MovieToolsｪ provides a suite of powerful utilities designed for use in video production with QuickTimeｪ. It is intended for use with full-size, full-frame rate digital video QuickTime movies that have been captured from video, or animations and digital video movies created on the Macintosh that will be recorded to video.
Because of the many functions MovieTools provides, some of the File menu items and the corresponding control buttons will change depending on your actions. Thus, some of the functions described below will not be available at all times.
Some of MovieToolsﾕ functions work with a single source movie file, while others work with two source movie files that are open simultaneously. MovieTools is based on the concept of ﾒbackgroundﾓ and ﾒforegroundﾓ movies. Background movies are always opened first, using the Open item in the File menu. The charactaristics of the background movie (bit depth in particular) will determine which functions are enabled for working with it.
Once a background movie has been opened, a foreground movie can then be opened, using the Open Foreground Movie item in the File menu. Having a foreground movie open will change the functions of some of the buttons and menu items, again based on the characteristics of both movies.
For instance, with a single movie open, the top control button and its related menu item will read ﾒField Renderﾕ, and selecting it will field render (interlace frames of) the open movie. When a foreground movie is opened, the top button and its related menu item will read ﾒInterlace Moviesﾓ, and selecting it will interlace the frames of the two opened movies.
In all cases, MovieTools does not alter either the background or foreground movies. Instead, it creates a new movie containing the results of processing.
When creating an output movie, MovieTools will append a suffix to the name of the background movie in single-movie operations, or the foreground movie in two-movie operations. The suffix will range from three to six characters in length. Before doing so, MovieTools checks the length of the original file name, and will truncate it as necessary before appending the suffix. You can of course rename the file as you wish before clicking the Save button.
What follows is an overview of the various functions of MovieTools. More detailed descriptions of individual functions are available by clicking the function in the topics list.
Field Rendering
The Field Rendering function of MovieTools creates smooth motion in movies that will be recorded to video by performing field interlacing. It is intended to be used to process movies ﾑ animations in particular ﾑ that have been rendered at 60 or 59.94 frames per second (50 FPS in PAL or SECAM). The Field Rendering function takes adjacent frame pairs and interlaces them together, creating a final movie at 30 or 29.97 FPS (25 in PAL/SECAM).
Interlacing Movies
This is a specialized function designed for the creation of 3D stereoscopic movies that will be recorded to video. It takes two movies and field interlaces them together into a single movie. In the output movie, each frame will consist of one field from the background movie and one field from the foreground movie. The output movie can be recorded to video for viewing with LCD-shuttered glasses.
De-Interlacing
The De-Interlacing function does essentially the opposite task of Field Rendering. This lets you take video that has been captured to a QuickTime movie and split the two fields contained in each original frame into separate frames in a new QuickTime movie of exactly twice the length of the original. The resulting 60 or 59.94 FPS (50 PAL/SECAM) movie is ready for rotoscoping or other effects processing. The De-Interlace function creates new frames with simple line doubling; the two fields extracted from the original frames are thus the same size and aspect ratio as the original frames.
Field Interpolation
The motion that often occurs between fields in captured video causes ﾒfield jitterﾓ or blurring when viewed on the Macﾕs non-interlaced display. The Field Interpolation function creates smooth-looking QuickTime movies that will be used on the Mac, as opposed to someday returning to video media. Field interpolated movies can be reduced to any size without the blurring caused by motion between fields. Stills taken from field interpolated movies will also work well as print graphics. The Field Interpolation function deletes one of the two fields from each frame of captured video and replaces it with a field interpolated from the remaining field. It throws away every other line, and fills it in with the average of the line above and the line below the discarded line.
Alpha Channel Extraction/Creation
With only a background movie open, the Extract Alpha function will allow you to extract the alpha channel from a movie and create a new output movie with just the alpha channel information. Numerous 3D animation programs allow animations to be created with an alpha channel mask. The alpha channel is stored in the upper 8 bits of a 32-bit image (ﾒMillions of colors+ﾓ), and is intended for use in overlaying elements on a background. Many editing systems, however, work best with a separate movie as an alpha channel mask.
This function can also extract an alpha channel from a 24-bit background movie with chromakey information.
With both a background and a foreground movie open, the Create Alpha function lets you create an alpha channel in the output movie from information in the foreground movie with RGB data from the background movie.
