Importing movies under Linux

evilkillerfiggin · Post by **evilkillerfiggin** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 7:41 pm

At the moment, whenever I import a video (AVI or MOV) I just see a broken image icon.

Is importing movies even possible under Linux, and if so, how do I do it?

If it's not possible, can anyone recommend a good 2D animation program that can? (preferably open source. I'm not sure whether Synfig's reached this stage yet?)

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 8:25 pm

Hi evilkillerfiggin,

to import a movie into AS in linux you only have one option: import it as an image sequence. Go to to Menu->Scripts->Image->Import Image Sequence. It would popup a select file dialog where it ask for the first file of the image sequence. Read the build in help for more info on this script.

Regarding to Synfig it can do something very similar to Anime Studio but with Synfig you can specify the files that you want to read (not only the first one) and also the frame rate of the image sequence (that can be different of the frame rate of the current animation). Check it out here. Althoug you cannot import the sound, recent version of Synfig allow to import Papagayo output voice files in Synfig.

Some tips to obtain an image sequence from an AVI:

Code: Select all

mplayer -vo png:z=8 myvideo.avi

where myvideo.avi is the video where you want to extract a file sequence. It would produce a set of 24 bit png files starting with 000001.png and ending with the last one. The z value would be set because if not it would be set to 0 (default value) and the png files would be produced without compression and easily some hundred of MB are written in your HD..

Best
-G

evilkillerfiggin · Post by **evilkillerfiggin** » Wed Apr 02, 2008 8:59 pm

Genete: thanks for your time. I'd love to use Synfig, but haven't suceeded in getting it running (on Ubuntu 6.06.) Anyway, I'm assuming you're saying Synfig can't pull in straight AVIs either.

But thanks for the mplayer tip.