Converting 6000+ still images into an animation...

[Ic3Knight]

Hiya people, I've just downloaded imagemagick as I think it may do what I need, but I have absolutely no experience using it, so I'm not sure how to do what I want!

Basically, I'm doing some numerical modelling of acoustic waves interacting with "stuff". The modelling package I'm using produces a graphical output and I have the option to dump said ouput every "n" timesteps and it creates a .png file of the graphic at that time.

So, once the simulation is complete I have a folder full of .png files which are sequentially numbered along the lines of "stub0001.png, stub0002.png" etc.

I want to "stitch" all of these together into a video sequence. Is this possible with image magick, and if so... er.... how do I do it?!

Thanks for your help!

Paul

[magick]

ImageMagick supports MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MNG video sequences. For MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 you need the mpeg2encode program delegate. Also for 6000 images you would need gigabytes of temporary disk space because ImageMagick caches the images to disk while it assembles the video.

[Ic3Knight]

Thanks for the info... could you outline the sort of thing I'd have to enter in the command line to convert to MPEG-1(2)? also, where do I get a hold of the mpeg2encode program?

Thanks again for your help!



Oh... one other thing... would it be quicker/possible to do some kind of "loop" to save IM from having to load all of the image files in one go? for example, could it add file 2 to file one and then stop and add file 3 to what it did previously? Does that make any sense?

Thanks

Paul

[magick]

ImageMagick may not be the best choice for video since it does require all 6000+ images be read in one command. For example,

• convert *.jpg image.m2v

You can track down mpeg2encode with Google.

[anthony]

It may be better to use IM for batch processing the individual frames of the video, then use the mpeg encoders to do the final conversion to a video format.