Create a Movie

Material:

  • Your favourite image(s)
  • Python + Pillow
  • MEncoder or another program to create movies from a set of images.
  • see the Flower Assembly Movie to get an idea how the result could look like.

Task

Write a program using the PIL library that creates a set of .png images. Generate the images and generate a movie from that using a non-Python tool (e.g. MEncoder). Remember that a movie typically has 25 frames per second.

Hints

  • start with a very simple movie to make sure the assembly is working
  • the Flower Assembly Movie was created by slowly disassembling the picture and playing the frames backwards

Creating a movie from frames on Windows

MEncoder requires files with the frames to have names like frame_000123.png so that they have the right order in the final movie.

  1. Collect all frame images in one directory
  2. copy Mencoder into that directory.
  3. open a console (Start -> Execute -> cmd)
  4. switch with cd <directory_name> to that directory

  5. type

    mencoder “mf://*.png” -mf fps=25 -o output.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4