Earlier today I found a file I was experimenting with last year and wondered if anyone had seen anything like this before. Quite simply it appears that you can create a, very simple, QuickTime based ticker with a text editor and QuickTime Player.
Here’s how;
Open your text editor and enter your text. Each line will become a separate frame in your final movie.
Save the file with a .mov extension
In the Finder you’ll see that the movie plays the text in a simple white on black news ticker. To use this in Freeway simply open the file in QuickTime Player and save the file as a standard movie - it appears this process creates a ‘real movie’ rather that our original text file masquerading as a movie.
I recall doing a search on the subject last year and found nothing on this so if anyone has any ideas on how this could be extended then I’d love to hear them. For example I’d like to be able to change the font styling, movie size, timing etc.
Regards,
Tim.
on 19/01/2011 13:20, Tim Plumb at email@hidden wrote:
Earlier today I found a file I was experimenting with last year and wondered
if anyone had seen anything like this before. Quite simply it appears that you
can create a, very simple, QuickTime based ticker with a text editor and
QuickTime Player.
Here’s how;
Open your text editor and enter your text. Each line will become a separate
frame in your final movie.
Save the file with a .mov extension
Sorry, does not work for me.
I’ve tried TextEdit and SubEthaEdit creating a plain text file with the .mov
ext. double clicking opens Quicktime7 but nothing else happens, then I tried
spacebar in the Finder that just opens a default movie file icon.
In the Finder you’ll see that the movie plays the text in a simple white on
black news ticker. To use this in Freeway simply open the file in QuickTime
Player and save the file as a standard movie - it appears this process creates
a ‘real movie’ rather that our original text file masquerading as a movie.
I recall doing a search on the subject last year and found nothing on this so
if anyone has any ideas on how this could be extended then I’d love to hear
them. For example I’d like to be able to change the font styling, movie size,
timing etc.
Regards,
Tim.
Okay, figured it out. The text file has to be in Classic Mac
linefeeds, and Western (Mac Roman) encoding, or you don’t get anything
besides a broken plugin icon. I made my original in TextMate, but on a
hunch I switched to BBEdit and saved it as Mac linefeeds. That left
the high bit characters like curly quotes all messed up, so I then
switched to Mac Roman. And that seems to work very neatly.
Amazing Easter Egg, Tim!
Walter
On Jan 19, 2011, at 2:03 PM, Walter Lee Davis wrote:
Wow. Yours works fine, but I just tried making one and it didn’t
work at all. QuickTime Player won’t open it, and TextMate won’t
embed it in a page.
It is pretty cool. Stewart at Softpress found the article below today which suggests to me that maybe this could be extended with text styles, timing and, possibly, href tracks so that certain parts of the movie can be set as links;
I was thinking that if any of this worked it could make a nice simple news ticker for Freeway.
Regards,
Tim.
I wonder if it recognizes Rich Text, a la TextEdit in non-plain-text
mode? I don’t know if that editor can be coerced into Mac Roman or
Classic Mac line-breaks, though.
Walter
On Jan 19, 2011, at 5:25 PM, Robert B wrote:
Well, I styled some text in Freeway and pasted it in and it kept
it’s color and font.
I discovered this a few years ago, and used it for a conceptual art project (showing the codes that went into making an mp3 song, and using this to display them).
I found this thread because I needed to relearn how to do it. This time around, I thought it might be cool if I converted the movie into an mp4, so I could send it to people who didn’t have quicktime, or macs (for the mac encoded characters), in doing that, I discovered something else that was cool.
…Because the text used to be an mp3 song, it turned back into a song when I converted it to mp4!. It wasn’t what I was after, but it’s good proof that those thousands of pages of text are what I say they are.