[Chimera-users] play movie forward then backward - script command?

[Elaine Meng]

Dear Gesa,
Your old sessions should be fine in newer Chimera -- if not, you could try using Help... Report a Bug in the Chimera menu and attach the session file and describe what the problem is.  It is the opposite situation that might cause problems, i.e. old Chimera with a session made with newer Chimera.

The movie command has all the same options as the dialog, so in a command file you would use those command options instead of dialog settings.  Here is the manual page, 

<http://plato.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/movie.html>

which shows that the "movie encode" option "roundtrip" is the setting you want.

With the movie command, the syntax is  like "supersample N".  Supersampling will not make the movie file any bigger because each image still ends up the same size.  Supersampling just means a bigger image is made first and then sampled down to the final size.  I just now tried making movies with supersampling 3 and no supersamping and the difference is rather subtle.  Without supersampling you can see a little bit of jaggedness along the edge of ribbons and sticks.  I think 4 is overkill.  The quality reduction during movie encoding (which has some compression) probably swamps out most of the supersampling, and although I usually recommend 3 for saving single images, it is a less dramatic improvement for movies.

I hope this helps.  Thanks for the compliments, by the way!
Elaine
----------
Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. 
UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab
Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
University of California, San Francisco



On Sep 1, 2011, at 9:57 AM, Gesa Volkers wrote:

> Dear Chimera-Programmers,
> 
> I like to create a movie in chimera by using a txt script and have some 
> questions.
> 
> I saw that it is possible to check the box "play forward then backward" 
> in the movie recorder but it does not work when I check the box and then 
> run my script to create the movie (maybe this is not suprising..). How 
> can I include this command into my script commands?
> 
> Another question. If I use the supersampling command, is it right to use 
> the command as follows:
> 
> movie record fformat png supersample 4
> 
> OR
> 
> movie record fformat png supersample 4x4
> 
> Somehow I cannot see a difference in quality if I use the supersample 
> command like this or if I do not use it at all, so I assume that 
> something is wrong. Also the mp4-file size is always the same.
> 
> And a third question: I liked to upgrade Chimera to the current version 
> (I use 1.5 (build 31025) 2010-07-20). But after the upgrade all my old 
> saved sessions did not work anymore. Is there a solution for this? 
> Because that keeps me from upgrading..
> 
> Thank you in advance for your help! I use Chimera a lot and I am always 
> surprised how helpful the tutorials are and how fast the programmers 
> respond to the users.
> 
> Gesa