On a Mac, what's the best tool/way to convert a series of webcam still JPEG images into an MPEG video? Preferably using Automator?
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M$2 Answers
Their official site is: http://www.ffmpeg.org/ but you're probably better off grabbing ffmpegx, a mac gui client for ffmpeg, which also give instructions for installing everything you need:
http://ffmpegX.com/download.html
My experience with ffmpeg is with the command line only so I'll explain that. Once you've installed ffmpeg, let's look at how you could use it from the terminal:
Assuming you have a directory of sequentially named jpeg files (001.jpg, 002.jpg, 003.jpg etc) you'd just run the command:
ffmpeg -r 10 -b 1800 -i %03d.jpg test.mp4
There is plenty more tweaking you can do. But to explain the arguments above:
"-r 10" is the framerate, 10 frames per second.
"-b 1800" is the bitrate or quality. 1800 gives a high quality movie. You can lower this figure if you want a smaller movie file.
There are plenty of other options for adjusting the size, movie format etc. There may be a bit of a learning curve to getting it set up but I think it's the solution you're after.
Because it's a command line application it is very easy to schedule automatic daily jobs etc. (through cron or other scheduling systems).
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"QuickTime Pro makes it easy to create a slideshow from your favorite pictures. Since QuickTime supports a large variety of image formats, you can use nearly any type of image in your slideshow"
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tutorials/slideshow.html
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M$
