances. (Like having an intact brain, or not.) Hot stuff! (TIA)

posted by metaculpa to Technology (11 answers total)

Mencoder does input from (and output to, I think) jpegs, seems like a good choice to me.
posted by fvw at 4:19 PM on February 9, 2005

MovieSalsa does this, although unfortunately the demo version is pretty crippled.
posted by mcsweetie at 4:34 PM on February 9, 2005

QuickTime Pro will handle this just fine. You can choose a framerate and codec that matches your needs.
posted by AlexReynolds at 4:42 PM on February 9, 2005

Graphic Converter will also do this.
posted by tomierna at 4:59 PM on February 9, 2005

second mencoder, it's what I use to make dvd menu loops.
posted by dorian at 5:21 PM on February 9, 2005

I compile my animation stills in Quicktime Pro, works great.
posted by spaghetti at 5:44 PM on February 9, 2005

I've used the free Virtual Dub to compile thousands of bmps to avi on my computer. Not sure whether it has JPG support, and not sure what kind of time estimate you're looking at with thirty thousand images, but worth checking out.
posted by rafter at 6:25 PM on February 9, 2005

Agh, it looks like Virtual Dub is BMP only. You could always batch convert the JPGs in Photoshop, but that would be an all-night processing time all it's own.
posted by rafter at 6:26 PM on February 9, 2005

I have a slight highjack question here: If I want to put jpegs into a flash movie, what's the best way to do so? I've tried it before and in the final movie the pics were pixellated beyond belief--and they were high res pics, too.
posted by zardoz at 8:35 PM on February 9, 2005

Adobe Premiere or Adobe After Effects will do this as well. I think they need to be numbered sequentially first, however.
posted by neckro23 at 7:26 AM on February 10, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks a lot, y'all - it looks like quicktime will solve my problems cheaply. The best part is that, with ~32k jpegs in a folder, my G4 takes 5 minutes to even list the directory. This may take a while...

Feel free to hijack, zardoz.

On preview (several hours later): hm. Might not work after all. After an hour to load the pictures, quicktime refuses to save them in any format. Poo. I guess I'll try again after a restart.
posted by metaculpa at 5:18 PM on February 10, 2005