Announcing QtlMovie for Mac OS X, a specialized front-end to FFmpeg

[lelegard]

Dear Mac users,

Three years ago, I developed QtlMovie for Windows and Linux. Today, starting with version 1.6, QtlMovie is available for Mac OS X as well.

QtlMovie is a specialized Qt-based graphical front-end to FFmpeg. It performs a few repetitive specialized tasks which proved to be difficult or boring with other tools. I developed QtlMovie primarily for my own usage to automate tasks which took me too long and then I shared it.

QtlMovie is mostly the answer to the following needs:

• I am a movie fan and want to watch movies exclusively in original audio version with subtitles when necessary.
• I record many movies from TV (digital TV and MPEG-converted analog recordings) as well as collect other movie files and I want to create DVD's out of them.
• I own an iPad or iPhone and many DVD's and want to watch those DVD's on the iPad.

QtlMovie is focused on simplicity and rapidity of use. Its main workflow is:

• Open a movie file of any type, including DVD file structures, with any combination and formats of audio, video and subtitles.
• Five clicks: 1. select video track, 2. select audio track, 3. select subtitle track, 4. select output type, 5. start. All selections use simple radio buttons in one single window (no complex menus, no drop-down or combo boxes, etc.)
• Everything is automated to create either a DVD (MPEG file, ISO image or burn the media, your choice) or an iPad movie file. The resulting output media is basic and simple: one video track with hardcoded subtitles, one audio track, that's all (no menu, no track selection).

Compared to other similar tools, the unique feature of QtlMovie is the ability to correctly handle and burn most subtitle types (DVD, DVB, SRT, ASS, Teletext, US Close-Captions).

QtlMovie has been discussed in the "latest video news" forum on VideoHelp.

QtlMovie is available on SourceForge at http://qtlmovie.sourceforge.net/ with Mac binaries (64-bit Intel-based Mac's) here.

And of course, QtlMovie is free and open-source.

Currently, QtlMovie has been built for Mac OS X 10.11 "El Capitan". Feedbacks from users of older versions of Mac OS X are welcome.

Enjoy...

[Case]

Very eager to try it, but I got a crash on launching the app. (OS X 10.11.4.)
← computer details in profile.

[lelegard]

Very eager to try it, but I got a crash on launching the app. (OS X 10.11.4.)

Sorry to read that. Could you be more specific? What kind of crash? Any error message? If you run QtlMovie from a terminal window, is there any message?

For a terminal windows, please run the following command and report any error message:

/Applications/QtlMovie.app/Contents/MacOS/QtlMovie

I do not have many Mac's to try. The one I use has the proper environment for application development. I tried to package QtlMovie so that it can run on any Mac. Maybe I missed something that works for me in my environment only. But I need more information about your crash to fix it.

[Case]

What kind of crash? Any error message?

"QtlMovie quit unexpectedly." + very long standard problem report [1]

If you run QtlMovie from a terminal window, is there any message?

iMac:~ case$ /Applications/QtlMovie.app/Contents/MacOS/QtlMovie
This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "cocoa"
in "".

Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Abort trap: 6

I do not have many Mac's to try.

I'll keep testing if you'll guide.

[lelegard]

OK, I can reproduce this on a new clean Mac OS virtual machine. It should not be too difficult to fix. However, I will not have time to take care about it before a couple of days. I will keep you informed. Thanks for your interest in QtlMovie. Stay tuned...

[lelegard]

I have updated the package for Mac. It works on my clean Mac OS virtual machine without development environment.

See https://sourceforge.net/projects/qtlmovie/files/mac/QtlMovie-1.6.1.dmg/download

Please let me know if it works for you.
Any other feedback on the application is also welcome.

[Baldrick]

Version 1.6.1 works on my Mac. Mac OSX 10.11.5.

[Case]

Version 1.6.1 works on my Mac, too. (OS X 10.11.5)
Thanks!

I noticed it created an NTSC DVD at 30 fps, not 29.97 fps. Any particular reason for that?

