mcp utility

Convert an image sequence to a movie file.

Synopsis

mcp [-v] input_movie -o output_movie

Description

mcp converts a sequence of images to a single movie file. For example, you can change a sequence of .pic images into a Quicktime movie. You can then use the movieplayer application to play back the resulting movie file. All the output movie files are composed of 32-bit images.

  • When converting a sequence of image files to a movie, it is important to note that jpeg compression is slow to write and playback.

  • Converting to the Houdini Movie Format (.hmv) offers very efficient for playback of large numbers of uncompressed animation frames.

Options

-v

Enables verbose output.

input_movie

is one of:

filename.mv (SGI movie)

filename.qt (Quicktime movie)

filename.hmv (Houdini movie)

[filename] …

-f min max [-i inc] xxx$Fxxx

-w width -h height -f 1 max stdin

min is the minimum frame number max is maximum frame number inc is the frame increment $F is a placeholder for the frame number within filenames.

output_movie

is: [-w width] [-h height] [-f min max] [-i inc]

[-c compression] [-r framerate] output_file

Note: After a movie is read in, its frame numbers are renumbered to the range 1,2,3,… the -f and -i options of the output_movie act on the new range. The default frame rate is 24 frames per second.

output_file

is one of:

filename.mv (SGI movie)

filename.qt (Quicktime movie)

filename.hmv (Houdini movie)

xxx$Fxxx

stdout

-c

The compression of xxx$Fxxx is determined by its suffix. The compression, as follows:

For SGI movies, compression is one of: none : lossless - the default, no compression rle24 : lossless - compresses areas of the same color jpeg : lossy - slow, 20:1 compression cosmo : special case of jpeg for use with cosmo board.

width & height - must fit within video-res. Width must be a multiple of 16; height must be a multiple of 8.

mvc1 : lossy - Good for video; problems with contrast mvc2 : lossy - asymmetric version of mvc1

For QuickTime movies, compression is one of: none : lossless - the default, no compression jpeg : lossy - slow, 20:1 compression qtvideo : lossy - (QuickTime only) similar to mvc1 qtanim : lossy - (QuickTime only) similar to rle24

For Houdini movies, compression is one of: rgba : Red, green, blue, and alpha channels are stored abgr : Same as rgba but channels are stored in reverse order (for playback on non-mips machines) rgb : Color channels, but no alpha bgr : Same as rgb but channels are reverse order. yuv : Image stored in YUV format. Width of image must be an even number of bytes.

The -c option is ignored in other cases.

Examples

mcp -v -f 1 40 CorkScrew\$F.sgi -o -c rle24 CorkScrew.mv
This will convert a sequence of images from 1-40 named CorkScrew1.pic… CorkScrew40.pic to a lossless compression using rle24, and will call the resulting movie CorkScrew.mv. Use this if there is a lot of black in your images, or pixels with constantly the same value.

If you want a lot of compression overall and don’t mind some loss, try:

mcp -v -f 1 150 -i 1 convertme\$F.pic -o -c jpeg filename.mv