VMD-L Mailing List

From: Josh Vermaas (vermaas2_at_illinois.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 29 2015 - 19:17:08 CST

Hi Anu,

It sounds like you are using the movie maker plugin. What I found was
that the default encoder settings left alot to be desired, and as a
result the animations that came out were not as aesthetically pleasing
as I would have liked. What I would do is to turn off the setting in the
movie maker that deletes the images automatically afterward, and then
reencode the images into a movie afterward using the rendered images
using ffmpeg so I could set the balance between filesize and image
quality myself. A basic example of the command would be:

ffmpeg -i frames-%05d.tga output.mp4

Alternatively, for simple trajectory animations, you could write a
simple rendering script in VMD and not use the movie maker altogether:

for { set f 0 } { $f < [molinfo top get numframes] } { incr f } {
     animate goto $f
     render snapshot [format "frames-%05d.tga" $f]
}

-Josh Vermaas

On 12/29/2015 06:05 PM, anu chandra wrote:
> Dear VMD users,
>
> I am trying to make a movie of simulation trajectories. Though I could
> make the movie successfully,I have noticed while watching the movie
> in a media player that the movie clarity has drastically came down as
> compared the trajectory visualized in the OpenGL window of VMD. I just
> wonder is there any way I can improve the clarity of movie made with VMD.
>
>
> Many thanks in advance
>
> Anu