Better butterfly

The first time I posted the butterfly-to-fractal movie, it was as an animated GIF. That was because the program I wrote just created individual Jpeg images, and I didn’t have any conversion software handy other than Gimp, which lets you convert a sequence of Jpeg images to animated GIFs.

Then a friend offered to compose music for the animation, at which point animated GIFs just wouldn’t cut it. To set an animation to music, you need something in a legitimate format like Quicktime, which lets you scrub forward and back over the animation, so you can do proper timing.

After a little looking around, I found the wonderful free program VirtualDub, which lets you convert a sequence of Jpeg images to an AVI movie, and another wonderful free program Oxelon Media Converter, which lets you convert an AVI movie in to a Quicktime MOV file.

So thanks to the kind generosity of the open software movement, I am able to present you with the butterfly film as a legitimate movie, both in a slow one minute version, and a fast thirty second version.

I can’t decide which version I like better. The fast/short one is peppier, but the slow/long one is more mysterioso, and gives you more time to look at the individual visions along the butterfly’s journey.

Does anyone care to weigh in?