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david van brink // Mon 2007.10.22 19:05 // {macintosh qt_tools}

qt_tools — AOK on Intel Macintosh

I hate to admit it, but I only last week started using an Intel-based Macintosh. A quad-core 2.66GHz, to be precise. I guess it does feel faster than the dual-core 1.25GHz G4 it replaces. And I was very very worried about my software not working.

But fortunately, everything actually does still work! I use Photoshop CS2 and After Effects 7.0 and even DVD Studio Pro 4, and they work fine. (Oh, I’ll be getting the latests for them, when I can. This is personal use costs, and I don’t use pirateware, so it may be a little while. And then they should really click right along, huh?)

Anyway, this post is to report that my free QuickTime command-line utilities qt_tools seem to work fine on this here Intel Macintosh! Hooray.

(I’ve heard reports that they can be recompiled for Intel with about a 50% performance improvement. And I’ll be investigating that as time permits, but porting software from big-endian to little-endian, or biendian, is not to be taken too casually.)

But what is qt_tools?

Well, you can get the full schpiel at the qt_tools page but generally, it lets you transform movies and images at the command line. Here’s some examples.

$ qt_export foo.mov foo.mp4                                   # convert a movie to mp4
$ qt_export bar.wav bar.aif                                   # convert a sound file
$ qt_export --sequencerate=30 frame001.jpg framesAsMovie.mov  # import frames to a movie
$ qt_export big.mov --size=80,60 tiny.mov                     # resize a movie

It’s very handy for some kinds of bulk processing, and certain production flows. If you’re into shell scripting — a very retro and powerful technology!

3 comments
Alan Latteri // Fri 2007.12.7 18:096:09 pm

qt_tools is awesome. thanks so much for making this. but i am having problems compiling on intel with OSX 10.5

src/qt_export.c: In function ‘makeTgaSettings’:
src/qt_export.c:491: error: ‘tga’ undeclared (first use in this function)
src/qt_export.c:491: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
src/qt_export.c:491: error: for each function it appears in.)
src/qt_export.c: In function ‘doMovieExport’:
src/qt_export.c:966: warning: ‘FSpDelete’ is deprecated (declared at /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/CarbonCore.framework/Headers/Files.h:10165)
src/qt_export.c:991: warning: ‘FSpCreate’ is deprecated (declared at /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/CarbonCore.framework/Headers/Files.h:10130)
make[1]: *** [obj/qt_export.o] Error 1
make: *** [quietly] Error 2

david van brink // Sat 2007.12.8 00:4312:43 am

Hi Alan!

Yikes, you are so right. I get the same result. To fix it, delete src/settings.c. Somehow the release includes that file, but the correct one is obj/settings.c, generated during the build.

That said, I’m pretty sure a straight build for i386 will have subtle problems (though it does seem to work at least basically). The code is — that is, I was — pretty cavalier about constants and literals in the code which are big-endian…

I haven’t really really tested an i386 build yet.

david van brink // Tue 2008.03.18 08:418:41 am

(update — qt_tools is built native for ppc & intel now, http://omino.com/sw/qt_tools/.)

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