Make AVI movie files from BMP files on Microsloth Winders

created Wednesday, 2006 August 23
updated Saturday, 2006 September 16

1 What is this?

I wanted a command line program which would assemble frame files into a movie file format. Specifically...

Because the frames would be generated by another program, & I didn't want to wait for that program to generate all of them, the movie maker program needed to read the names of the frame files from standard input.
The movie maker program needed the ability to delete each frame file after it had inserted the frame into the movie.
I was unwilling to pay money for such a movie maker program.
I wanted to learn more about movie files while I was at it.

So I wrote one & called it avi-ar.exe. This document contains the user manual for that program & for a related utility program. It also contains the source code for both programs.

Before writing my own program, I surveyed movie maker programs which were already available. I found few which were command line programs. None of those read the frame filenames from standard input. So I wrote my own, thereby achieving all of my requirements including ``learn more about movie files''.

2 License

One file, getopt.c, is in the public domain. I downloaded it from the TEX User's Group web site.

All other files, both source & executable, are copyrighted by Gene Michael Stover & released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License [1]. Here's a copy of the copyright notice & license agreement at the beginning of each source file:

Copyright (c) 2006 Gene Michael Stover. All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA

This documentation, the document you are reading now, has its own copyright & is not released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License.

3 Enumerate installed codecs

NAME

enum-icinfo.exe - print a list of installed compressors

SYNOPSIS

enum-icinfo -h

enum-icinfo [-cchar]

DESCRIPTION

enum-icinfo.exe prints to standard output a list of codecs installed on the computer. By default, the output format could be parsed by Common Lisp, but with the -c command line option, the output is in Delimeter Seperated Values (DSV) format.

Here is example output:

C:\temp>enum-icinfo

(ICINFO (n 0)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x64697663 "cvid")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "i"))

(ICINFO (n 1)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x30323469 "i420")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "m"))

(ICINFO (n 2)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x31337669 "iv31")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "i"))

(ICINFO (n 3)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x32337669 "iv32")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "i"))

(ICINFO (n 4)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x31347669 "iv41")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "i"))

(ICINFO (n 5)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x76757969 "iyuv")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "i"))

(ICINFO (n 6)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x656C726D "mrle")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "m"))

(ICINFO (n 7)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x6376736D "msvc")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "m"))

(ICINFO (n 8)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x79767975 "uyvy")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "m"))

(ICINFO (n 9)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x32797579 "yuy2")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "m"))

(ICINFO (n 10)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x39757679 "yvu9")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "t"))

(ICINFO (n 11)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x75797679 "yvyu")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "m"))

(ICINFO (n 12)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x3336326D "m263")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "m"))

(ICINFO (n 13)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x3136326D "m261")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "m"))

(ICINFO (n 14)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x30357669 "iv50")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "i"))

(ICINFO (n 15)
        (dwSize . 568)
        (fccType #x63646976 "vidc")
        (fccHandler #x33766D77 "wmv3")
        (dwFlags 0)
        (dwVersion . 0)
        (dwVersionICM . 260)
        (szName . "")
        (szDescription . "")
        (szDriver . "w"))

OPTIONS

-cchar: Tells enum-icinfo to print its output in DSV form with char as the delimeter. char must be a single printable character, such as a comma (,) or a colon (:). It is an error to omit char.
-h: Print brief usage instructions.

INSTALLATION

Copy enum-icinfo.exe into a directory that's in your path. Voilá! It's installed.!

AUTHOR

Written by Gene Michael Stover.

BUGS

Only available for Microsloth Winders.

Does not give the human-readable name for each codec. I had hoped that the Description field of the ICINFO would contain the human-readable name. There is a list of codec Four-CC codes & their names at fourcc.org.

SEE ALSO

The executable, full documentation, & source code are available at http://cybertiggyr.com/gene/vwu/.

enum-icinfo does most of its work with the Microsloth Winders ICInfo system call.

4 Create an AVI file from BMP files

NAME

avi-ar.exe - create an AVI movie file from frames in separate files

SYNOPSIS

avi-ar -h

avi-ar [-E] [-ccodec] [-ffps] [-qquality] avifile

DESCRIPTION

avi-ar.exe is a command line program which consumes frames from BMP files & produces an AVI movie file. Each BMP files contains one frame in the form of a Microsoft Windows's Device Independant Bitmap (DIB).

The resulting movie file does not have a sound track.

avi-ar has two modes of operation: stdin mode & directory scan mode.

In stdin mode, avi-ar reads the names of the frame files from standard intput. Each each line from standard input has one pathname. The pathnames may refer to any file, anywhere, except that they cannot contain newline characters. avi-ar will use stdin mode if you do not use the ``-d'' command line option.

