This is just a quick post. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but never got round to it and minecraft was the best excuse to do it with. Video I made is embedded at the very end (or you can click here to watch it now: http://youtu.be/JdQxXj5czrU).

How I Made The “Frames”

Basically I took many screenshots in minecraft, roughly about 3-6 screenshots per section I wanted to show in the video, using the F2 key. I did this on my laptop using the “Play Offline” feature, and setting my server to allow anyone. So I showed up in game as “Player” and set him where I wanted the “camera”. I then logged into Minecraft on my workstation using my normal account. Then I began building, every so often taking 3-6 screenshots with the laptop.

How I Rendered The Images

Now obviously I’m going to assume before you started taking screenshots that you cleared out your previous minecraft screenshots folder (or webcam stills, whatever), and that your folder is full of images that you want to make into a video only. The screenshots folder is found at “/home/your_user/.minecraft/screenshots/” without quotes. Since these are terminal commands, you’ll need to “cd” to that folder when you want to render.

Step 1: Installing “mencoder”.

First you’ll need to install “mencoder” since this is what makes the initial video. This is found in most distros repos. I’m using Ubuntu 10.10, but should work for all. Do this with the following (you should be able to find it in the software centre too):

sudo apt-get install mencoder

Step 2: Creating a file with list of images.

Now we’re going to cd to the screenshots folder, and we’re going to make a file with a list of all the images in the correct order as stated by modified date/time. This is going to be used by mencoder so that it creates the stop-motion video. To make this file we’re going to do this:

ls -1tr > files.txt

You can name the file anything you want, in this example I’m using “files.txt”, however make sure you remember what file name you give it, and please note that’s a one (1) not a lower-case L. The -1 is so that each file is on its own line, t is to list by the modified time/date, and r is for reversing the order. Please check the man pages (command: man ls) if you want to use other options. I find this the best way to do it however.

Step 3: Render the video! \o/

Now that we have our file full of all the images we’re going to be using on each line (and in the correct order), we now need to finally render it into a video. Now I’m not going to go into details about the options I have picked, but it basically outputs into a raw video file (~200MB for a 1 minute long video) and is great for editing should you wish to do so. Anyways, on with the command line stuff!

mencoder -nosound -ovc copy -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -mf fps=6 mf://@files.txt -o video.avi

The important thing to note by the way, is the -o option – this is to set the filename of the output. You can call this whatever you like, I just chose “video.avi”. Also note that vcodec is which codec we’re going to be using (in this case mpeg4), the -ovc copy is how I’m making this video output as raw video (basically a direct copy of the images), and one last thing I should mention is you’ll notice fps=6 – This basically defines what the framerate is, I set this to 6 because I was using ~6 images each time. However have a play with that number until you get the right results your after. Doing it this way takes less time, since it doesn’t have to process very much. Plus you get quality as good as the images your working with, which is perfect.

Step 4 (optional): Edit video, add sound.

You don’t have to do this, but well ~200MB is a bit much to upload to things like YouTube (plus it has no sound!). So I used PiTiVi Video Editing software that comes with ubuntu to import the video and song of my choice. And then rendered it how I liked it. I use MP4 Muxer with default options, because the size is decent at the end, and looks reasonable for the end quality (and works in YouTube).

That’s everything! We’ve just made a stop-motion video file! With that, I shall now present my first ever stop-motion video, using the medium of Minecraft! The song used is released under the Creative Commons licence (info in the video description), the pictures were designed by me (using popular ideas as a base), and the game used is Minecraft which is owned by Mojang. Enjoy!

Wonderful quote from Linus Torvalds himself recently (found here):

How is life at the moment? Are you enjoying work at the Linux Foundation in Portland, Ore.?

I’m all happy with my life. The reason I come to Linux.conf.au is it is summer here and freezing in Portland. My job is the same, and I do the kernel and nobody tells me what to do and they pay me for it, which is just the way I like it.

Just goes to show you that despite everyone who tells you that Linux or Open-Source developers don’t get paid for their work – their wrong. You just have to have an interesting project that shows some future value, and you will get paid for your work. Just thought I’d get the myth clarified.

Well, I’ve been trying to look into it and this one quote is by far the best one I’ve seen on the matter (found here comment number 25):

Re: BUT..
by Xanthir, FCD – Apr 23rd, 2008 @ 1:11pm

Incorrect. The GPL states that you must release the source code to people you distribute the program to. If you never distribute it, you never have to share the source, and your improvements remain your own.

However, if you make an improvement to some GPLed code and then use that in your product that you sell, you *do* have to release the source code with it (along with your improvements). As noted by a previous respondent, that’s THE feature of GPL. GPL is a viral license that infects anything that touches it. The point is to eventually make virtually everything GPL, so that we return to the early state of computing where anyone could change any program they had to do what they wished.

This is why the Open-Source model is always overlooked! Everyone thinks, just because as part of the GPL you MUST release the source code, that Open-Sourced must be bad!

This is wrong and should be clarified to the media right now! Yes, you must release the code along with your compiled version, but that isn’t a bad thing. You only have to distribute the code to the audience that your distributing it to – I might be wrong on this statement though, but bare with me.

If, say, your creating some code for a business (bank) and by disclosing your work to the public could be a risk to people’s privacy (in this case money). Now, recreating the wheel is terrible. I know, I’ve tried to recreate code that’s already been out there for years and its hard work! Specially when doing it from scratch. Using the GPL as the licence, I could use Open-Source code, improve it and then sell my changes to the bank (but obviously provide my code with it). Since the program will not be used outside of the bank’s building, that code never needs to be released publicly – but any code that the bank doesn’t mind disclosing, could be sent out back to the community. For example I fixed a bug that people have been trying to work on for months, this could be then sent back and help the community forward.

Where do you see the bad side in this? If the bank later needs to adjust the code further, sure they could hire someone else – which could be bad – but aren’t they more likely going to trust the man who made it originally? Won’t his services, if they thought it was good enough, worth re-hiring for alterations? But on the other hand, it also means they can get a new set of eyes to improve their software further, and life would continue, bug fixes and code the bank again doesn’t mind disclosing could be sent back out to the community… etc… etc… life goes on, people are getting paid for their hard work, etc…

If someone thinks this is the wrong thinking towards the GPL, please do bring it to my attention, but as far as I’m aware this is what the GPL was made for, to make code viral and spread to everyone.

Edit:
Wow, I couldn’t of put this any better. It seems I am right in my thinking above. Read the quote found here, he uses references from the actual GPL licence website.

Edit, Edit:
Some news on a French police organisation that has switched from Windows to Linux (ubuntu no less). ;)

– Everyday I like the Open-Source community more and more. :)
Haz