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EasyBMPtoAVI Movie Creator
Version 0.55

Author: Paul Macklin
Website: http://EasyBMPtoAVI.sourceforge.net

Intro

EasyBMPtoAVI is a simple, easy-to-use, cross-platform utility for creating an avi movie file from a series of windows bitmap (BMP) images. Some features:

1. Support for reading all bit-depths supported by EasyBMP. At the present time, this includes 1, 4, 8, 16, 24, and 32-bpp bitmap images.
2. Can create files up to 2GB in size.
3. Output is uncompressed, so you can choose your own compression without loss of quality.
4. Cross-platform compatible (Linux, Unix, Windows, Macintosh, Solaris, ...)
5. Cross-compiler compatible (supports compiling in MS Visual Studio, g++, MinGW, Intel's icc, and the lousy Borland compiler)
6. Easy user interface even helps you if you forget to specify crucial information.
7. Endian-safe as of Version 0.52, so it will work on things like PowerPC, Sparc, etc.
8. 64-bit compatible
9. EasyBMP Version 1.05 or higher is required

Use

EasyBMPtoAVI needs to know a few things to run: the naming scheme of your bitmap files (along with the first and last files), your desired framerate, and the name of the output video file. This information is supplied as command-line arguments:

-framerate
-start
-filebase
-filelist
-end
-output

To see how to use EasyBMPtoAVI Movie Creator, type

EasyBMPtoAVI -help

Here's the current help:

EasyBMPtoAVI Help:

Usage scenario 1:

---

Convert frame000.bmp ... frame123.bmp to out.avi at framerate 13 fps: EasyBMPtoAVI -filebase frame -start 0 -end 123 -framerate 13 -output out.avi

Usage scenario 2:

Convert frame00.bmp ... frame13.bmp to out.avi at framerate 13 fps: EasyBMPtoAVI -start frame00.bmp -end frame13.bmp -framerate 13 -output out.avi

Usage scenario 3:

Convert files listed in FileList.txt to out.avi at framerate 13 fps: EasyBMPtoAVI -filelist FileList.txt -framerate 13 -output out.avi

Additional flags:

-increment N Assume that filenames are incremented by N, rather than 1. -copyright Set the copyright bit in the output file -help Access this help screen
-smooth N Smooths (temporally) by a factor of N. Useful for low-fps animations. -interleave Uses interleaving rather than interpolation for slightly faster

smoothing. Most be used with the -smooth option. -rescale <mode><dimension>

Rescales the input images as follows:

-rescale p300 Rescales images to 300% of original size -rescale w300 Rescales proportionally to new width 300 -rescale h300 Rescales proportionally to new height 300 -rescale f300 Rescales to fit inside a 300 x 300 square.

Additional notes:

1. We note that EasyBMPtoAVI can automatically detect the number of digits in your frame numbering scheme, i.e., don't worry if you have frame000000.bmp instead.
2. We note that in the third usage scenario, your input image files don't have to be sequentially numbered. For instance, files.txt could look like this:

   Bob.bmp BobLooksDumb.bmp BobSaysHuh.bmp BobSaysStopUsingHimAsAnExample.bmp Darn.bmp

3. EasyBMPtoAVI Movie Creator supports filebases that include numbers and symbols. For instance, this is fine:

   Sample001_test1_000.bmp Sample001_test1_001.bmp Sample001_test1_002.bmp Sample001_test1_003.bmp Sample001_test1_004.bmp

4. When EasyBMPtoAVI doesn't have enough information to do its job, it will interactively quiz you to fill in the blanks. User-friendly, no? :-)
5. As compiled, EasyBMPtoAVI is compatible with pentium3 processors and up. If support for a lower-end processor is required, then you'll need to grab the source and recompile it.
6. You can set the copyright bit by using the -copyright flag.
7. This readme may be out of date. For more current information use "EasyBMPtoAVI -help".