VMD-L Mailing List

From: Margaret Cheung (cheung_at_physics.ucsd.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 22 2002 - 00:17:58 CST

Dear John,

Thank you for your prompt reply. I'm installing
netpbm-progs-9.14-2.i386.rpm for ppmtompeg. I didn't get any error
messages. Instead, "complete" was shown in the window. I'll appreciate it
because I'm preparing my movie for a talk next Monday..... please help.

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 Thu, 21 Mar 2002, John Stone wrote:

>
> Hi Margaret,
> Can you tell me which version of the netpbm software you have
> installed? I found that some of the older versions are buggy,
> so you may have to have a newer version if the old one fails to
> work for you. I'm not sure that's your problem, but its a
> possibility if everything except for the last phase of the
> movie compression is working correctly. Do you get any errors
> in your VMD console window, or in any Tk dialog boxes? Let me know
> if you see any other indications of the source of the problem.
>
> Thanks,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> On Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 08:34:58PM -0800, Margaret Cheung wrote:
> > 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
> > >
>
> --
> 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
>