AVI animation creator

Creates an unindexed raw AVI from a stack of uncompressed RGB24 Targa files (the ones generated by POV-Ray are accepted perfectly).

After having a raw AVI file generated by animmaker, you can encode it to DivX with MPlayer, like this:

mencoder foo.avi -o foo2.avi -divx4opts br=800:q=5:key=25

Or if you prefer libavcodec instead of divx4linux and two-pass encoding (enhances the quality/size ratio), you can do it like this:

mencoder foo.avi -o foo2.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800:vhq:vpass=1
mencoder foo.avi -o foo2.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800:vhq:vpass=2

Refer to the mencoder documentation to see how you can add audio, use different codecs, tune the compression parameters etc. Note that not all codecs support two pass encoding, which is completely optional anyway.

This is animmaker-0.4.1
Copyright (C) 1992,2002 Bisqwit (http://bisqwit.iki.fi/)

Usage: animmaker [<option> [<...>]] <file> [<...>]

This software assumes the files are uncompressed rgb24 tga files.

Options:
    -@, --list <filename>           Read input file names from the given file.
    -V, --version                   Displays version information.
    -X, --xflip                     Flip horizontally (not default)
    -Y, --yflip                     Flip vertically (default)
    -a, --audio <filename>          Specify raw audio source (can be a pipe).
    -b, --byte                      Audio is 8-bit (not 16-bit).
    -f, --fps <float>               Frame audio.rate (default: 25).
    -h, --help                      This help.
    -n, --mono                      Audio is mono (not stereo).
    -o, --outfile <filename>        Specify the output file.
    -r, --rate <rate>               Specify audio rate in hertz.
    -s, --audiochunksize <seconds>  Specify audio spacing.

You can also give the tga files in stdin, example:
 cat *.tga | animmaker -ogruu.avi -

No warranty whatsoever.

The program uses the colour depth and pixel resolution of the first image in the sequence (autodetected) as the parameters of the whole animation.

This is an example of making an animation in povray as DivX.

$ cat >animmakerdemo.pov <<EOF
plane { y,-1 pigment { checker rgb 1, rgb .5 } }
sphere { 0,1 pigment { rgbf .8 } finish { specular 0.3 ambient 0.3 } interior { ior 1.3 } }
camera { location x*10 look_at 0 angle 35            rotate y*360*clock    }
light_source { 0, 1 fade_power 2 fade_distance 10
               looks_like { sphere { 0,0.2 pigment { rgb 1 } finish { ambient 1 } } }
               translate <6,1,0> rotate y*360*clock*-4
             }
EOF
$ povray +w320 +h200 +kff300 +ft +ianimmakerdemo.pov
$ animmaker -f20 -oanimmakerdemo.avi animmakerdemo???.tga
$ mencoder animmakerdemo.avi -o animmakerdemo1.avi -divx4opts br=400:q=5:key=100 -pass 1
$ mencoder animmakerdemo.avi -o animmakerdemo2.avi -divx4opts br=400:q=5:key=100 -pass 2

Result is a nice looping animation (link removed due to bandwidth concerns).
(Time for render total: 357 seconds; time for encode total: 239 seconds.)

For an example of what you might achieve when using tga streaming (stdin mode), see this example: beladum.avi (1.4 MB, divx4+mp3) (recorded from Tales of Phantasia in snes9x using animmaker as a slave).

If you wish to include audio with your animation, you can either use --audio option in animmaker or add -audiofile <filename> to your mencoder commandlines.
See the manual pages of each programs regarding the use of them.

• All input tga files must be the same resolution.
• Only uncompressed rgb24 tga files are accepted.
• The resulting avi will not contain index.
• Resulting avi may not be bigger than 2 GB.
• Only raw audio is accepted, and the soundtrack can only have 1 or 2 channels and can only be 8-bit or 16-bit.

• Any frame rate can be selected between 0.00023 and 1000000 fps.
• Any number of frames is accepted (though the OS may limit the number of parameters).
• tga files can be read from stdin too.

These features might be implemented some day:

• Runtime conversion of any image format (using ImageMagick, obsoletes the requirement of tga files)
• Raw audio support is EXPERIMENTAL. If you find glitches, please report to me.

animmaker has been written by Joel Yliluoma, a.k.a. Bisqwit,
and is distributed under the terms of the General Public License (GPL).
Some features contributed by Warp.

If you happen to see this program useful for you, I'd appreciate if you tell me :) Perhaps it would motivate me to enhance the program.

You can contribute!

• Add new features, fix bugs! Modify the program (the source code!) and send me the patches.
• If you have a nice short (6-8 lines) povray animation scene to replace that crappy one of mine here on this page, you can send it to me too :)
• Tell me what you do with this program. I am interested.

My email address (sigh) is: bisqwit at iki dot fi.

GNU make is probably required.

$ make
$ su
# make install

If you do not want to install libargh (included in the archive), do not use "make install" and edit Makefile and enable the STATIC linking instead of DYNAMIC.

The official home page of animmaker is at http://oktober.stc.cx/source/animmaker.html.
Check there for new versions.