Alpha Channel/Chromakey Compositing
This function lets you composite a 32-bit alpha channel movie or a 24-bit chromakey movie over a background movie. It will create a new movie that combines the foreground movie keyed over the background movie using the alpha channel of the foreground movie as the key source. Performing this compositing off-line can save time with both non-linear editing system and for recording movies to video using an animation controller such as MacAnimator Pro.
Converting 24 FPS Movies to 30 FPS
MovieTools lets you convert a 24 FPS movie to either 29.97 or 30 FPS using a standard 3/2 pull-down technique identical to the one used when film is transferred to video. If youﾕre creating animations for film projects, this process lets you convert your movie for recording to video at the correct playback rate.
Comparing Movies
MovieTools lets you create a movie that shows the difference between a background and foreground movie. This is particularly useful when comparing different forms of compression, especially against an uncompressed movie, or a movie compressed with a lossless compressor.
Effects
MovieTools provides a set of effects that can be performed on movies. The effects are: Flip Horizontal, Flip Vertical, Rotate 180｡, Convert to Monochrome, Film Effects and various Resizings for analog/digital format conversion. All effects are performed on the entire movie to be processed.
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General Information & System Requirements
MovieTools supports image dimensions limited only by memory, including film resolutions of 2,000 x 1,000 and higher, and frame rates of 30, 29.97, 25 and 24 frames per second. With the de-interlacing and field rendering functions, it also supports field rates of 60, 59.94, 50 and 48 fields per second.
When one or more movies are open but no processing is in progress, you can advance the movie(s) in the preview window a frame at a time with the right arrow key on the keyboard, or go back a frame at a time with the left arrow key.
If you open a background movie, advance a distance into it, and then open a foreground movie, the background movie will be ﾒrewoundﾓ back to its start so that both movies are in sync.
If you have advanced into opened movie(s) and then start a process, the movie(s) will be rewound to their beginning before processing starts.
When a foreground movie is loaded after a background movie, the preview display will show a diagonal split, with the background movie in the upper left and the foreground movie in the lower right. This is a visual cue that two movies are currently loaded.
All functions duplicate the frame rate, bit depth and compression (if any) of the original movies in the new movies they create, with the exception of the Extract Alpha and Create Alpha functions. In the former instance, the output movie will have the bit depth selected in the Preferences dialog, either 8 or 24-bits. In the latter instance, the final output movie will always be a 32-bit depth movie, with the alpha channel in the upper 8 bits.
When the frame rate, bit depth and/or compression of background and foreground movies is different, a new output movie will normally be set to the characteristics of the background movie. The duration (running time) of output movies is based on the duration of the background movie. If the foreground movie is shorter, then at its end it will ﾒdisappearﾓ from any compositing or comparison. If the foreground movie is longer, then it will be truncated in the output movie.
You can override the default settings by selecting the ﾒDisplay Compression Dialogﾓ checkbox in the Preferences dialog.
While movies are being processed, two progress bars will be displayed below the preview image: The right progress bar will show the progress of the overall movie processing. The left progress bar will show the progress on each frame as it is being processed. (In some functions, such as when comparing movies, processing is done on a full frame basis, rather than line-by-line. In these instances the left progress bar will not appear.)
After each frame has been processed, MovieTools then passes it to the compression routines. While the frame is being compressed, the cursor will change to a rounded square with a ﾒCﾓ to show that the compression process is taking place. With some compressors, this will happen very quickly, while others will take a fair amount of time.
MovieTools is shipped with its memory segment set to
8 MB, and has run well under extensive testing at that setting.
When working with video resolutions, if you have lots of RAM, you might want to bump the setting up to 10 or 12 MB, especially if youﾕre processing PAL or digital video. Large frame sizes require more memory; the length of movies being processed has little bearing on memory requirements.
When working at film resolutions, you may need to increase the memory segment to 20 MB or more.
MovieToolsﾕ memory allocation is set by selecting the MovieTools icon and using the Get Info item under the File menu from the finder.
MovieTools requires System 7 or later, and QuickTime 1.5 or later. It will run on virtually any model Mac, but its windows and controls are designed for color or greyscale displays. No support is provided for 1-bit monochrome displays as found on the Plus or SE.
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Special Note
We love challenges. Many of the features youﾕll find in this version of MovieTools were suggested by beta testers and users of earlier versions.
If thereﾕs a conversion or effects feature that youﾕd like to see incorporated in MovieTools, please let us know; thereﾕs a good chance weﾕll add it to the program. If so, weﾕll restart the clock on your registration, and provide free updates for a year from the time you provide the suggestion.
The information on how to reach us can be found in the Registration dialog (even if youﾕre already registered).
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