[plug] Time Lapse Movie

[Craig Ringer]

Onno Benschop wrote:

> However, it fills up RAM with all the images, and causes a phenomenal
> system load *before* it actually starts doing anything with the encoder.
> The system is completely unusable during the conversion.

That's just 'the ImageMagick way' :-(
You should see what it does to my server when I try to make a thumbnail 
directory of a gigabyte of images, mostly JPEG and EPS files. *shudder*.

> So, how can I make a movie of all these frames and how do I do it in
> such a way that I can append the latest frame to the movie every hour?

[snip]

> Any suggestions?

Most movie formats (such as MPEG) aren't designed to do what you want, 
because data from several frames is mixed together. MJPEG _is_ designed 
for frame-by-frame manipulation though, and would seem a good choice if 
you can find the software to manipulate it.

Mencoder will create MJPEG, and knows how to create a movie from a 
series of frames, but I don't know if it can add a single frame to an 
existing file.

Another avenue to look at might be MNG. I don't know how well supported 
it is ATM, unfortuately.

--
Craig Ringer