Tiling Video in Quicktime

Recently, I was playing around with some time-lapse video software using multiple cameras with different views of my room, and I wanted to take each camera view and create a single video. I’ve figured out how to do this using only Quicktime.

First, we need the videos:

Just to make things easier for myself, I went ahead and tiled their individual windows in the way I want them displayed in the final version.

Now, you’ll want to save the first video as whatever you want to call the finished product. File > Save As

Next, show the Movie Properties Window. Window > Show Movie Properties

After that, your movie properties should be displayed and you should see something similar to the following:

Go to the second video you want to tile, and select all, then copy it. (I used command+a, command+c)

Give your first video (the one you opened the properties of) focus, and then Edit > Add to Movie

If you look at the properties window now, you should see a second video track added.

Here comes the magic. Select the second video, then select the Visual Settings tab. You should see an input field for Offset. The first field is the “X” value, the second field is the “Y” value. Since this is the second video, and I want it to tile to the right, and since my video is 640x480, I need to offset the second video by 640px.

You should see something similar to this.

You’ll need to return to the beginning of the video if you want to add another tile, and to just review to make sure it all worked.

Now, for the third video, just repeat the previous steps. Select all of the third video, copy it, give the first video focus, then Edit > Add to Movie. If you’ve done this correctly, then you’ll see the following:

Since I want this video to be on the bottom right, I need to offset it 640px in the X direction, and 480px in the Y directions.

Jumping back to the beginning of the video once again, lets you see what you’ve done.

If you’re videos aren’t all the same length (mine weren’t) one area will go black while the others are still playing. I didn’t like this.

I went to the last point in the video that all clips were playing, and made that the last point in my selection.

I then go up to my edit menu, and then Trim to Selection. Edit > Trim to Selection

Now I’ve got a lovely bunch of videos, all sitting nicely in a quad. I only had three source videos, but this method could be used to tile any number of videos.

12:44 AM | Tags: ,