mcp

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 15 frames per second (the maximum).

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