merge images to animation or video

[diamantis13]

Hi,
I have a large number of plots and I would like to merge them in order to show the change through time. Ideally I would like to be able to pause or search through the output animation, so I would like to avoid an animated giff file. The input images can be postscript, pngs or jpgs.
Does anybody know What software should I use for such a task and what is an appropriate video format?
Thank you very much

[lukeiamyourfather]

I use FFMPEG to make videos out of PNG sequences. Its pretty quick too. Supports many input and output formats. The -r is for the frame rate of the output, -b is the bitrate, -i is the input file(s). Note the padding syntax at the end of the input.

ffmpeg -r 24 -b 16777216 -i /home/luke/scenes/nodeParameters/preview/preview%05d.png /home/luke/Desktop/test.mp4

If there's a better option I'd be curious for that too. Cheers!

[diamantis13]

Thank you very much!
it seems to work fine. Is there another way of determining the input files order (e.g. for images 001.png 002.png 005.png 011.png 101.png).

[lukeiamyourfather]

Thank you very much!
it seems to work fine. Is there another way of determining the input files order (e.g. for images 001.png 002.png 005.png 011.png 101.png).

I'd probably remove the unnecessary frames and then rename the sequence to conform. If there is another way to specify the input frames then its probably in the FFMPEG documentation (man ffmpeg). Cheers!

[PeterVR]

peter@viking:~/pics$ ffmpeg -r 24 -b 16777216 -i * test.mp4
FFmpeg version SVN-r0.5.1-4:0.5.1-1ubuntu1, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --extra-version=4:0.5.1-1ubuntu1 --prefix=/usr --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --disable-stripping --disable-vhook --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static
libavutil 49.15. 0 / 49.15. 0
libavcodec 52.20. 1 / 52.20. 1
libavformat 52.31. 0 / 52.31. 0
libavdevice 52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0
libavfilter 0. 4. 0 / 0. 4. 0
libswscale 0. 7. 1 / 0. 7. 1
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
built on Mar 4 2010 12:41:55, gcc: 4.4.3
Input #0, image2, from '0000.png':
Duration: 00:00:00.04, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
Stream #0.0: Video: png, rgb24, 1680x1050, 24 tbr, 24 tbn, 24 tbc
Segmentation fault
peter@viking:~/pics$

Huh?

[FakeOutdoorsman]

peter@viking:~/pics$ ffmpeg -r 24 -b 16777216 -i * test.mp4
FFmpeg version SVN-r0.5.1-4:0.5.1-1ubuntu1, Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Fabrice Bellard, et al.
configuration: --extra-version=4:0.5.1-1ubuntu1 --prefix=/usr --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --disable-stripping --disable-vhook --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-swscale --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static
libavutil 49.15. 0 / 49.15. 0
libavcodec 52.20. 1 / 52.20. 1
libavformat 52.31. 0 / 52.31. 0
libavdevice 52. 1. 0 / 52. 1. 0
libavfilter 0. 4. 0 / 0. 4. 0
libswscale 0. 7. 1 / 0. 7. 1
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
built on Mar 4 2010 12:41:55, gcc: 4.4.3
Input #0, image2, from '0000.png':
Duration: 00:00:00.04, start: 0.000000, bitrate: N/A
Stream #0.0: Video: png, rgb24, 1680x1050, 24 tbr, 24 tbn, 24 tbc
Segmentation fault
peter@viking:~/pics$

Huh?

FFmpeg does not take a * as input. You need to give it something like:
ffmpeg -r 24 -i %04d.png -vcodec libx264 -vpre hq -crf 24 -threads 0 output.mp4
See the FFmpeg FAQ: 3.2 How do I encode single pictures into movies? (http://www.ffmpeg.org/faq.html#SEC14)

[PeterVR]

FFmpeg does not take a * as input. You need to give it something like:
ffmpeg -r 24 -i %04d.png -vcodec libx264 -vpre hq -crf 24 -threads 0 output.mp4
See the FFmpeg FAQ: 3.2 How do I encode single pictures into movies? (http://www.ffmpeg.org/faq.html#SEC14)

Thanks for your response FakeO.

Let me go RTFM.

[tom17]

So for some reason this does not work for me. What am I doing wrong??

$ ls
IMG_2526.JPG IMG_2529.JPG IMG_2532.JPG IMG_2535.JPG IMG_2538.JPG IMG_2541.JPG IMG_2544.JPG IMG_2547.JPG

$ ffmpeg -r 10 -b 1800 -i IMG_%04d.JPG -s 800x600 test.mp4
FFmpeg version 0.6-4:0.6-2ubuntu6.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2010 the FFmpeg developers
built on Mar 31 2011 18:43:47 with gcc 4.4.5
configuration: --extra-version=4:0.6-2ubuntu6.1 --prefix=/usr --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-vdpau --enable-bzlib --enable-libgsm --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-vaapi --enable-pthreads --enable-zlib --enable-libvpx --disable-stripping --enable-runtime-cpudetect --enable-gpl --enable-postproc --enable-x11grab --enable-libdc1394 --enable-shared --disable-static
libavutil 50.15. 1 / 50.15. 1
libavcodec 52.72. 2 / 52.72. 2
libavformat 52.64. 2 / 52.64. 2
libavdevice 52. 2. 0 / 52. 2. 0
libavfilter 1.19. 0 / 1.19. 0
libswscale 0.11. 0 / 0.11. 0
libpostproc 51. 2. 0 / 51. 2. 0
IMG_%04d.JPG: No such file or directory


Why isn't it doing the padding correctly?

Thanks,

Tom...

Edit: Ohhhhhhhh you have to start from 1! :)

[FakeOutdoorsman]

How many input images do you have? Although your images appear to be in sequential order, and if I remember correctly, FFmpeg requires the inputs to start with 1 as in IMG_0001.JPG.

[Flaggmann]

Use a video editor NLE application and create a project file. Add your images to the project then just drag and drop them in whatever order you want and render out a video file in whatever format you want. Viewing it in a video player will allow you to adjust the slider manually to view specific spots paused.

If you need to change the order, just open the project and drag and drop the image files to where you want them and re-output a new video file.