This application program is Shareware. It may be used by anyone for any purpose. It may be distributed freely as a complete package with this documentation on BBSes, but it may not be sold by itself for profit, or be distributed by Shareware companies or bundled with commercial software without prior permission from the author.
If you use this program often and you feel it is worthwhile, please register the program with me by sending me the Shareware fee of $10 in US funds. Please make the check payable to Eduard Schwan, and send it to:
Eduard Schwan
1112 Oceanic Drive
Encinitas, California, 92024-4007
This registration is a one-time fee, and entitles you to notices of updates to this application, and also possible notices of any other new applications I create. Please help support the Shareware concept and Macintosh software development, register today.
Introduction
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MooVer is a System 7-only drag-n-drop application. It requires at least System 7, and QuickTime version 1.6 or newer. It creates a QuickTime movie from a sequence of Macintosh PICT data files dropped on it.
You can optionally "add subtitles" under each image frame. In this case, MooVer will subtitle each frame. It will either use the name of each PICT file, or, if there is a special "subtitle" text file in the same folder as the PICT files, MooVer will use each text line from this file for the subtitles instead.
The display size of the movie frame is determined by the size of the first image dropped in. All successive images, no matter what size they are, will be resized (scaled, not cropped) to fit the size of the first image.
The final QuickTime movie can create either 8-bit or 24-bit QuickTime movies. If 8-bit is used, then any 24-bit PICTs will be dithered before their frames are added to the movie.
How To
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To use MooVer, do the following:
(1) Drag some PICT files onto MooVer.
(2) Answer the prompts for settings, compression and where to put the movie.
(3) Drag some more PICT files onto MooVer, they will be added on to the current movie.
(4) Choose "Close" or "Quit" to save and close the QuickTime movie as output.
(5) Repeat steps 1 through 4 to create new movies until you are dizzy, or out of disk space.
Example
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I have enclosed a sequence of PICT files that you can select and drag onto MooVer to create a simple computer animated movie. This animation was created by POV-Ray, a Freeware ray-tracer for the Macintosh and many other computer platforms, available on CompuServe, America On-line, and the internet. I have also included the POV-Ray 2.0 scene source file that generated the frames, so that you may create a larger or smoother animation if you wish. I wanted to include an interesting set of frames for a sample movie, but at the same time I wanted to keep this archive small. I hope this is a reasonable compromise.
More about Subtitles
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If you have the Subtitles checkbox off (the default), then a simple QuickTime movie will be generated, straight from the pictures. If you turn Subtitles on, then MooVer will overlay some text at the bottom of the image. MooVer will automatically put the name of the PICT file in the subtitle area, unless you do something special. If you want some subtitles other than filenames under each image, you must create a subtitle file. The subtitle file must be named "Subtitles", or it must be the name of the first PICT file, with any PICT file extension replaced by ".Sub". For example, if the first image was called "Red October.Pict", then you'd need a Subtitle file called "Red October.Sub". This subtitle file must be in the same directory as the first Pict file. The subtitle file is simply a text file, with each line holding text for the subtitle of that picture (First line goes onto the first frame, 2nd onto the 2nd frame, etc.) If a line is empty, the previous line is repeated in its place. If the subtitle file has no more lines, but more pictures are added, their frame subtitles will revert back to their file names.
Subtitle technical note: Currently the subtitle text is imaged right onto the image behind it, which means that any lossy compression will affect the quality of the text, and scaling the movie will scale the text in an ugly chunky way. A future version may split the text out as a separate track and use TrueType text for smooth scaling.
History
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1.0b1, 6/93
First started coding
1.0b13, 3/3/94
Fixed splash screen to take keys/clicks correctly, and added a POV-Ray created logo
1.0 final, 3/25/94
Finalized document, created example POV-Ray animation scene and PICTs.
Maybe Later
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After 1.0, these may be added:
-Multiple System 7 Sound Files and AIFF files can be dropped along the sequence, and they will be added as part of the sound track, at the frame they were dropped.
-FLI style (MSDOS) movies may be dropped on and converted to QuickTime movies
-separate the image and subtitle as independent tracks
-save the subtitle track as TRUE text (better when scaled,)
-allow even more user options for the final generation of movies
-allow FLI output, so we Mac guys can contribute MSDOS-readable movies
Of course, the most important options are the ones you decide need to be added. Please let me know how you are using this, and what you would like to see added!
