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// to run from the command line :
// cscript jsQTtest.js sourcepath, destpath
 
// Get script arguments
if (WScript.Arguments.Length >= 2)  {
    sourcePath = WScript.Arguments(0);
    destPath = WScript.Arguments(1);
}   else    {
    WScript.Echo("not enough parameters");
    WScript.Quit();
}
 
// Launch QuickTime Player Application
var qtPlayerApp = WScript.CreateObject("QuickTimePlayerLib.QuickTimePlayerApp");
if (qtPlayerApp == null)    {
    WScript.Echo("Unable to launch QuickTime Player!");
    WScript.Quit();
}
 
// Get the QuickTime controler
var qtPlayerSrc = qtPlayerApp.Players(1);
if (qtPlayerSrc == null)
    WScript.Quit();
var qtControl =  qtPlayerSrc.QTControl;
 
// Set up the exporter and have it configured
var qt = qtPlayerSrc.QTControl.QuickTime;
 
qt.Exporters.Add();
var qtExporter = qt.Exporters(1);
 
var CodecInfoFileName = "C:\QuickTimCodecInfo.xml";
 
var FileSystemObject =  WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject");
var CodecFileInfo;
 
if ( FileSystemObject.FileExists(CodecInfoFileName) )
    CodecFileInfo =  FileSystemObject.OpenTextFile( CodecInfoFileName );
 
qtExporter.TypeName = "QuickTime Movie";
qtControl.CreateNewMovieFromImages( sourcePath, 
                                    30,     // frame rate
                                    true ); // rate is in frames per seconds 
var qtMovie = qtControl.Movie;
qtExporter.SetDataSource( qtMovie );
 
if ( CodecFileInfo )    {   
    var xmlCodecInfoText = CodecFileInfo.ReadAll();
    // cause the exporter to be reconfigured 
    // http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2006/tn2120.html
    var tempSettings = qtExporter.Settings; 
    tempSettings.XML = xmlCodecInfoText;    
    qtExporter.Settings = tempSettings;
} else  {
    qtExporter.ShowSettingsDialog();
 
    var xmlCodecInfoText = qtExporter.Settings.XML;
    CodecFileInfo = FileSystemObject.CreateTextFile( CodecInfoFileName );
    if ( CodecFileInfo )  {
        CodecFileInfo.WriteLine(xmlCodecInfoText);
        CodecFileInfo.Close();
    }
}
// do the actual export
qtExporter.DestinationFileName = destPath;
qtExporter.ShowProgressDialog = true;
qtExporter.BeginExport();
qtPlayerSrc.Close();

21 Responses to “Automating QuickTime at the Command Line on Windows…”

1. lernie Says:
   July 19th, 2006 at 6:10 am

   hi, what does it mean, after trying to execute the script, winxp commandline tells me:

   c:\jsQTTest.js(14, 1) WScript.CreateObject: Could not locate automation class named “QuickTimePlayerLib.QuickTimePlayerApp”. ?

   what does that point to?

   thanks. :)

2. Luc-Eric Says:
   July 19th, 2006 at 10:01 am

   is quicktime 7 installed?

3. Rockdeman Says:
   August 29th, 2006 at 10:01 pm

   Hi, I just ”ported” your script to PHP5, and well it works nice. However… did you notice that the Flash 8 export is unavailable? this is really strange. I wanted to automate FLV8 encoding!

4. Erich Neuwirth Says:
   September 23rd, 2006 at 9:25 am

   I tried your script, and it created a QuickTimeCodeInfo.xml file.
   It does not, however, create a movie, and I do not get any error messages.
   Is there a way of finding out why it goes wrong?

5. Luc-Eric Says:
   September 23rd, 2006 at 4:22 pm

   does it work with the Quicktime Animation Codec? That’’s the simplest codec there is. I am not sure what can fail, my script doesn”t do error reporting. Perhaps a codec-specific setting is wrong? Some codecs, for example, only accept images that are of size NTSC or PAL.
   If you have quicktime pro try to do it manually in the user interface of the quicktime player to see if you get error messages.

6. Erich Neuwirth Says:
   September 24th, 2006 at 4:01 am

   I tried and I managed to create a movie interactively. The attempt to do the same with yous script failed.
   The script just stops, and no movie is created.

7. Luc-Eric Says:
   September 25th, 2006 at 10:37 am

   what is the exact command line that you are typing when you are using the script, and which codec are you using

8. Anton Says:
   October 7th, 2006 at 8:31 am

   Is it possible to use the same script for converting mpeg 4 to 3gp?
   Or what needs to be changed to make it work?

