MOV files (out of topic, but I am curious)

robycos wrote on 12/17/2003, 1:47 AM
Hi all,

I know this is slightly out of topic, but I am curious and I have seen that many of you are very expert of this kind of stuff.

Introduction:
Recently I bought a magazine that contained a CD-ROM with 3D reconstraction of ancient Egyptian temples. IN practice what you see is an image of the reconstructed monument, then by using the mouse of the keybord you can change in a smooth way yhe camera position. Very cool.

Problem:
Now, I would like to use some of this clips in a homemadevideo (its a footage I did myself, and it is just for me.. so no copyright problem!). In the CD I notice that there are different files. Among them ther are some mov files. I opened them in Vegas and they are related to the temples.
I try to explain myself (not so easy with my bad english... sorry!). There is one clip (MJPEG compressed) for each temple. The clip starts with the temple seen from a given angle and height, then it is like the camera move clockwise along a spiral that climbs to the sky.

Now the questions:

-does anybody know how this work? I think that the mouse/keyboard just allows one to skip from one frame to another of the clips with and the skip is so defined that the results is to move right/left or bottom/up. This would also explain why MJPEG has been used instead of MPEG. Do you think it is right?

-the imported clip shows a 'strange' aspect. in fact you can see a good frame every N frames (I can't remember the exact N, more or less N=15). The intermediate frames seem to be a faded versione of the two 'good' frames.
I can't understand this. Do you think there is any practical reason for this? maybe i did something wrong with Vegas. Can it be that the fps of the clips is different from the one of the project and so VV interpolates all the frames between the two correctly sampled ones... (but also if I open the mov file with window media player, I can see the faded frames - not sure 100%... I should check this again)

Sorry again for the outoftopic post! I hope someone can reply my curiousity!

Best,

Roberto

Comments

roger_74 wrote on 12/17/2003, 2:17 AM
Sounds like a QuickTime VR. It's not really 3D, just a bunch of pictures stitched together and the display software calculates the image you see.

Some more examples
robycos wrote on 12/17/2003, 2:27 AM
ok, thanks roger!
THis explain the 1st point, but I still can't find an explanation to the 'faded' frames/pictures in the sequence. Can you?

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/17/2003, 7:39 AM
You have to explore the disk and find the file with the .mov extension, and drop that into Vegas. Vegas may or may not read this file format. I've never been able to read more than a slice of the still set, and haven't taken the time to dissemble it to see if I could get it to function.
Further, if you are copying to share with anyone, even from one disc, it's a violation of copyright. Even if it's for education, you must seek permission from the copyright holder.
robycos wrote on 12/18/2003, 1:04 AM
Spot,

Vegas opens these mov with no problem. THe only thing that bothers me is that there are those 'faded' frames! so I should retain only 1 frame out of N.
Concerning the copyright.. I think it shouldn't be a problem. It is just for putting some clips in a video I made by myself in Egypt... just an holiday video that will be watch by me, my girlfriend! and maybe just some friends 'obliged' to watch it during some private dinner ;)