[GRASS-dev] Re: Nviz animation wish

[Helena Mitasova]

On Jan 25, 2007, at 11:51 AM, William Kyngesburye wrote:

> On Jan 25, 2007, at 8:19 AM, Helena Mitasova wrote:
>
>> Michael - there is a file sequencing tool for that in nviz - I  
>> have been doing it for years (I also
>> had some of it at your workshop), just check my website.
>> My slides for the lausanne workshop should have a description how  
>> to do it along
>> with a sample data set. I need to run now but I can write you more  
>> later.
>> It may be broken in the latest CVS but it worked well in 6.1
>>
> I was going to mention this also.  It looks like it can make a  
> series of ppm images, or an mpeg if GRASS was built with ffmpeg  
> support.

nviz will create series of rgb files - I used moviemaker to make them  
into movies on SGI.
I had troubles to create decent animations after moving to PCs - as  
mpeg movies weren't
very good for small number of frames so I used gifmerge to create  
animated gifs.
That was until somebody suggested convert (thank you million times, I  
don't remember who it was)
- it has many options and you can create high quality
animated gifs from series of rgb images (or images in other formats)
http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl1_convert.htm
Here are the workshop slides that describe how to do the animations  
from series of raster maps
in nviz including some examples:
http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/grasswork/foss4g/ 
FOSS4G06WKSVisual4anim.odp (34Mb)

Helena

> And this is where I have issues.  I've been wrestling with this for  
> a while, trying to get a usable ffmpeg library on Mac OS X.   
> Because of the VERY unstable nature of the ffmpeg project (a  
> perpetual beta), it's hard to get something that works at any given  
> time.  This probably applies to more than just OSX.  Building a  
> universal binary is more difficult because of different processor  
> optimizations.  Nobody makes binaries for the ffmpeg libraries,  
> just the program.  At least on OSX, and I don't want to resort to  
> Fink or Darwinports.
>
> As an alternative to directly in nviz, there is the r.out.mpeg  
> module.  You could create the ppms in nviz, then run those thru  
> r.out.mpeg.
>
> But that has a similar problem - no Mac binaries for the mpeg- 
> encode program that it uses.  And ancient code - I haven't tried  
> building it yet, but I expect problems.
>
> A possibility would be to rewrite the r.out.mpeg module to use the  
> ffmpeg program or other mpeg encoder, which has readily available  
> binaries.  Or just run them manually thru ffmpeg.
>
>
> A question about the ffmpeg support - is it limited to just the  
> mpeg-1 output, or can it use any format supported by ffmpeg?
>
> -----
> William Kyngesburye <kyngchaos at kyngchaos.com>
> http://www.kyngchaos.com/
>
> First Pogril: Why is life like sticking your head in a bucket  
> filled with hyena offal?
> Second Pogril: I don't know.  Why IS life like sticking your head  
> in a bucket filled with hyena offal?
> First Pogril: I don't know either.  Wretched, isn't it?
>
> -HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy
>
>