Softimage .pic Codec for QuickTime
June 20th, 2006 by Luc-Eric - Viewed 7077 times - Popularity: 9%Updated Dec 12, 2006
I have written a codec which allows QuickTime to understand .pic files.
A few people have manually associated .pic files with the XSI flipbook or another viewer, but most people have them associated with the QuickTime Picture Viewer by default.
Installing this will not change your current file associations, but will allow the Picture Viewer to view .pic files when you double-click them instead of being greeted with an ”Unknown Format” error, caused by QuickTime thinking these are Apple PICT file.
Content of the Package
- SoftimagePic.qtr
- SoftimagePic.qtx
- QuicktimeTestPic.pic
- Install.bat
Double-click Install.bat, which will copy the three other files to %WINDIR%\system32\QuickTime, and will launch the Picture Viewer on QuicktimeTestPic.pic to verify the installation. It’’s not necessary to have XSI installed on the machine.
I am not aware of any installation problem, but if somehow QuickTime isn”t finding the codec try to log out and back on to restart it.
Batch file hackers might be interested in seeing how I got the batch file to work from UNC drives, which isn”t supported by cmd.exe.
1.1 Update Dec 12, 2006
Some users reported corruption of the image, which was fixed by resizing the QuickTime window. This problem should now be fixed
SoftimagePicCodecWIN1_1.zip (69k)
Preliminary OS X Version
Here is a Universal Binary port of this codec for OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
It will allow the QuickTime Player and other QuickTime-enabled apps to load Softimage .pic files. Unfortunately, this will not work in Preview or Finder previews as they by-pass QuickTime for .pic files and use an undocumented Core Image image mecanism instead. It is best to re-associate .pic files with the QuickTime player instead of Preview to allow easy double-click viewing of images. Please read the instructions contained in the installer.
The file contains a disk image with an installer which simply copies the component to /Library/QuickTime. A restart of the system is necessary at this time for the component to be detected.
June 20th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
thanks for this!
June 21st, 2006 at 3:39 am
Nice one, thx.
June 21st, 2006 at 11:45 pm
hoo man thanks itīs great
June 22nd, 2006 at 4:51 am
i have installed but when i click on the .pic files rendered from xsi 5.11 i get the same error. I have not restared my workstation do i need to do that?
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:24 am
ok, you”re the first who can”t get it work - it’’s bound to happen eventually.
The first thing you need to check is if the tree files have been indeed been installed in C:\WINDOWS\system32\QuickTime. The only reason I could see needing to reboot is if there was a quicktime app constantly running in the background.
Try different pictures, maybe the .pic you tried were invalid. Started or aborted renders produce these small 4k .pic files that aren”t valid, and I don”t think this supports fields images (image.1.100.pic)
June 23rd, 2006 at 4:51 am
Hi,
I had a similar problem that the install script wouldn”t copy the files over. Be sure to check if your folder isn”t somewhere in a location that has spaces in the path, like the desktop.
If you move it to say “C:\temp\SoftImageCodecWin\” it will work.
Batchfiles don”t like pathnames with spaces too much ;-)
cheers for the codecs, very much appreciated.
rob
June 23rd, 2006 at 2:24 pm
Great stuff!
June 25th, 2006 at 7:58 am
Finally…I always prefered using software’’s native formats and QT is my favorite app for previewing everything…
Excellent idea
thnks
June 27th, 2006 at 7:19 am
It succeeded in installation. Thank you for a great tool. Even if it is not QuickTimePro, practical use is fully possible. I want to introduce this tool also to my site (it is a Japanese site).
July 30th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Does this plugin also load .pic sequences, not just individual .pic images?
August 1st, 2006 at 10:22 am
it’’s quicktime that handles pic sequences, so this plug-in does allow loading .pic sequences with quicktime.
August 3rd, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Thanks, Luc-Eric. This is a great plugin.
September 7th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Hi Luc Eric!
Have you had any luck with your Plugin bundle? I”d like to create quicktime movie directly from our render through the Quicktime API (Actually I just build a tool to replace our previous pipeline and we are using it for everything but .PIC). If you don”t mind sharing the code I could have a look and try to see if I can figure out something.
Thanks,
Olivier
September 7th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Olivier, I haven”t looked at this since posting the article. Are you really talking about an OS X version of this quicktime component, and if so which CPU and OS version?
September 13th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Oops, sorry… Yes, I”d like to be able to load the .pic files from Quicktime on Mac OS X. I”m using all kinds of CPU, but my principal “burners” are still on Power PC G5 Cpus.. But from my experience, when one platform is working, it’’s only a few clics away from the other (PowerPC to Universal Bin..). As for the OS, I”m using the latest update of 10.4.7.
Thanks
September 29th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
No it’’s more complicated that this. Building a universal binary vs building an old-style binary that works for PowerPC only is two different version of both the compiler and the Quicktime SDK. It’’s They don”t work the same way - bundles are only for universal binaries, it’’s a directory structures. Old-style, it’’s a single binary with a resource fork. Also one of the XCode version broke the QT SDK (I think there was an update since). If you are at ease with OSX developement and creating resources ”thng”, I can indeed send you the Windows source - it will require studying and decifiering the ElectricImage sample in the QuicktimeSDK.
November 7th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Thanks very much for this Luc-Eric.
The codec works on XP64 (32 bit Quicktime of course) but with a couple of minor issues. Through trial and error, I found that dropping your .qtr and .qtx files into the Program Files(x86)\Quicktime\QTSystem folder got it to work, except that when the image sequence first loads it shows a corrupted image. Hitting Play or just stepping one image fixes everything. Is there a different location where the codec files should be placed for XP 64?
December 12th, 2006 at 6:28 pm
[...] ail with a .pic attached and would have liked to be able to just click on it to see it? My Softimage .pic codec for QuickTime has been updated with a bug fix for an corrupted image issue reported by a few [...]
December 16th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Can you please make a OSX version since at work we use Mac’’s for video editing/ compositing and most of the time they have to open up After Effects to just see my .pic renderings from XSI ;)
Hope you release it soon!
January 9th, 2007 at 1:13 am
alright I’ve posted a preliminary OS X (10.4) version of the codec
January 27th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Is it no available? I can’t get it.
January 30th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Alright, I’ve re-uploaded the file, thanks