Converting MOV movie files for use with Tango Movie Tool

Overview:

The Tango Movie Tool (TMT) was designed to be used with the movie recording feature of digital still cameras -- like the Olympus C-3040 (which directly produces 320x240 .mov files at 15 frames/second) and the Fuji FinePix F-700 (which directly produces 320x240 .avi files at 30 frames/second). Before using TMT to annotate or view a movie, the .mov or .avi file must be converted into an "image sequence" -- a sequence of numbered files, each containing a JPEG image for a single frame.

For .MOV files, this conversion is done using Apple QuickTime Pro (version 5 or greater). The Windows version of this program can be purchased on-line from Apple for about $29 (http://www.quicktime.com).

The following instructions apply to converting an MOV movie file into an image sequence of JPG files which can be annotated and viewed with the Tango Movie Tool. If you have an AVI file, use these instructions instead.

Detailed Steps:

1. Open the .mov movie file in QuickTime Pro. Using the pair of slider markers along the lower edge of the selection bar, mark the section of the movie that you want to export. The following screen capture is typical of a movie file that will be editted down to just a small area of interest:

2. Select the Trim function from the Edit menu to actually trim the movie to the selected area. (This operation will not have any effect on your original movie file).

3. Select Export from the File menu.

4. The "Save exported file as..." dialog will appear:

• Browse to the base folder for your stored TMT-compatible movie sequences, and create a new, empty folder to hold the images only for this movie.
• Browse into this new folder (the "SampleSequence" folder is shown in the screen captures).
• Enter a relatively short file name (for example: "sample") that contains only letters (no spaces, no periods, no numbers, no .jpg at the end).
• For the "Export" setting, select "Movie to Image Sequence." Use "Most Recent Settings."
• Do not click on Save until you have set the options according to the steps that follow below this dialog.

5. Click the "Options" button in the above dialog. This will bring up the Settings dialog. Be sure that the "Format" is specified as "JPEG." Also be sure that the "Frames per Second" is set to match the frame rate used by your camera. Before you click on "OK," first click on "Options" and perform the next step.

6. Click the "Options" button in the dialog above. This will bring up the following JPEG Options dialog. Be sure that "Color" is selected, and that "Target size" is unchecked, and lists "0" for bytes. Select the desired quality setting. For most cases, the "Medium" setting will provide excellent results as well as producing relatively small output files. After making these settings, click "OK" on the "JPEG Options" dialog, click "OK" on the "Export Image Sequence Settings" dialog, and click "Save" on the "Save Exported File As" dialog.

7. When the export process is complete, you can exit completely from QuickTime, and bring up the Tango Movie Tool to view the movie image sequence that was just created.