Animation from Movie

Summary

This program converts movies into animated clips. Here you can find example clips made with this program http://www.caricature-software.com/animation/index.php

System Requirements

Windows XP or Windows Vista with DirectX 9.0 (Direct3D) compatible graphics card/driver (most newer computers are compatible), at least 512MB RAM

Installation

  • Download the program from here http://www.caricature-software.com/products/animation-from-movie/download.html (click the gray Download button and select Save File in a pop-up dialog if the dialog appears)

  • Locate the file AnimationFromMovieSetup on your computer (this is the file you downloaded, it may be listed as AnimationFromMovieSetup or AnimationFromMovieSetup.exe depending on your computer settings). Double-click on it and follow the instructions. After installation is completed, look for a new pencil-shaped icon on your desktop, double-clicking on it starts the program.

    • Supported video formats

    To use this tool, you need a movie. The supported input formats include avi, wmv, asf, mpg, mpeg. You can download a sample movie from http://www.caricature-software.com/products/animation-from-movie/sample.avi Mov format is not supported; we recommend to use a free program Bink Video to convert mov into avi format.

    Step-by-Step instructions

  • Press Open Movie, and select a movie. The first frame of the movie will appear in the left picture box. If the video file is searchable, you can use the slider under this box to select a different movie start.

  • Press Play Animation. The movie is converted to animation frame-by-frame; depending on the frame size and the speed of your computer, the result animation may run too fast or too slow. After the animation is saved to a file, it will have the regular speed.

  • At any time, you can adjust the parameters of the animation (darker - lighter, more details - fewer details). If some cases, when some of the objects in the movie don't move often, i.e., when the movie has a background, it is useful to check the Stabilize Background option to reduce blinking.

  • To save the animation to a file, press Record to AVI or Record to SWF. Recording will start right after you enter the desired file name and will stop when the Stop button is pressed. In the case of SWF output, only up to 500 frames will be recorded (otherwise the swf file becomes too large). AVI output doesn't have any length restrictions.

    • Trial Version

    The trial version never expires; however a watermark is placed on the clip. The trial version can be converted into a regular version by purchasing the license here http://www.caricature-software.com/products/animation-from-movie/license.html In the program menu, select License, in the submenu select Enter License Number. After entering the license code, the program will no longer place the watermark on the clips.

    Including an swf clip in your web-page

    Swf movies can be easily displayed on web-pages. Just put the clip (sample.swf in this example) in the same directory with your html page and include the following code (replace sample.swf, 640 and 480 by the actual file name, and the width and height of the movie)
    <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0" width="640" height="480" id="sample.swf" align="middle"> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain">
    <param name="movie" value="sample.swf">
    <param name="quality" value="high">
    <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff">
    <param name="menu" value="false">
    <param name="wmode" value="transparent">
    <embed src="sample.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#ffffff" width="640" height="480" wmode="transparent" name="sample.swf" align="middle" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"> </object>

    Troubleshooting

  • If the input movie is in one of the supported formats (avi, wmv, asf, mpg, mpeg), but, when you try to open it, an error message "No combination of intermediate filters could be found to make the connection" appears, try to play this movie in Windows Media Player. If Windows Media Player doesn't play it, your computer is missing a codec needed to decode the input file. The specifics of the required codec depends on where the movie came from. Sometimes, it is DivX codec. http://www.divx.com/divx/windows/

  • A "Could not find any compatible direct3d devices" error message means that the graphics card or driver are not DirectX 9.0 compatible, i.e. the program will not run on this computer.

    •