Hi there.
I have TONS of jpegA movie files with much empty space on the peripheral view. I want to be able to program a script that will prompt me for the region that I want to keep and crop the rest of the blank space out of the file, and save it as a new file. Right now i’m just doing this by hand, and it’s a real pain. Would apple script be able to accomplish this task with quicktime?
any input would be greatly appreciated.
Hear is an example of a cropped movie file: http://nematoda.bio.nyu.edu/index2.html that I did manually. As you can see, I’ll need to be able to do this much faster if I ever want to create a database of movies online.
Well, first and foremost, you’ll need to tell us what OS you’re using. X or 9?
Second, we’ll have to look into whether or not Quicktime Player is able to do physical manipulation of the movie ‘canvas’. An initial glance at its dictionary reveals mostly commands inreference to length of the movie and its timeline, but nothing about cropping or cutting the viewable area. However, there may be other tools out there which could perform the task.
Finally, once we find a tool for the job, it will most likely require that all movies you wish to crop have the same area to preserve. For automation to be possible, the script will need to be able to count on the same area outside/inside the crop. For example, every movie’s undesirable area would need to be the same. (exclude the outside left by 23 pixels, exclude outside right by 29 pixels, for example.)
right, someone else suggested that I use final cut express for this. but i’m unsure as to how to write a script for that piece of software, and searches online don’t seem to produce any fruitful leads.
yes i was assuming that the script would have a uniform criteria in the pixel dimesions in relation to where to crop. the region of interest in each movie is directly on center so that won’t be much of an issue.