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Movie tools

The visit -movie utility always supports creation of series of image files but it does not always support creation of movie formats such as MPEG, QuickTime, or Streaming movie. Support for movie formats varies based on the platform. QuickTime and Streaming movie formats are currently limited to computers running IRIX and the appropriate movie conversion tools (makemovie, img2sm) must be in your path or VisIt will create a series of image files instead of a single movie file. All other platforms except Windows support creation of MPEG movies using software provided in the VisIt distribution. If you want to create movies on Windows, use visit -movie to generate the individual movie frames and then use your favorite movie generation software to convert the frames into a single movie file.

Argument

Description

-format fmt

The format option allows you to set the output format for your movie. The supported values for fmt are:

mpeg : MPEG 2 movie.

qt : Quicktime movie.

sm : Streaming movie format.

png : Save raw movie frames as individual PNG files.

ppm : Save raw movie frames as individual PPM files.

tiff : Save raw movie frames as individual TIFF files.

jpeg : Save raw movie frames as individual JPEG files.

bmp : Save raw movie frames as individual BMP (Windows Bitmap) files.

rgb : Save raw movie frames as individual RGB (SGI format) files.

-geometry size

The geometry option allows you to set the movie resolution. The size argument is of the form WxH where W is the width of the image and H is the height of the image. For example, if you want an image that is 1024 pixels wide and 768 pixels tall, you would provide: -geometry 1024x768.

-sessionfile name

The sessionfile option lets you pick the name of the VisIt session to use as input for your movie. The VisIt session is a file that describes the movie that you want to make and it is created when you save your session from within VisIt'sGUI after you set up your plots how you want them.

-scriptfile name

The scriptfile option lets you pick the name of a VisIt Python script to use as input for your movie.

-framestep step

The number of frames to advance when going to the next frame.

-start frame

The frame at which to start.

-end frame

The frame at which to end.

-output

The output option lets you set the name of your movie.

-fps number

Sets the frames per second at which the movie should be played.

While visit -movie on Windows does not provide an encoding program to create a single movie file, it does have some usability advantages over other platforms. If you browse the Windows file system and come across a VisIt session file, which on Windows ends with a .vses extension, you can right click on the file and choose from several movie generation options. The movie generation options make one-click movie generation possible so you don't have to master the arguments for visit -movie like you do on other platforms. After selecting a movie generation option for a VisIt session file, Windows runs visit -movie implicitly with the right arguments and saves out the movie frames to the same directory that contains the session file. The movie generations option in a session file's context menu are shown in Figure10-7