Exporting Quartz Composition to .mov file

Question

I'd like to export my prepared quartz composition (I'm using Quartz Composer 4.6) to .mov. I tried to it with "File > Export as a QuickTime Movie", but it asks me about duration time and after clicking OK it creates a file .mov what is "zero kilobytes".

I wonder it's a bug or I'm doing something wrong? How can I export it to .mov in another way?

Answer 1

Quartz Composer's built-in "Export" command takes the composition and wraps it in a special kind of QuickTime movie — in order to play this movie back, you need a Mac, you need QuickTime Player version 7, and you can't use any "unsafe" plugins (i.e., almost all 3rd-party plugins). So, even when it works, it's of limited utility.

There are a few other options for taking the visual rendered output of a Quartz Composition and turning it into a normal movie (which you can share with non-Mac users) —

1. Use qtzrendang — it renders composition frames to a movie file.
2. Use Kineme QuartzCrystal — it renders composition frames to a movie file, with additional features like antialiasing and motion blur. (*)
3. Put your composition inside a Render In Image patch, and feed the output to the Movie Exporter Plugin.

(*) Disclosure: I'm one of the developers of this software.