Export every frame as image from a Movie-File (QuickTime-API)

Question

I want to open an existing Movie-File and export every frame of this file to an image like JPEG or TIFF. I got so far until now:

int main(int argc, char* a         


        

Answer 1

As a beginning, this article on Movie exporters should pretty much get you started:

http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.16/16.05/May00QTToolkit/index.html

Even though MacTech is a Mac resource, all described API functions should be available in the QuickTime for Windows SDK as well.

I will slap some sample code together myself as a reference here as soon as I find the time.

Edit

See this book excerpt for additional info:

QuickTime Toolkit - Basic Movie Playback and Media Types @ Google Books

Edit 2 - The High-Level Approach: Movie Exporters

If all you need to accomplish is to extract all video frames from a QuickTime Movie and convert them to another format supported by the QuickTime API you won't have to take any low-level actions whatsoever if using a Movie Exporter.

The below sample code allows to extract and convert all video frames from a QuickTime Movie to, f.e., a bunch of JPEG files using a programmatically invoked Movie Export Dialog.

Just select Movie to Image Sequence in the Export combo box of the dialog and select your desired image format by hitting Options.

Note 1: If you need to do this non-interactively, just let me know.

Note 2: error handling has been omitted for clarity

#include "Movies.h"
#include "QTML.h"
#pragma comment (lib, "QTMLClient.lib")

...

int  flags                  = createMovieFileDeleteCurFile 
    | showUserSettingsDialog 
    | movieToFileOnlyExport;
ItemCount  movie_prop_count = 0;
CFStringRef  cfpath         = 0;
Boolean  bool_true          = true; 
QTNewMoviePropertyElement  movie_props[ 2 ];
Movie  movie;

// initialize QuickTime API
InitializeQTML( 0 );
EnterMovies();

// set up Core Foundation string for source path (argv[ 1 ]) contains the full path to the MOV file to convert
cfpath = CFStringCreateWithCString( 0, argv[ 1 ], kCFStringEncodingASCII );
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propClass        = kQTPropertyClass_DataLocation;
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propID           = kQTDataLocationPropertyID_CFStringNativePath;
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propValueSize    = sizeof(cfpath);
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propValueAddress = (void*)&cfpath;            
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propStatus       = 0;
++movie_prop_count;

// make Movie active
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propClass        = kQTPropertyClass_NewMovieProperty;
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propID           = kQTNewMoviePropertyID_Active;
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propValueSize    = sizeof(bool_true);
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propValueAddress = &bool_true;
movie_props[movie_prop_count].propStatus       = 0;
++movie_prop_count;

// aquire Movie for our Movie file
NewMovieFromProperties( movie_prop_count, movie_props, 0, 0, &movie );

// invoke conversion dialog
ConvertMovieToFile( movie, 0, 0, 0, 'TVOD', 0, 0, flags, 0 );

// clean up
DisposeMovie( movie );
CFRelease( cfpath );

ExitMovies();
TerminateQTML();

...