Module: Movie Maker ()

Description:

This module can be used to create an MPEG 1 movie or an animation consisting of a series of 2D images in JPEG, TIFF, PNG or RGB format. The module requires a Time object as input. When creating the movie, the module iteratively sets the time value, fires the connected modules so that other objects can adjust themselves, and takes a snapshot of the viewer window. The snapshots are appended on-the-fly to the specified MPEG file. In order to create an initial Time object that a movie maker module can be attached to, select Animations And Scripts / Time from the main window's Project > Create Object... menu. Note: The movie is always generated using the contents of viewer 0. No other viewer can be used for generating a movie.

Connections:

Data [required]
Connection to a time object. It is not required that the connected time is defined in seconds or in any particular unit. Instead the number of frames and the frame rate are specified (see below). For example, if 100 frames are to be recorded, the connected time is moved from its minimum values to its maximum values in 100 steps.

Ports:

Viewer

Select the viewer to record the movie from and the antialiasing option to enhance the resulting image quality.

Format Options

Filename

The name of the resulting movie or image file(s). A file dialog pops up when the Browse button is pressed. For image sequences the filename should contain a series of hash marks ####. The hash marks will be replaced by the actual frame number. The output format is bound to the previously selected movie format. If no filename is specified, the file name will be asked on apply. If no file name was given or on pressing cancel, the movie/images will not be created.

File format

The format of the resulting movie or image file(s). To create a MPEG movie, select MPEG movie. On Microsoft Windows it is also possible to select AVI movie as file format. If video exporting in MPEG or AVI doesn't match your need regarding exporting quality, you still have the possibility to write a series of JPEG, TIFF, PNG or RGB files by selecting the corresponding image types; and importing these files in an external software like Camtasia, Virtual Dub or even ffmpeg to generate a movie that will allow you to choose your favorite codec. The selection also has an influence on which ports are shown/not shown in the Properties area.

AVI encoder [advanced]

This port is only shown when selecting AVI movie as desired file format. You can select the codec in which the AVI movie should be compressed with. The Options button shows the codec's property page and is only active if the codec provides such. All codecs installed on your machine before starting and found by the AVI reader are listed in this port. (ffdshow codec might be good a candidate as it is fully customizable). Notice that using a 64-bit version of requires 64-bit codec.

Quality [advanced]

This port is displayed if a lossy output file format was chosen. It allows you the adjustment of the degree of compression. Small values indicate high compression and low quality, high values indicate low compression and high quality.

Frames [advanced]

The number of frames to be recorded. This value has nothing to do with the range of the connected time object. If the input time is already defined in seconds and if you don't want any scaling, then the number of frames should be set to the number of seconds of the time object times the desired frame rate.

Frame rate [advanced]

Specifies the desired frame rate. It depends on the particular movie player if the specified frame rate is actually achieved when playing the movie.

Frame rate [advanced]

Some movie file formats are only capable of storing movies in specific frame rates. In that case this port is shown with all possible rates of the requested format.

Type [advanced]

Set up the movie type here. The Movie Maker is able to create monoscopic and stereoscopic movies. The following stereoscopic types are supported:
- stereo side by side
- stereo red/cyan
- stereo blue/yellow
- stereo green/magenta
- stereo over/under
- stereo side by side half filled
All others types of stereo are not supported by Movie Maker module.

Format [advanced]

This port specifies the pixel format of the screenshots. If RGBA is chosen, the screenshots are generated with an 8-bit alpha channel blending out the scene background. Using the alpha feature has the advantage of smaller image files on complex scene backgrounds (gradient). The second advantage of movies containing an alpha channel is that one can choose another scene background during movie playback. Note that not all image or movie file formats are capable of storing a fourth channel. To create alpha image files choose the suffix .tif since TIFF is capable of storing alpha channels. The disadvantages of alpha movies are slower playback speed on some architectures and larger data files on non-complex backgrounds (uniform).

Resolution Options

Tiles [advanced]

In order to create movies with a higher resolution than the screen, specify the number of tiles to render in each direction. Since the anti-aliasing feature of the former Movie Maker is gone, you can create high resolution single image files and downsample them in a batch to get smooth edges.

Size

Radio box allowing you to adjust the size of the recorded images. If Viewer is specified, the current viewer size adjusted to multiples of 16 pixels will be used if using MPEG export. 360p means 480 by 360 pixels (480 by 352 for MPEG). 480p means 720 by 480 pixels. 720p means 1280 by 720 pixels. 1080p means 1920 by 1080 pixels (1920 by 1072 for MPEG). Finally, if Custom is specified, the size can be specified explicitly.

Resolution

This port will only be enabled if Custom is chosen for the Size port. It allows you to set the image size of the resulting movie.
Values must be multiple of 16 if exporting in mpeg due to codec restrictions used by the movie maker. By the same, if exporting in AVI, values must be multiple of 2 according to some third part codec limitation.

Commands:

filename <filename>
Set the file name for the movie that will be generated by the MovieMaker

action setValue 0
This command instructs the Movie Maker module that everything is ready for movie to be generated. Then a subsequent "fire" command is needed to start the movie making process

fire
Issues an event notice to Movie Maker module. This command will force Movie Maker to update all its ports. When action setValue 0 is executed before hand then the module will start the movie making process.