In directory scan mode, avi-ar looks for frame files in the current directory. It assumes the frame files are in order (0, 1, 2, 3, ...). It assumes that each frame file's name is the frame number in decimal, with no leading zero, followed by ``.bmp''. In other words, the first frame's name is ``0.bmp''. The second is ``1.bmp''. The eleventh is ``10.bmp''. avi-ar will scan & read frame files until the next frame file does not exist and the done file does exist. It will delete the done file. avi-ar will be in directory scan mode if you use the ``-d'' command line option. The argument to the ``-d'' option is the name of the done file.

For example, if you use ``-ddone.stop'', then avi-ar will be in directory scan mode, & it will stop when there are no more frame files & there is a file called ``done.stop''.

The reason avi-ar needs a done file is that it does not assume all the frame file exist before avi-ar starts. So it will scan the directory repeatedly, consuming frame files in order (0.bmp, 1.bmp, 2.bmp, ..., 10.bmp, 11.bmp, ...99.bmp, 100.bmp, ...) until the next expected frame file doesn't exist and the done file does exist. So you can start avi-ar, then start your frame-generating program.

The reason I created directory scan mode at all is that, on Microsloth Winders, the program I use to generate frames has difficulty running avi-ar in a way that the frame-generator can write the frame file names to avi-ar's stdin. On unix-like systems, I rely on stdin mode.

OPTIONS

-E

Tells avi-ar to delete each frame file after writing the frame to the AVI file. Use at your own risk.

The -E is case-sensitive for your protection.

This option is for environments in which the frames are generated by another program, so no frame is sacred & it's safe to save space by removing them after writing them to the AVI file.

-ccodec

Codec is a four-character code which names a CODEC. Tells avi-ar to use codec for encoding the movie. Of course, the CODEC must be present on your comuter, & it must accept Device Independant Bitmaps as input. The default CODEC is ``cvid'' (which is Cinepak).

To get a list of CODECs on your computer, use enum-icinfo.exe 3.

-ddonefile

Tells avi-ar to use directory scan mode & specifies the name of the done file. By default, avi-ar uses stdin mode.

-h

Print brief usage instructions.

-ffps

Specifies that the movie file should be played at fps frames per second. Default is 24 fps.

-qquality

Specifies the value for the dwQuality member of the AVICOMPRESSOPTIONS. The quality value

should be $0 < q \le 10,000$ . The default is 10,000.

ARGUMENTS

avifile: names the output file. This argument is required; there is no default.

INSTALLATION

Copy avi-ar.exe into a directory that's in your path. Voilá! It's installed.!

AUTHOR

Written by Gene Michael Stover.

BUGS

Only available for Microsloth Winders.

SEE ALSO

The executable, full documentation, & source code are available at http://cybertiggyr.com/gene/vwu/.

5 Source Code & Executables

If you just want the executables, download them from the links in the bin directory, below.

If you want the source code so you can compile it yourself, create a subdirectory tree like the one below & download all of the files into it.

After downloading all of the source code files & creating the directories (even the ones which are empty before you compile), you can build all of the programs from the command line by CDing into the same directory with Makefile.w32 & then running build.bat.

You will probably have to edit the pathname in build.bat for your system.

bin/
build.bat
lib/
Makefile.w32
src/
- avi-ar.c
- bitmap.c
- bzero.c
- bzero.h
- cfg.c
- cfg.h
- choose-compressor.c
- enum-icinfo.c
- frame.c
- frame.h
- getopt.c
- gwp.c
- gwp.h
- log.c
- log.h
- msgmap.c
- msgmap.h
- test0000.c
- this.h
- types.h
- vidf.c
- vidf.h
- xmalloc.c
- xmalloc.h
tmp/

A. Some AVI documentation

These are links to some of the documentation I used while writing avi-ar.exe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVI at Wikipedia
Windows Multimedia Start Page at MSDN
Multimedia Reference
AVI example code for creating AVI files
``AVI Video File Formats: Resolution, Pixels, Colors and Compression''. By Douglas Dixon. 1999 May.
Radius Cinepak for portability?
Windows Multimedia at MSDN
``AVI Overview''. By John F. McGowan, Ph.D. [2]
MPEG Software Simulation Group
Using AVI
1. ICCompressorChoose let's you choose a compressor from a dialog box. You can spcify the type of data to compress. I'll specify the input format's type with pvIn. I don't yet know what values specify what types unless it's ``DIB'', a Device-Independant Bitmap. Does this get us an initialized compressor or a structure to use to initialize a compressor?
2. Open AVI File. AVIFileCreateStream
3. ICSeqCompressFrameStart & its two related functions to compress frames.
4. Open EXR
5. ICCompressorFree

B. Other File Formats

This document is available in multi-file HTML format at
http://cybertiggyr.com/gene/vwu/.
This document is available in Pointless Document Format (PDF) at
http://cybertiggyr.com/gene/amo/vwu.pdf.

Bibliography

1: Free Software Foundation.
Lesser general public license.
world wide web.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/licenses.html#LGPL.
2: Ph.D. John F. McGowan.
AVI overview.
www.jmcgowan.com, 1996.
http://www.jmcgowan.com/avi.html.

Gene Michael Stover 2008-04-20