From: Axel Kohlmeyer (akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 16 2009 - 11:40:03 CDT

On Thu, 2009-07-16 at 11:14 -0500, Thomas C. Bishop wrote:
> Got it.
>
> It seems that default NETPBM does not have ppmtompeg so the VMD developers
> should be aware that there are "extra" hurdles for folks (like me) that want
> things to work "out of the box"
>
> This old posting suggests I'm not the only one
> http://forums.opensuse.org/archives/sf-archives/archives-software/341764-netpbm-ppmtompeg.html
>
> it appears from NETPBM changelog located at
> http://www.rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/opensuse/factory/x86_64/netpbm-10.35.64-1.2.x86_64.html
>
> * Wed Apr 11 2007 nadvornik_at_suse.cz
> - removed ppmtompeg sources [#261140]
>
> who know who but not why?

probably paranoia about some patent or open source license issue.

> Do other distro's have this problem?

not that i know of. fedora seems ok and they are usually
much more paranoid about licenses that suse.

if you uncheck the "Delete image files" option under
"Movie Settings" you can retain the raw images and then
use some script to feed those files to some other
move compression tool. ppmtompeg also uses only MPEG-1,
a very old and not very efficient compression with
lots of artefacts, so switching to some more modern
tool would give you better results. ppmtompeg is somewhat
of the lowest common denominator on linux/unix machines.

i'm certain that john, who has been working on movie
compression professionally, will have some recommendations
for what current codecs are worth trying out.

cheers,
    axel.

>
> Tom
>
> On Thursday 16 July 2009, John Stone wrote:
> > Tom,
> > You will need to install a working version of the NetPBM toolkit in order
> > to allow the vmdmovie plugin to take care of the entire movie generation
> > process, as that's the package that the "ppmtompeg" package is part of.
> > You can also use the movie maker to generate the raw frames for your movie,
> > and then compress them with the movie encoder of your choice, if you'd
> > rather not use ppmtompeg, or if you have a more convenient tool (e.g. the
> > Apple quicktime tools are quite popular).
> >
> > Cheers,
> > John Stone
> > vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 10:55:57AM -0500, Thomas C. Bishop wrote:
> > > If I blindly click away to "make movie " in VMD (1.8.6 and 1.8.7 ) it
> > > does not work.
> > >
> > > The problem appears to be that SUSE does not get ppmtompeg w/ the
> > > prepacked netpbm (think I got all of these details correct)
> > >
> > > This is what Imagemagik calls to convert to mpeg (again doing this from
> > > memory)
> > >
> > > Other's have this problem?
> > > Suggestions? Ideas? Workarounds?
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > > Toim
>
>
>

-- 
=======================================================================
Axel Kohlmeyer   akohlmey_at_cmm.chem.upenn.edu   http://www.cmm.upenn.edu
   Center for Molecular Modeling   --   University of Pennsylvania
Department of Chemistry, 231 S.34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6323
tel: 1-215-898-1582,  fax: 1-215-573-6233,  office-tel: 1-215-898-5425
=======================================================================
If you make something idiot-proof, the universe creates a better idiot.