9. Oscord Says:
   October 16th, 2006 at 1:46 pm

   How can I setup 3gpp exporter instead of QT Movie??

10. Luc-Eric Says:
    October 16th, 2006 at 4:01 pm

    Converting to another type than quicktime is left as an exercise to the reader. On line 40, above, it specifically sets the type of the export to ”Quicktime Movie”. One could theorize that if an other typename is used, another type of exporter object will be created.

11. jo Says:
    November 23rd, 2006 at 3:36 pm

    when I run it, it opens a quicktime movie with the correct size and appearently length, but the image is blank

12. Nick Says:
    December 8th, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    When I run the script, it converts the quicktime startup screen into a 160KB mov.
    I tried 10 .pic files at pal and 1080.

13. wsacul Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 7:07 pm

    I couldn’t get this to export anything, so after

    qtControl.CreateNewMovieFromImages( sourcePath,
    30, // frame rate
    true ); // rate is in frames per seconds

    I added

    if (qtControl.Movie == null) {
    WScript.Echo(”Unable to create movie from images!”);
    }

    Movie does in fact come out to be null- but is that in fact a valid test at that point?

14. wsacul Says:
    February 12th, 2007 at 7:09 pm

    I was also thinking that this could be scripted with something like:

    qtPlayerSrc.DoMenu(”File”, “Open Image Sequence…”);

    and then somehow fill in the file name in the dialog box and finally

    qtPlayerSrc.DoMenu(”File”, “Save”);

    and fill in a name.

    What’s the DoMenu equivalent of filling in dialog boxes?

    Thanks

15. bijurama Says:
    March 16th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

    Hello Luc:

    Thanks luc, it works like a charm. I was wondering if its possible to create a video layer (to stamp/watermark with an image) to create the .mov file ..?

16. Jan Petzold Says:
    May 16th, 2007 at 12:16 pm

    Hi guys,

    I’ve been spending some hours, just to find out that it’s pretty easy to load a videoclip:

    except: qtControl.CreateNewMovieFromImages( sourcePath, 25, true );
    write: qtControl.URL = sourcePath;

    worked fine using an uncompressed avi - no idea about other file types, though.

    Together with

    qtExporter.TypeName = “3G”;

    I’ve built a 3GP CLI encoder based on Quicktime - something I wanted for several years now. Thanks!

17. HP Says:
    July 9th, 2007 at 1:12 pm

    Hey

    This is a very good example but does anyone know how to rotate the movie (or access the movie matrix for rotating) before exporting?

18. Tim Brown Says:
    August 19th, 2007 at 3:09 pm

    Hi,

    Thanks for posting this handy code.

    I wanted to mention that I ran into into what seems to be a bug and the workaround I found, in case it is messing anyone else up.

    Here’s the problem: when I load a folder of images using the “CreateNewMovieFromImages” call, it only loads about 3 images out of a folder of 1500. If I delete some of the images or load a different folder, it does the same thing but with a different small number of images.’

    The images I am using have super long filenames and when I rename them to have short filenames there is no problem loading the folder.

    So perhaps it has something to do with the length of names permitted on macs that they haven’t fixed in the windows version. Anyway, if you only get short movies that might be the problem.

    Another useful thing to know — you can pass QT a list of a folder of shortcuts to your images rather than the actual files which is handy if you are building movies out of images in multiple locations.

    Thanks!

    Tim

19. Richard Lane Says:
    August 20th, 2007 at 3:18 pm

    Hi

    I had a an issue I was trying to solve with poor quality audio from my digital camera and I thought this approach to extracting the audio from my .mov on the command-line looked promising but came up against:

    C:\qttest\qttest.js(21, 1) (null): Unspecified error

    Regards
    Richard.

20. Sergey Says:
    November 14th, 2007 at 9:39 am

    Hello,
    Thanks for the script,
    however when i try to run it i end up with the same error as above. The line where the error happens is: var qtPlayerSrc = qtPlayerApp.Players(1);
    Thanks in advance for your help.
    Regards
    Sergey

21. Dan Says:
    June 30th, 2008 at 7:33 pm

    Great code snippet! I tried it out and it works great when converting a sequence of BMPs I have into an MOV.

    Question for you — Do you know if it is possible to add an audio track (i.e. a WAV or MP3) to the creation of the MOV (obviouly adding an extra bit of code to your .js)? If so, how would I do that within the QuickTime API? I’ve been searching thru the QT API at developer.apple.com, but haven’t come across anything yet. Any suggestions or directions you could point me to would be greatly appreciated!

    Thx for your help!
    -Dan

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