Would it be against the app's simplicity to add an option for “film” (NTSC progressive, 23.976 fps) ? Does today's ffmpeg provide options for a soft 3:2 pulldown marker in such MPEG streams? (I couldn't find that info.)

[lelegard]

Thank you for the feedback.

I noticed it created an NTSC DVD at 30 fps, not 29.97 fps. Any particular reason for that?

I live in a PAL country where we tend to think that PAL=25 and NTSC=30, sorry. I will fix NTSC frame rate to 29.97 in the next version. Does 30 fps create a problem with NTSC DVD players or NTSC TV's?

Would it be against the app's simplicity to add an option for “film” (NTSC progressive, 23.976 fps) ?

I think that the "DVD" option is that, provided that you selected NTSC in the settings. Any difference?

Does today's ffmpeg provide options for a soft 3:2 pulldown marker in such MPEG streams? (I couldn't find that info.)

I am not a specialist here. But, don't you need a 2:3 (is it really 3:2?) soft pulldown marker only when your movie is encoded at 24 fps. The videos that QtlMovie processes are of various origins, probably not at 24 fps, especially when it comes from a TV recording which is the main use case for making DVD's. So, isn't better anyway to re-encode into a native NTSC frame rate?

[Case]

I live in a PAL country where we tend to think that PAL=25 and NTSC=30, sorry. I will fix NTSC frame rate to 29.97 in the next version. Does 30 fps create a problem with NTSC DVD players or NTSC TV's?

I live in a PAL country too. My BD/DVD player and HDTV accept both PAL and NTSC, so I’m not in a position to tell if some detail causes problems on NTSC systems. Nor would I be able to tell how a player deals with the (small) discrepancy.
As the machines do all the hard work on precise numbers just as easily as on rounded numbers, there is no reason to round off anything, imho, risking incompatibilities.

However, the app sets “-target ntsc-dvd -r 30”, thus first setting general options for NTSC DVD, including 29.97 fps framerate, then overriding that with a 30 fps setting.

I think that the "DVD" option is that, provided that you selected NTSC in the settings. Any difference?

Someone once told me that a bunch of modern fiction tv shows from the US are progressive 23.976 fps, or can be captured that way. If I were to burn such a show to DVD, then I would like to keep the progressiveness and framerate as-is, preserving what I have and not needlessly convert the video specs.

But, don't you need a 2:3 (is it really 3:2?) soft pulldown marker only when your movie is encoded at 24 fps.

I’m aware that the pulldown is actually 2:3 almost always, although many say 3:2 (including me - thanks for reminding me ). Like the glossary on this site says: “Most people mean 2:3 pulldown when they say 3:2 pulldown.”
My idea is that I would like to be able to use 23.976 fps clips with QtlMovie as well, and preserve framerate and progressiveness on DVD.

[lelegard]

You are right when you say that -target ntsc-dvd (or pal-dvd) already sets sensible default values and it is useless to respecify the frame-rate. At best, it does not change anything. At worst, the value is incorrect. I just changed that and now trust the -target option.

Concerning soft pulldown, I haven't found anything in ffmpeg. Only mencoder can do this apparently. But the feedbacks are "variable". Some users report it as excellent, some others as miserable.

Now, let's assume you got a recording with progressive 23.976 fps and want to make a DVD out of it.

Progressiveness: AFAIK, the DVD are all progressive. Interlace is used only in broadcast for obvious bandwidth reasons. FFmpeg -target *-dvd always generates YUV 4:2:0 progressive output. So, progressiveness is always preserved when present in the input.

File size: Some frames will be duplicated (or interpolated, I am no sure about what ffmpeg is doing). So, yes, there is some overhead.

Processing time: Normally, when processing an input file which is 1) MPEG-2 video, 2) display aspect ratio = 16/9, 3) same width and height as the target (depends on NTSC vs. PAL), then QtlMovie does not re-encode the video (unless this default option is disabled in the settings). So, no re-encoding should occur.

I have no sample file with progressive 23.976 fps and soft pulldown. If you have any, I would be very interested to get it for my tests. Only 30 seconds of contents should be enough.