Tim Nikias <JUS### [at] gmxnetWARE> wrote:
> After a looooooong hiatus from POV-Ray (sick with various things, along
> with a nice one-week-hell of a cancer-misdiagnosis) I'm trying to get
> everything tracing-related working properly on my Intel MacBook Pro.

> All it really needs to do is convert a series of TGA images into an
> MPEG-Animation, no sound (for the time being ;-), 25fps, along with a
> couple of options for quality/kbps and such (if you know TMPEGenc, you
> know what I mean).

Glad to here you're alright.  MacBook Pro, too.  Guess that's not quite as
important as health though...

My advice would be 'mpeg_encode'.  Does pretty much exactly what you're
describing, although I've never tried sound with it.  I'm afraid it's not quite
as simple a solution as you're looking for, but once you get this working once,
it's REALLY simple.  I use it all the time.  But here's my advice anyway
(forgive me if I'm telling you things you already know or just things you don't
care to hear):

First of all just to get things set up, you'll need XCode which includes the GCC
compilers and such, so if you don't have that you may need to go on the Apple
Developer Connection site at http://developer.apple.com/ , sign up for a free
account, and download that.  Nice to have anyway.

Next, head on over to the Fink website at http://www.finkproject.org/ and
download and install that.  It's a GREAT way to install a whole lot of free
programs.  Just type 'fink list' the Terminal.  Wow.  Unfortunately to get all
the more current software you will need to enable the 'unstable' branch,
described in detail at http://www.finkproject.org/faq/usage-fink.php (search
for 'unstable').

FINALLY, fire up the terminal if that's all done and type in 'sudo apt-get
install mpegencode'.  'mpeg_encode' runs the program.

This is a very simple and configurable way to compile a sequence of frames into
a mpeg animation in the true Unix way.  It takes a parameter file that I could
post if you're interested, but it's really pretty simple.  You only have to set
it up once.

This isn't really the GUI solution you may be looking for, but since Mac OS X
came out I've managed to get pretty familiar with the Unix/Linux stuff and as
far as productivity goes, I've never looked back.  If that's not your cup of
tea, just disregard this reply, but it seems to me that ignoring the Unix side
of Mac OS X is missing out on at least half of what it has to offer.  At least.
 Let me know if you want more details or if I should just shut up already. :)

 - Ricky

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