[MacDV] QuickTime, iMovie, iPhoto questions? (Part 2)

[Mark M. Florida]

--- Part 2 ---

On Saturday, November 23, 2002, at 12:55  AM, Frank Flynn wrote:

> Hi - I put the questions here at the top and the explanation below so 
> if you
> had no interest or no clue you could move on right away.  But if you 
> know
> how to do these please let me know - I'm so close to doing something
> great...
>
> --Can you switch the Key Frame rate in the middle of a QT movie?  How?

I'm not sure if this question makes sense...  what do you mean by "Key 
Frame Rate"?  Do you mean like in the iPhoto slideshow how long the 
image is shown on-screen?  The easiest way to do that would be to copy 
and paste the image you want to hold using QuickTime Player (Pro) -- 
just pause on the image you want to extend and choose "Copy" from the 
"Edit" menu and then "Paste" it however many times you want it to 
display longer than the original.  The advantage to this is that it is 
REALLY easy, but the disadvantages are:  you can only extend the image 
a multiple of the time length it is in the slideshow (a 5 second image 
can be made to hold for 10, 15, 20 secs, etc.), and you therefore have 
limited control of where the transitions land.

>
> --If not can you link two movies together such that if your end user 
> opens
> the first one it will play it and at the end (without stopping) it 
> will play
> the next one?

This is *kind of* possible -- you will want to make a new blank movie 
in QuickTime Player (Pro) and paste your source movies into this new 
file in the order you wish them to play.  Then, save the new 
"compilation" movie by doing a "Save As..." from QuickTime Player and 
choose to "Save normally (allowing dependencies)" so that it references 
the original movies instead of combining them all into an entirely new 
file.  As long as all of the associated "dependent" movies are in the 
same folder as the new compilation movie, you can move them around from 
computer to computer, burn a CD-ROM, etc., and the audience can have 
the option of watching all of the movies in the sequence you intended 
by playing the "compilation" movie, or watch each individual section by 
opening the desired "original" movie.

You can insert video clips using the same method -- just make sure that 
the video and still images are the same size or you will get 
unpredictable results...  I suggest 320x240 as a good size to conform 
everything to (use Sorensen for your QuickTime codec if you need to 
compress some high-res video)

> --Can you edit the sound of a QT movie and save it without affecting 
> the
> Video (without re-compressing it)?  What tool will do this?

Depending on what you want to do...  you could probably do all of this 
with QuickTime Player (Pro) by using the "Add" commands to insert audio 
at the appropriate times in your movie.  Like if you want to add the 
sound of crashing glass as your 11 month-old tries to stand up but 
crashes to his butt, do this:

- open the movie you want to add the sound to and position the play 
head in QuickTime Player where you want to insert the sound.

- open the sound file you wish to add in QuickTime Player, command-A to 
select all (or Shift-drag through the section you want to cut out), and 
choose "Copy"

- back in the video file, choose "Add" from the "Edit" menu -- this 
will place the audio snippet over the existing sound track

The advantage to working this way is that it is fairly straight-forward 
once you get comfortable to working with QuickTime Player's editing 
features, but the disadvantage is that you don't have very precise 
control like you do with iMovie  -- but then again, you can work with 
any existing QuickTime compatible files you already have without trying 
to figure out how to get them in iMovie for editing.

Anyway... hope this helps...  and I hope your mind is numb from reading 
my post.  (hehe)  (I think I was breathing gas fumes too long yesterday 
working on my car...)

;-)

- Mark

>
> My problem:  I have a bunch of photos in iPhoto and I can export them 
> into a
> QT movie slideshow using iPhoto.  This works great within the 
> limitations of
> iPhoto which are:
> -crummy sound track support (you can only have one audio file which 
> will
> play over and over, there's no easy way to sync different songs or 
> sounds to
> a particular photo).
> -All photos must be displayed for the same length of time.
> -You can't insert anything but photos (no video clips among the 
> photos).
>
> But the QT movie file is very small, the resolution is good (the 
> photos in
> the movie look great) and it's super easy to do this.
>
> So I tried to import the photos as still images into iMovie and do the 
> same
> slide show.
> -audio control was great
> -different display times for photos was easy
> -Mix in Video, titles and some effects also easy
>
> But the output was poor (it just looked bad) and the file size was 
> huge (100
> x the iPhoto file - even without the video and effects).
>
> After some research I discovered iPhoto tells QT to do only one Key 
> Frame
> per photo and sets the resolution for that photo high.  This gives 
> great
> quality and a very small file size.
>
> So next I tried having iPhoto making the QT movie and importing it into
> iMovie to tinker with the audio track.  This gave the worst results, 
> there
> seems to be no way to tell it "the Video is cool, just add this 
> audio..."
> and when it re-processes the Video it assumes moving Video and the 
> output
> sucks _and_ the file is huge (strike two).
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Frank                frank at declan.com

--- End Part 2 ---