I’ve completed version 1.5.2 of Movie Stumbler - a program that creates an .avi (w/ sound!) from a sequence of bitmap files (.bmp) and a wave file (.wav). This version adds compression, and fixes all known bugs!

Here are the specs for version 1.5.2:

• Windows XP only.
• Specifying only a start image and end image, create a .avi movie file from a sequence of bitmaps (.bmp). Movie Stumbler will automatically calculate the images in between the starting and ending images. For example, your images could be named using the format “myAni.test.#.bmp”.
• Use any frame rate from 1 to 1000 FPS.
• Add an optional sound file (.wav) that plays from the beginning of the movie.
• Compress the .avi with any codec installed on your computer, i.e. DivX.
• Intelligent skipping of, or halting due to, missing frames.
• Completely free!

Future Features:

• Manually sort the images and sequence them any way you like.
• ~Save movie builds, so a movie can be created by running a batch file, instead of entering in the same values every time.
• Use a real installer, instead of just a naked .exe, and add shortcuts to the Start menu, etc.
• Support for additional file formats (input and output).

Why did I write this? Well, two months ago, I bought the Student version of Maya Unlimited 6.5 - a modeling/animation/rendering package from Alias. It’s phenomenal software - it’s been used to do Ice Age, parts of Star Wars Ep. III, and tons of other movies and effects. Anyway, as you create an animation, what you’re actually doing is rendering, say, 30 frames a second over the duration of your movie. For a ten-second animation, this means you’ve got 300 image files! Maya provides a little program that lets you view these files as a flipbook - essentially a movie player - but it’s not portable: I can’t give that program to you. In essence, even though I can create a movie, I can’t share it with anyone who doesn’t own Maya.

The solution is merge these pictures into a single AVI (.avi) file. There are several programs available online that do this, but they are all either not free, were written for Windows 95, or didn’t support frame rates higher than 15(!).

Using the excellent, non-license-encumbered code available from Lucian Wischik, I created a simple WinXP GUI-based proggie that lets you create .avi files for any frame rate, with sound, for any number of images. And, it’s free!

Where does the name come from? When I first started looking around for a program to use, as I said above, I stumbled around the internet for a few days. I also discovered that the name I wanted to use (”makeAVI”) was already being used by another program. So, it seemed like a fitting choice to go with Movie Stumbler.