ConvertToMooV:The novel

ConvertToMooV is a simple application that converts PICS files, scrapbooks, and series of PICT files into QuickTime movies, with some added options thrown in for grins. Selecting a Source File The first thing you will see when running the app will be a standard file dialog asking for a file. You can now select a PICS file, a scrapbook ('ZSYS', or 'scbk') file or the first of a series of PICT files. PICT files must be of the form "<some name>.######" In other words, the name must consist of some string common to all of the PICT files followed by a "." and an identifying frame number. The first frame can be any number up to six digits, and leading zeroes are optional. After you have selected a file, if it was a PICT file, another standard file dialog will come up and ask you for the last PICT file in the series. The same naming conventions as above apply. If you select a PICT file that has a number less than the first file or a completely different name, the app will beep at you menacingly and quit. Choosing Compression Options After selecting a source file, your sense of aesthetics will be accosted by a big ugly compression dialog. You may need an extra monitor just to see all of it. From here you can choose just about any compression option you want, and then some. Compression Method The first pop-up menu lets you select the compression method you would like to have applied to your source material. Since you most likely are converting some form of animation, you will probably want to use the RLE or RoadPizza compressor. JPEG makes for some really sluggish animation. Color Space The second pop-up menu lets you select the pixel depth (number of colors) that you want the movie compressed at. If you are converting a PICS file, this menu will be defaulted to the number of colors in the original material. If converting any other type of file, however, you have to know what depth it needs to be compressed to and select accordingly. When selecting the depth to compress at, you probably don't want to use the "Millions of Colors+" selection, particularly with RLE. If you select it, you're saying that you like toting around a byte per pixel of extra baggage for nothing. If your images actually have 32-bits per pixel of useful information, select "Millions of Colors+" and the RLE and RAW compressors will preserve that extra byte. When compressing at indexed depths (1, 2, 4 and 8-bit), the default color or grayscale system clut for that depth is used, with "2 colors" and "Black & White" being identical. There is currently no way in ConvertToMooV to specify a custom clut for material being converted.

Spatial Quality This slider lets you choose the quality level you want each frame to be compressed at. When compressing to indexed depths, the spatial quality slider is meaningless, and ignored accordingly. Refer to other QuickTime documentation for a more detailed explanation of spatial quality. Temporal Quality This slider, which looks remarkably similar to the slider above it, lets you choose the frame differencing quality level. As with spatial quality, the temporal quality slider is also meaningless when compressing to indexed depths, Again, refer to other documentation for real explanations. If you uncheck the temporal quality checkbox, no frame differencing will be done on the movie. (I know, I know, the slider and edit text boxes should be grayed out when the check box is unchecked, but they're not, so give me a break.) Key Frame Rate Key frame rate lets you specify how frequently you want key frames (non-frame differenced frames) placed in your movie. Zero key frames puts one at the beginning and that's it. Ten puts one every ten frames, and so on. Frequent keyframes permit smoother random access on playback but take more space. Refer to other documentation blah, blah, blah... Max Frame Rate Max frame rate is really just the frame rate of the movie you are creating. With PICS files, the max frame rate is defaulted to whatever the PICS file says its frame rate is, but you're free to defy its wishes. With other file types, concentrate real hard on a number and the app will use the number you're thinking of. If that doesn't work, try giving it a hint by entering the number into the max frame rate box. Conversion Options To help your senses recover from the monster compression dialog, a small, tasteful dialog is brought up to take its place. From this dialog, you can choose from a few image manipulation options. Scaling As the heading implies, you can tell the app how much to scale every frame before compressing. There's not much more to say beyond that except, no decimals or fractions please. This is an integer only zone. Averaging The averaging option is just a modifier to scaling. If you don't want scaling, you're not going to get averaging. When averaging is checked, each frame of the animation is imaged into to a 32-bit buffer and then averaged and depth-converted to its final size into another buffer. The end result of this is an image that has been anti-aliased down to its final size instead of being decimated down to it. To see the effects of averaging, take a black and white animation and compress it to 8-bit, 50% scale, with averaging and compare it to a movie without averaging. Remember that all of these buffering games take time and memory. Dithering The dithering option is similar to averaging. If chosen, each frame is imaged into a 32-bit buffer and then CopyBits'ed with ditherCopy into a buffer of the final size and

depth. Dithering will give more visually pleasing results but kills the amount of compression. Also note that if your source material is already dithered, don't be surprised if your movie is dithered, even if the dither option was not selected. After all, it is a dither option, not an undither option. Saving the File After you've dealt with the barrage of options, you are finally at the point of selecting a file name for the movie file that in just moments will be created. The default name will be the name of your source file with the suffix ".MooV" appended. There is nothing magical about this suffix so if you don't like it, pick another. Don't save over your source file with the movie file. The app makes a simple check for this case but there may be ways of fooling it, so don't press your luck. At best you may get a disk error, at worst it may damage your source image file. The Conversion Window And now, the moment you've been waiting for. As your anticipation mounts, a window with the dimensions of your movie is displayed. As the conversion process proceeds, this window will display each frame of the animation. Don't panic if the images on the screen are drawn at a depth different than what you selected. All compression is being done offscreen and the window is only for feedback. At any time during the conversion, clicking the mouse will abort, leaving you with a half-baked movie file and a view of the Finder. What Next Dialog Upon completion of the conversion process, yet another lowly dialog is brought before you, asking for your approval. You can either repeat the entire process by selecting the "Convert another file" button. If that doesn't sound interesting, you can always select the "Append another file" which, obviously, lets you append another file or series of files to the movie. This can be useful if you have, for instance, five PICS files that are all part of one animation and you want to convert them all into one movie. And, last but not least, the "Quit ConvertToMooV" can be selected to, as the name implies, play a medley of digitized songs from Zamfir and his magic pan flute's greatest hits. Parting Shots Error detection in ConvertToMooV is fairly complete but error feedback is nearly nonexistent. If some type of error occurs, the program just beeps and quits. Oh well. Someday there may be error dialogs and messages, but for now you just have to guess. However, the most likely guess is that the mulifinder partition is just a little too small for the 4096 x 8192 24-bit images you're trying to compress. Try adding memory or subtracting pixels. This app is by no means bug free, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are certain combinations of parameters that make it die a horrible death. But for the most part, it is a very useful quick-and-dirty tool.