[Pythonmac-SIG] python and quicktime

[Kent Quirk]

Noah Gift wrote:
> I am new to python and was interested in writing some python code that 
> converts image sequences, for example tiff, into Quicktime movies, for 
> example animation codec.  Can anyone point me in the right direction 
> to begin my research?  It would be nice to not use pyobjc as I am 
> trying to focus on doing things in pure python for now as a learning 
> excercise.
>

Well, having solved a similar problem last year (making quicktime 
animations from a sequence of screenshots), I can testify that:

a) It's not easy. Quicktime doesn't make this problem simple or document 
it very well. In fact, at last year's WWDC, a guy from Pixar gave a talk 
about building a storyboarding tool and along the way ranted about how 
hard it was (and didn't need to be). I suppose it's possible that 
they've improved the documentation since then.

b) It's probably not possible with "pure" python. The file formats are 
neither documented nor trivial, so you're not going to just write the 
bits out to files. And as far as I know, there's no prewritten Pythonic 
wrapper for Quicktime -- other than going through PyObjC. If you really 
don't want PyObjC, I think your remaining choice is to build a C++ 
plugin for Python that makes the appropriate Quicktime calls (which is 
what we did -- but we already had a C++ framework we were using).

I wish I could help you with source code, but I'm no longer associated 
with that project.

    Kent