Movie Recorder

Movie Recorder captures image frames from Chimera and assembles them into a movie file. Movies of trajectories can be recorded with MD Movie. See also: Animation, making movies, tips on preparing images

There are several ways to start Movie Recorder, a tool in the Utilities category. It is also implemented as the command movie.

Any desired adjustments in the window size or Frame Options should be made before recording is started. The window size is reported as Resolution in the status area of the dialog. The window can be resized manually or with the command windowsize. On certain platforms, other windows should not overlap the Chimera graphics window during recording (details...). This is not an issue when raytracing is used.

On the Movie Recorder dialog, clicking Record initiates frame capture and changes the button to Stop. Clicking Stop halts frame capture. Frame capture can be restarted by clicking Record again. This can be repeated until the desired segments have been saved. Reset resets the frame counter to zero and (unless Save images on Reset has been set to true) deletes the frames.

Clicking Make movie initiates encoding the saved frames into a movie file. During encoding, the button changes to Cancel movie, which can be clicked to halt the process. When the movie is fully assembled, a reset will occur unless Reset after encode has been turned off. Output settings:

• Output format - output movie file format
  • H.264 [.mp4]
  • VP8/WebM [.webm]
  • Theora [.ogv]
  • Quicktime [.mov]
  • AVI MSMPEG-4v2 [.avi]
  • MPEG-4 [.mp4]
  • MPEG-2 [.mpg]
  • MPEG-1 [.mpg]
  • WMV2 [.wmv]
  • APNG [.png] - animated PNG (lossless, bit rate options do not apply)
• Output file - output movie file name and location

• Directory - image file location
• Filename pattern - string for naming image files
• Format - image file format (however, PNG will be used regardless of this setting if raytracing is done):
  • JPEG [.jpeg]
  • PNG [.jpeg]
  • PPM [.jpeg] (default)
• Rendering:
  • screen grab (default) - capture the Chimera window contents; render onscreen. This rendering option is the fastest, but image quality is no better than the display. The graphics window must be kept completely visible: not overlapped by other windows or menus, moved offscreen, or blanked out by a screensaver.
  • Chimera - Chimera rendering, normally offscreen (details...). Images can be supersampled, that is, initially generated at a higher resolution and then sampled down to the final size.
    • Supersample (1x1/2x2/3x3/4x4) - how many pixels to sample in the X and Y dimensions for each pixel in the final saved image; thus, 1x1 corresponds to no supersampling. Higher values increase the smoothness of edges in saved images and increase calculation time with little effect on file size. 3x3 is generally recommended when supersampling is done.
  • POV-Ray - raytrace with POV-Ray. This rendering option is the slowest but includes fancier effects such as high-quality shadows. The POV-Ray Options button opens the corresponding preferences.
• Save images on Reset (true/false) - whether to keep individual image files when a reset occurs

• Bit rate controls quality and file size - a higher bit rate corresponds to higher quality (better appearance) but also a larger movie file, assuming the same window size and frame rate. A movie can be encoded to play back at a constant or variable bit rate.
  • Variable bit rate (default on); Quality: (highest/higher/high/good/medium/fair/low)
  • Constant bit rate (Kbits/s) (default off but set to 2000)
• Frames per second (default 25) - movie playback rate in terms of image frames
• Play forward then backward (off by default) - whether to include the frames in reverse order as the second half of the movie