From: Margaret Cheung (cheung_at_physics.ucsd.edu)
Date: Thu Mar 21 2002 - 22:34:58 CST

Dear VMD users and developers,

I installed the vmdmovie plugin. However, I can not make movies.
I use linux redhet 7.2. vmd is 1.7.1. I installed ppmtompeg package
(netpbm-progs*.rpm). I can see the script is making rgb and ppm files.
However the final test.mpg is size 0! I got a null output. Please help
me. Thank you very much.

1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1673853 Mar 21 20:40 test.0000.ppm
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0000.rgb
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1673853 Mar 21 20:40 test.0001.ppm
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0001.rgb
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1673853 Mar 21 20:40 test.0002.ppm
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0002.rgb
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1673853 Mar 21 20:40 test.0003.ppm
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0003.rgb
 416 -rw------- 1 cheung user 405504 Mar 21 20:40 test.0004.ppm
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0004.rgb
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0005.rgb
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0006.rgb
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0007.rgb
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0008.rgb
1640 -rw------- 1 cheung user 1674350 Mar 21 20:40 test.0009.rgb

Sincerely,
Margaret S. Cheung
Biophysics Program
Physics Department 0319
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive,
La Jolla, CA 92093-0319
http://www-physics.ucsd.edu/~cheung

On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, John Stone wrote:

>
> Dear VMD-L,
> I have been developing a movie making script for VMD that
> is a complete solution for creating Animated GIF, AVI, Quicktime,
> and MPEG movies with VMD. The movie script uses several helper
> programs to do its work, but provides a completely automatic way
> to generate movies without having to do a lot of manual script
> processing and running of batch jobs etc. The script is available
> as part of the VMD script library here:
> http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/script_library/scripts/vmdmovie/
>
> Since the script is a test release, I am still in the process of
> adding new movie encoder support, improving the GUI, and finding/fixing
> bugs. If you would like to try it out, please go ahead and give us
> feedback if you have questions or run into problems. In order to
> use the script you'll need these programs installed
> (and in your path, on Unix systems):
> Windows:
> The "VideoMach" package, see the movie script page for links and
> information.
>
> Unix:
> NetPBM (frame conversion)
> ImageMagick (animated GIF format, frame conversion)
> SGI dmconvert (AVI, MPEG, Quicktime)
> 'ffmpeg' (MPEG-1 generator, works on Linux)
>
> The script now runs on Windows and Unix systems, with the two
> best-supported platforms being Windows and SGI IRIX at the
> present time using "VideoMach" (Windows) and "dmconvert" (SGI).
> These platforms provide AVI and MPEG encoding presently, and are
> pretty reliable.
>
> For other Unix platforms, the "animated GIF" option is currently the
> most reliable output medium. I'm working on getting several MPEG encoders
> working on Linux and Solaris, but at the present moment only the
> 'ffmpeg' option is ready, and even so the 'ffmpeg' utility is somewhat
> buggy.
>
> If you have questions, pleast let me know. I have several more updates
> to complete on this script today and tomorrow, adding support for more
> MPEG encoders, after that I'll be working on improving the user interface
> again.
>
> I'll be updating the movie script page over the next few days as
> improvements are made to the script, etc.
>
> Thanks, and enjoy!
>
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> --
> 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
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> --
> 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
>