VMD-L Mailing List

From: John Stone (johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 17 2008 - 21:56:35 CDT

Hi,
  I'm not sure how you changed your copy of the vmdmovie.tcl file,
but I'd ask that before we delve any further, that you first try the
original vmdmovie plugin and the command I emailed earlier. If that
works for you, then we can proceed with debugging whatever has been
changed in your modified version. Starting with your modified version
is likely to add more confusion so I'd rather leave that for a second
step. Please try the example sequence I sent earlier and let me know
if that works with the unmodified script on your system, or not.

Cheers,
  John Stone
  vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu

On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 09:18:24PM -0500, Samir Unni wrote:
> Hi,
>
> That character resulted from an issue with the email formatting; it was not
> actually part of the command that I used. The command I used was:
>
> ::MovieMaker::makemovie /Users/srunni/dev/vmd_tests/1fas 1fas ppmtompeg
> snapshot 10
>
> Also, I sent an update a few hours after my initial email, but it seems not
> to have made it onto the mailing list. I will repost it here:
>
> --------------------
> I've got a small update. I slightly changed vmdmovie.tcl, so that the
> framerate can be passed to the 'makemovie' method. When I did this, defined
> 'framerate' as the extra variable being passed now, and defined 'numframes'
> as the product of the framerate and the duration, a working movie was
> created. Though it would seem that only 2 of these 3 variables need to be
> defined for the program to be able to determine the 3rd, when I eliminated
> any one of them, the movie was not generated correctly. I have attached the
> working version of vmdmovie.tcl, if anyone wants to look at it.
>
> I would still like to know if there is a way to generate a movie from the
> command line without modifying any files that are a part of VMD, if
> possible.
> --------------------
>
> I still have not found a workaround for this issue. The command I am using
> now is:
>
> ::MovieMaker::makemovie /Users/srunni/dev/vmd_tests/1fas 1fas ppmtompeg
> tachyon 5 40
>
> Thanks,
>
> Samir Unni
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 5:02 PM, John Stone <johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi,
> > The ">" character you have in your example below shouldn't be there,
> > that would cause some trouble for sure.
> >
> > Here's a proper example command sequence to make a movie from text mode:
> > package require vmdmovie
> > mkdir /tmp/mytmpdir
> > ::MovieMaker::makemovie /tmp/mytmpdir example ppmtompeg snapshot 10
> >
> > This worked fine for me.
> >
> > Try that and let me know how it goes.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > John Stone
> > vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> >
> > On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 09:32:37AM -0500, Samir Unni wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I'm trying to create a Tcl script that will use output from APBS to
> > create a
> > > video file, with no user interaction. So far, I have managed to manually
> > > create a state file, to which I can then add a few lines of code for the
> > > Movie Plugin, to automatically generate the video file and then exit VMD.
> > > However, I can't seem to get VMD to properly generate the video file when
> > I
> > > use the script. It creates a file, but it doesn't seem to contain any
> > actual
> > > data (it's only about 20 KB), and doesn't play correctly when I open it
> > with
> > > MPlayer. This is the line of code that seems to be the problem:
> > >
> > > ::MovieMaker::makemovie /Users/srunni/dev/vmd_tests/1fas 1fas ppmtompeg
> > > > snapshot 10
> > >
> > >
> > > When I load this exact same state file, but with that line removed, and
> > > manually use the Movie Plugin, there are no problems. I figured out the
> > > syntax for the above code by taking a look at vmdmovie.tcl, and imitating
> > > the calls made when the Movie Plugin is launched from the GUI. As far as
> > I
> > > can tell, I have made no mistakes in the syntax. Does anyone know why
> > this
> > > isn't working correctly?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Samir Unni
> >
> > --
> > NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
> > Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
> > University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
> > Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu Phone: 217-244-3349
> > WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/ <http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/%7Ejohns/>
> > Fax: 217-244-6078
> > 

-- 
NIH Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois, 405 N. Mathews Ave, Urbana, IL 61801
Email: johns_at_ks.uiuc.edu                 Phone: 217-244-3349
  WWW: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/~johns/      Fax: 217-244-6078