Creating AVI Files 

You can create AVI files using Adobe Premiere (installed on the instructional lab machines) or using freeware.  We give instructions here for using Premiere and refer you to the freeware links below.

Creating AVI files with Premiere

This is a very brief overview of the steps needed to create an AVI file from a sequence of still images using Adobe Premiere.

Important: your sequence of still images needs to have the frame number embedded in the filename:

final_0001.bmp
final_0002.bmp
final_0003.bmp

1. Start Adobe Premiere and let it start a new project for you (the default action).
2. Right-click in the "Project" window and select "Import --> File" from the menu that appears.
3. Select the first of your sequence of images, and check the "Numbered Stills" box.
4. Premiere will open the entire sequence of images and store them in the Premiere project window as one animation.
5. Drag the animation from the Project window to the Timeline window, into the "Video 1" track.
6. Adjust the work area slider (at the top of the Timeline window) so that its length equals that of the animation you just dragged there.
7. Select "Enter" to preview the project. You will be prompted to save the project before previewing.
8. To create the AVI, select "File --> Export --> Movie" and make sure "Microsoft AVI" is the type of animation file that will be created. Select the "Cinepak" codec (or see below for a note on codecs) and adjust the "Quality" slider to your liking. Also, the frame size can be adjusted; I'd recommend matching the aspect ratio of your original frames to minimize distortion.

Creating AVI files with freeware

In addition, there is a free program that creates AVI files from BMP files. Please visit here to download the program and read the online documentation. Here are a few tips:

• Use the command-line version available at http://www2.prestel.co.uk/cherryjam/bmp2avi.zip rather than the graphical UI version.
• Compress your video; if you don't compress the .avi, it will be really huge, which will make both uploading it and playing it a pain. Here is the syntax you should be using:
  bmp2avi -f 30 -p -o
  It will ask you for a compression format and a quality setting. I would recommend using either the Indeo codec, MPEG4, or MPEG2 (in approximately that order). Cinepak is okay, but the various MS Video codecs tend to look pretty bad. (FYI: MPEG2 is what they compress DVDs with; MPEG4 is a newer version of it). You may have to play around with the quality settings a bit to see where the best size/performance ratio is, but I'd recommend somewhere around 70-80.
• bmp2avi is really touchy about overwriting old .avi files; you'll need to make sure the "-o" specifies a unique filename.
• As for audio, you can easily add .wav files to AVIs with the "-w" command-line option. I'd highly recommend you do this; we won't be able to work with separate .wav files.