[Pw_forum] On making a *.axsf file with XCrySDen

[Axel Kohlmeyer]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 12:53 AM, Paul M. Grant <w2agz at pacbell.net> wrote:
> Axel, thanks for getting back on this.  Let me think about your suggestion
> and see what others have to comment as well.
>
> Reflecting on "animation" in general a little more, I wonder if there's a
> Linux screen capture tool available somewhere analogous to KDE Ksnapshot for
> jpeg images, but which could capture motion in addition resulting in an mpeg
> file.  Now that would be a handy and nifty gadget for lots of purposes!

paul,

to follow up on this. something along those lines already _does_ exist.

the "import" utility of ImageMagick allows to make automated sequences
of snapshots of any given window or screen area of any x11 desktop it
can access.

to get a movie, all you have to do is:

- start xcrysden and set up what you want to monitor.
- launch xwininfo from an xterm and click on the xcrysden window
  to get its window id, e.g. 0x3200045
- launch: import -snaps 20 -pause 1 -window 0x3200045 snap.jpg
- this will produce 20 snapshots of that window, one per second
  named snap-1.jpg snap-2.jpg and so on...
to make a gif animation: convert snap-?.jpg snap-??.jpg snaps-movie.gif
to make an mpeg-1 movie you should make snapshots more frequently and
use, e.g, ppmtompeg (i can send you a parameter file and some info on how
to script using it).

this is all a bit clumsy and should be adapted to your specific needs.
one could even consider integrating it into xcrysden at some point. the
the nice thing is, that there is no hacking of low level code involved,
which would be most important if speed up the capture needs to be
improved.

cheers,
     axel.







>
> Paul M. Grant, PhD
> Principal, W2AGZ Technologies
> Visiting Scholar, Applied Physics, Stanford (2005-2008)
> EPRI Science Fellow (Retired)
> IBM Research Staff Member Emeritus
> w2agz at pacbell.net
> http://www.w2agz.com
>
>
>
>


-- 
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Axel Kohlmeyer   akohlmey at cmm.chem.upenn.edu   http://www.cmm.upenn.edu
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