[Chimera-users] MPEG compression

[Thomas Goddard]

Hi Matt,

   Chimera uses ffmpeg to encode a series of images into a movie. 
ffmpeg is included with Chimera in the "bin" directory.  If you record a 
movie in Chimera using the "movie" command or "Movie Recorder" dialog, 
the command used to encode the movie is reported in the reply log 
(Favorites menu).  Here's an example:

/Users/goddard/chimera/chimera-twain-AGL/install/Chimera.app/Contents/Resources/bin/ffmpeg 
-r 25 -i 
/var/folders/+g/+gO21g+SFqCxNgLVgIvElk+++TM/-Tmp-/chimovie_YZ1R-%05d.ppm 
-y -f mov -b 2000 -bufsize 200 /Users/goddard/chimera_movie.mov

The "-r" option gives playback frame rate in frames per second.  The -i 
gives the input image files.  The "%05d" in that specification 
represents the 5 digit image number in the file name (e.g. 
image-%05d.jpg represents image-00000.jpg, image-00001.jpg, 
image-00002.jpg, ...)  The "-f" is the output format (mov = quicktime). 
  The "-b" gives bit rate it kilobits/second which determines quality 
versus file size.

You can invoke ffmpeg directly from a terminal window on Mac or Linux 
without starting Chimera.  For more options search for ffmpeg on the web.

	Tom



Matthew Dougherty wrote:
> One of the people in my lab has a series of images that they want to  
> turn into MPEG's
> 
> Because they are familiar with Chimera, I would like to solve their  
> problem using Chimera rather than train them on FCP.
> 
> Is there a way to do this either with chimera commands or developing a  
> short python script?
> 
> thanks, Matt
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