Converting MAC Screensavers to QT Movies

[patrickg6]

I am looking to create a script that will allow me to convert a folder of images used for the Pictures Screensaver on OS X into a QuickTime movie. I basically want the QT movie to contain all of the photos with transitions and the pan and scan movement generated within the screensaver. My goal is to be able to take these screensaver generated QT movies and add titles and audio and convert into iDVD or something like that. So I would need the ability to choose the file output size for the desitnation QT movie.

Does anyone have any tips or no of something that already accomplishes this?

Thanks,

Patrick

[jonn8]

QT in and of itself doesn’t support the transitions and pan & scans that the screen saver does. The app SaverLab http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10327 allows you to save the screen saver as a QT file. From there you can add your subtitles in iMovie or something but scripting it will require GUI scripting, I believe, where you get all the names of the images in the screen saver folder and then look at the timing used for the display then use GUI scripting to make subtitles spaced appropriately using the file name. Was that clear?

HTH,
Jon

[jonn8]

On further thought, if you use SaverLab to create a movie of your screensaver, then open that in QuickTime Player and run the script below to get some quick and dirty subtitles of the file names. Be sure to modify the script to the folder you actually used for the sceensaver and to amend the file types if you have some other file types you want to include. This script strips the extensions off of the file names but you can modify the last value of the get_folder_list call to false to include them. This script is not very smart and simply looks at the total time of the movie and divides that by the number of files it finds. Assuming the screensaver displays each file for the same amount of time, this should work.

QuickTime is very scriptable (and may well actually be able to do the pan and scan and transitions that screensaver does) but I haven’t delved into it that much. I’m sure there is a much better way create nice anti-aliased labels that float on top of the movie with your choice of location, size, color, font, etc. Anyone want to tackle this in AppleScript Studio? Maybe someone already has.

set file_types to {“TIFF”, “JPEG”, “PICT”}
set file_extensions to {“tif”, “jpg”, “pict”}
–set this folder to the folder used for the screensaver
set picture_folder to (((path to “cusr”) as string) & “Pictures:xxx:”)
set the_subtitles to my (get_folder_list(picture_folder, file_types, file_extensions, true))

tell application “QuickTime Player”
activate
tell movie 1
set subtitle_count to (count of the_subtitles)
set subtitle_duration to (duration / subtitle_count)
set selection_start to 0
set selection_end to subtitle_duration
repeat with i from 1 to subtitle_count
set the_subtitle to item i of the_subtitles
set the clipboard to the_subtitle
set selection start to selection_start
set selection end to selection_end
add with scaled
set selection_start to (selection_start + subtitle_duration)
set selection_end to (selection_end + subtitle_duration)
end repeat
end tell
end tell

on get_folder_list(the_folder, file_types, file_extensions, strip_extensions)
set the_files to {}
tell application “Finder” to set folder_list to every item of folder the_folder
repeat with new_file in folder_list
try
set file_info to info for (new_file as alias)
set temp_file_name to name of file_info
set temp_file_type to file type of file_info
set temp_file_extension to name extension of file_info
on error
copy {“fold”, “fold”} to {temp_file_type, temp_file_extension}
end try
if file_types contains temp_file_type or file_extensions contains temp_file_extension then
if strip_extensions = true then
repeat with i from 1 to count of file_extensions
if temp_file_name ends with (“.” & (item i of file_extensions)) then
set name_count to (count of characters of temp_file_name)
set extension_count to (count of characters of (item i of file_extensions)) + 1
set temp_file_name to (characters 1 thru (name_count - extension_count) of temp_file_name) as string
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
end if
set the_files to the_files & {temp_file_name}
end if
end repeat
return the_files
end get_folder_list

–this script was automatically tagged for
–color coded syntax by Script to Markup Code
–written by Jonathan Nathan

Jon

[patrickg6]

Thank you for the great advice. However, I think I need to clarify my original post.

I intend to add titles and music is something like Final Cut Pro. So all I need is a file generated from the photos with the animation pan and scan added to them automatically. Basiclly I want an automated Ken Burn’s effect applied at random to each photo, plus a simple cross fade between photos.

Ther rest of hte processing would take place in FCP. However, this does require a fairly large file in native NTSC-DV format. So if I could choose my exported movie settings when the script is invoked that would be awesome in case I have to change things for the output file.

I looked at SaverLab but man is it slow. It has to run the screensvaer which already uses a lot of processing power and then write it to disk at the same time. I let it run for about 2 minites and and only got about 10 seconds of complete movie. There has to be a better way.

I appreciate any more input anyone has on this topic.

Thanks,

patrick