How to Make a Movie 

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Introduction

This document describes how to make an animation from a sequence of existing image files. It does not describe adding audio to your movie. If you have more than about 40 full-screen size image file frames, or if you have several sets of image sequences, you can first make short movie clips of each set, and then combine the movie clips to make your movie.

Image Files

In order for your movie to fill the screen on the Onyx2 (Flat Plane projection), you should make each image 1750x450 pixels. You should name your files like:

prefix1001.extension
prefix1002.extension
prefix1003.extension

or,

prefix.001.extension
prefix.002.extension
prefix.003.extension

The numbered portion of your file names should have the same number of digits. For example, if you have images 1 through 999, use 001 through 999. If you have 2000 image files, use 0001 through 2000, or 1001 through 3000. The numbering sequence can start with any integer. You can use the multi_rename script to rename your files if necessary. See man multi_rename for more information.

Make the Movie Clips

The number of frames that a movie clip can use depends on the size of the images. Too many frames will result in a pipe error. For images that fill the screen (1750x450 pixels), a safe number is about 40 frames per movie clip. If you have more than about 40 image files of 1750x450 pixels each, you must make movie clips for each of group of files then combine the clips to make your movie. This limitation is due to the amount of memory available on the Onyx2.

If your image files are tiff files or targa (tga) files, you can use a script to make either an SGI or QuickTime type of movie, as shown in the following table.

 SGI  make_sgi_movie_from_tiff [options]  
 SGI  make_sgi_movie_from_tga [options]  
 QuickTime   make_qt_movie_from_tiff  [options]

The scripts use 10 frames per second unless you specify a different value. See man make_sgi_movie_from_tiff or man make_qt_movie_from_tiff or man make_sgi_movie_from_tga for more information.

These scripts issue the dmconvert command for you. If your image files are in some file format other than tiff or tga, you can either convert them to tiff or tga format, or you can use the dmconvert command without a script to make your movie.

Available dmconvert image file formats are:  bmp, gif, jpeg, pict, ras, rgb, tga, tiff, xwd and others. Also use the dmconvert command if you want to make a different format movie. Available movie formats are avi, mpeg1s , mpeg1v, qt and sgimv. See man dmconvert for details.

Here is the basic syntax for using the dmconvert command. This command has many other options and arguments. Note that the # pound signs show how many numeric places exist in your numbered filenames; they are not replaced by numeric values in your actual command.

dmconvert -f movieformat  -n imagename###.imageformat,start=start_number,end=end_number,step=step_number -p video,inrate=inrate,rate=rate,il=none,or=b2t  imagename###.imageformat  imagename.movie

Here is an example for making a QuickTime movie clip named yy.mov.  The image files are named yy100.tiff  to yy180.tiff and we will make the movie 10 frames per second  The default step number is 1. Note that the qt movie format requires an additional option, comp=qt_anim.

dmconvert -f qt -n yy###.tiff,start=100,end=180 -p video,inrate=10,rate=10,il=none,or=b2t,comp=qt_anim  yy###.tiff  yy.mov

The mediaconvert command is the graphic interface of dmconvert.

Combine Movie Clips

Use moviemaker to combine movie clips into one movie.

  1. Go to File/open to open the first clip.
  2. Click Control/Go to end.
  3. Use File/Import to import the next clip.
  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 to get more clips.

Play the Movie

Use the movieplayer or mediaplayer command to play the movie.

  1. Click File/Open in the interface to open the movie.
  2. Click View/Zoom Up or Zoom Down

    3. to zoom the movie to fit the screen.

  3. Click the play.gif (203 bytes) (Play button) to play the movie.

Creating in-Between Frames

If your movie appears jumpy or rough when you play it, you may not have generated enough in-between frames. Adding more in-between frames will smooth it out and slow the movie down. It is easy to create the additional frames by making dissolves between existing frames.

This technique works best with images which have smooth shapes or areas. Images which consist of lines, like spline graphs, will probably not show improvement and may appear worse.

Creating a new movie with additional in-between dissolves is a 3-step process:

  1. Convert your existing frames to targa format.

    You can use the multi urt (Utah Raster Toolkit) scripts to convert all the frames of your movie at once. For example, if you have tiff images, use multi_tifftorle and multi_rletotarga. See man multi_urt for more information.

  2. Create the in-between images.

    You can use the morphframes script to create all the new dissolve frames at once. See man morphframes for more information. morphframes uses Michael J. Gourlay's morph program.

  3. Make the new movie from the tga frames.

    You can use the make_sgi_movie_from_tga script to make an sgimv type movie. See man make_sgi_movie_from_tga for more information.

A different approach to creating the in-between frames is to use the SDSC Image Manipulation Tools version 3 imdissolve command. Enter man imdissolve for more information.