[chimerax-users] Limits on movies

[Elaine Meng]

Hi Maria,
If you have commands that do something for N frames, then the wait right after them should be that same number (or more).  I.e. if you transition from one view to another view over 200 frames, then wait 200 frames. If you play a morph trajectory with coordset command for 81 frames, wait 81 frames.  Then, if you want extra frames where nothing is happening you could add extra wait commands.

Adding wait commands semi-randomly is probably not the most effective way, although I've resorted to that approach myself on occasion!

<http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/wait.html>

Making movies, including links to tutorials:
<http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/movies.html>

I hope this helps,
Elaine



> On Aug 13, 2020, at 9:14 AM, Maria Maldonado <mmaldo at ucdavis.edu> wrote:
> 
> Tom,
> 
> Thank you very much. I've been using "wait 60" between the steps, but I'll try longer waits and see what happens.
> 
> Thanks again to you and Elaine for really helpful advice!
> 
> Best,
> Maria 
> 
> On 8/12/20, 5:53 PM, "Tom Goddard" <goddard at sonic.net> wrote:
> 
>    Hi Maria,
> 
>      There is no limit on the video size.  That maxframes 15000 limits the video to 10 minutes (= 600 seconds = 15000 / (25 frames/sec)) and your video is probably shorter than that.  If you look at your script and add up all the frames in your wait commands and divide by 25 that is going to be the length of the video in seconds.  Only by using the wait command do you get frames saved out to your video.
> 
>    	Tom
> 
> 
>> On Aug 12, 2020, at 11:57 AM, Elaine Meng  wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Maria,
>> I believe that "limit" with maxframes is the only built-in limit on the movie length.  My only idea of what else to do is to make sure that you have all the proper "wait" commands in place so that the encoding doesn't start before all the other actions in the script before have finished. 
>> 
>> <http://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/movie.html>
>> 
>> It is possible that larger volumes and models cause the various commands prior to encoding to execute more slowly, so it could be consistent with my theory of needing more "wait" frames, as well as your theory that it is a memory issue of some kind.
>> 
>> I hope this helps,
>> Elaine
>> -----
>> Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D.                       
>> UCSF Chimera(X) team
>> Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
>> University of California, San Francisco
>> 
>>> On Aug 9, 2020, at 7:38 PM, mailman-bounces at cgl.ucsf.edu wrote:
>>> 
>>> From: Maria Maldonado <mmaldo at ucdavis.edu>
>>> Subject: Limits on movies
>>> Date: August 9, 2020 at 7:23:21 PM PDT
>>> 
>>> Hi!
>>> 
>>> I have a question about movies and thought you might be able to help. Is there a limit to the length of the movies other than the limit  maxframes? I’ve made scripts for movies with several steps. All the motions/commands show in the ChimeraX window while it is rendering, the script gets to the end and says “movie encoded”. However, when I open the movie file, the movie is missing several frames/steps. This happens even though I increased the limit maxframes (and my movies should be shorter than 15000 to begin with). If I split the original movie into shorter chunks that works fine, but I’ll have to edit the steps together in a different programme. I was wondering if this has to do with ChimeraX, or whether maybe it could be a computer memory issue or something else outside of the programme? It seems to be worse (ie the movie file stops earlier) for larger volumes and models than for smaller ones.
>>> 
>>> Thank you very much for your help!
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> Maria 
>> 
>> 
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