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FrameGlide Content >> Photojpeg/MJPEG conversion methods.

PHOTO-JPEG / MOTION-JPEG (MJPEG) QUICKTIME MOVIE EXPORT - THE SITUATION.

Initially posted March 2021 by TechnoFrolics in connection with its FrameGlide | Spin Browser video explorer, Updated March 2022.

• Background:
  • Apple has discontinued support of QuickTime and Adobe products no longer support PhotoJPEG/MotionJPEG QuickTime .mov movie export.
  • This is unfortunate, as Photo JPEG is a key codec — high image quality and potential for very fast intra-frame decompression and compression — something critical for the FrameGlide | Spin Browser system. (This deprecation it turns out is not just an issue for us, but generally — as reading support forum postings made clear.)
  • Last time we checked, Adobe did allow downloading older versions of their products, but only two versions back from current, which is insufficient. (You may be in luck if you previously purchased an older version — e.g., Premiere V6. We believe you can re-download old version so long as you have the relevant order/product info. We have V6 running under Windows 10.)
  • You can also perform the required conversion with Apple's Quicktime Pro (at least on a PC, we have not tested on a Mac), but as it is also not formally supported or currently available, that is a solution only if you happen to already have etc.
  • In response to the above, we created a simple batch file to allow using FFmpeg to convert any movie file to the required jpeg format. It technically "worked", but no settings combination we have so far been able to come up with provides sufficient output image quality. (If a reader happens to be an FFmpeg expert, and has confidence the utility can be used to generate professional quality output, visually indistinguishable from the original, please let us know. Certainly simply choosing the maximum quality output export option is not , in our experience, sufficient.)
• Solution:
  • Fortunately, Black Magic's DaVinci Resolve still supports. Below are directions on how to use it to perform the required conversion.
    • Note that you do not need the paid version Studio version — the free version works fine.
    • Caveat: We have tested on a PC only, not a Mac. If you are reading this within the context of deploying TechnoFrolics FrameGlide | Spin Browser system — which runs under Windows only — presumably you have at least the deployment PC.
  • UPDATE March 2022: We were recently alerted to a legacy (< last updated 2012) format conversion utility that, in our tests so far, works great — and is much simpler to use than DaVinci (the latter of course being a full-featured editor).
    It is called MPEG Streamclip, is free, and is designed for Mac and Windows. (Version 1.2 functioned on Windows 10, using Apple's QuickTime, readily and without issue. Whether it works on a current/recent version of OS-X is as yet untested.) It may be downloaded from its creator's website "Squared 5".
    
    Usage is relatively straightforward: Unzip archive (no "install" needed). Open your file. Export to QuickTime PhotoJPEG with desired compression. Choose "No Sound" for Sound setting. (If your source is interlaced, you will want to deinterlace for Spin Browser use.  Otherwise, just deselect "Deinterlace Video".  In general, if source video is interlaced, it will be "Upper Field First" as is the default setting.  We believe the destination video will be Progressive (as needed) if prior boxes properly checked. In other words, if source video also Progressive, then simply uncheck boxes, and if source video Interlaced, then Delinterlace.)
    
    Note: If screen is black when you open Source video, it means its codec is unsupported. (Probably unsupported by the OS on which you are running - you can try simply opening file in the OS's preferred video playback application to confirm. In that case, you will need to re-render Source video to some other supported format prior to using Streamclip.)
• Side note: A very helpful free cross-platform utility, with context menu right-click option in Windows, is https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo. Choosing "Tree View" after selecting media file of interest will show lots of useful file format info.

 

DaVinci Resolve (DR) Directions/Comments:

Preamble:

A) Disclaimer: We have used DR for a total of about 1 hour, so if anything below is wrong, incomplete, or not the best way of doing something, please forgive.

B) When installing, you need to find the installer window that shows installation is finished, containing a button to close the installer, etc. We mention this, because the progress window — a different window — keeps looking like the application is installing, even after it has finished and that other window is present, waiting for user input...

C) We first installed DR 17 on a Windows 10 laptop with only modest CPU, RAM, and motherboard GPU. In that environment, it just kept crashing. So we installed it on a much more powerful quad core Window 10 desktop, with lots of RAM, powerful nVidia graphics card, etc. There, it has so far worked fine.

D) When DR starts up, it may show the message "Looking for control surface" for a long time...
In that regard:
- Up to say 10-60 seconds, this is likely "normal", where Black Magic Design (BMD) says it is just that they don't update the message. In other words, the search for control surface (a hardware device providing editing controls) happens almost instantaneously, but then lots of other initialization happens, but they don't update the onscreen message.
- HOWEVER, there is also another thread with users describing it taking 10-15 minutes to get past that message, which is a bug of some kind...

E) DR project files, unlike other suites we have used like Adobe CC, are stored in a database and so a simple Save-As does not work to place project in desired folder. The location for the database can be seen/modified via the File | Project Manager | Show Databases icon click | "i" Info to show detail, and then hover over database path.
(There is also an "Export Project" option that we believe may write the database entry of relevance to wherever you wish, in some format we have not explored.)

STEPS:

1) Download DR free version from https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/ and install it.

2) Start it up and on the top menu select File | New Project | Create.

3) Assuming the bottom menu item selected is Media, then top menu File | Import selection will include Media as an option. (If Media is not selected in the bottom menu, then the top menu may have Import | Media grayed out.)

4) When you import the media, you will likely get a query re changing Project Framerate to match Media. We did so match and think in general that is the correct thing to do.

5) Once you import the media, it may take a while (tens of seconds for even a relatively short clip) for media to actually appear in media clip icon view, be scroll-able, etc. We believe what is happening is that DR is taking temporally-compressed footage (we opened an H264 .mp4 file) and creating a format better suited for backward/forward scrolling (e.g., by making each frame temporally stand-alone.)

6) Right-click on the clip and select Create New Timeline Using Selected Clips, and just accept the defaults.

7) Left-click on the newly created timeline icon (not sure this is necessary, but won't hurt), and then click the Gear icon on the lower right of the environment windows.
Ignore the Timeline Resolution dropdown (unless it has what you need), and just type in the desired pixel res directly below it. (While the drop-down selection above won't immediately change when you do this, the next time you click the gear icon to open the dialog, it will show "Custom".)
And we changed the 10 bit video to 8 bit — see no reason not to and likely will speed things up during editing. (Think this is just for display — nothing to do with export, which needs to be, and is, 8 bits/channel.)

8) On the bottom menu, click the Deliver item. When you do this, on the left (at least that is where it was on our default workspace layout) there will appear Render Settings. Select Format: QuickTime, Codec: Photo JPEG (Yay!!!).

9) There are then Video, Audio, and File buttons in the render panel.

a) Video: For the compression, choose the lower of the two options (not the "Best", which is likely much larger/slower-at-run-time than you need, and will be visually no better) and, in general, choose 70-80%. And choose square pixels.

b) Audio: Uncheck the Export Audio checkbox.

c) File: Enter a desired filename.

10) Right above the timeline, where you see the movie, you can select Render: "Entire Timeline" or "In/Out Range". Generally you will probably want Entire Timeline. (The In/Out range is, we believe, set by the thin gray bar just above the movie timeline, should you ever need it.)

11) Select the Add to Render Queue bottom at the bottom of the left-hand Render panel. When you do that, it will ask you for a file path for the to-be-rendered movie.

12) The movie in question will then be added to the Render Queue, shown on the right-hand panel. Once you confirm it is there, you may select the Render All button further down.

The above should hopefully do it. If there are issues, feel free to contact us.