| animated png: a new format for scientific animations [message #60463] |
Wed, 21 May 2008 07:28  |
pgrigis
Messages: 436
Registered: September 2007
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Senior Member |
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Hi folks,
production of animations (i.e. movies) is one
perennial subject of discussion in this group.
One of the main difficulties is the large number
of mutually incompatible formats, not always
equally well supported by different platforms
and softwares.
Furthermore, scientific animations are not well
suited to lossy compression schemes (i.e. jpeg,
mpeg etc.) such that the quality is in general
low, or the file size huge when higher bitrate
is used.
For still images, the alternative png format
has been available for some time, and has
become the format of choice for plots etc.
So it seems quite logical that
png animations should be the way to go.
The mozilla folks have come up with a new
specification for animated pngs that is supported
in firefox 3. I tried out the new format and
I can confidently say that the quality is much
better than any other movie format I have ever
seen, and the file size is quite reasonable.
I've put up an example, but bear in mind that
to be able to see the animated png you'll need
the firefox 3 beta (release candidate)!
The web page show the animated png and 3 quicktime
movies of increasing quality (and file size!).
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~pgrigis/scianim/index.html
Of course, the availability (finally!) of a good
format specification for scientific animations does
not mean that it is easy or convenient to use.
The main problem now are the fact that only a few
player and encoders are available.
On the other hand, you can play the movies with
firefox 3 and you can endcode the images using
a (cosed source) command line java utility
(http://www.reto-hoehener.ch/japng/), therefore
at least a minimum of multiplatform support already
exist.
Anyway, if you are willing to live with the limited
support for the format, it will probably give you
the best quality for your scientific animations
(and arguably is still a better solution than having
IDL open and issuing for i=0,100 do tv,img[*,*,i] ;-)
Ciao,
Paolo
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| Re: animated png: a new format for scientific animations [message #60531 is a reply to message #60463] |
Sun, 25 May 2008 17:33  |
Vince Hradil
Messages: 574
Registered: December 1999
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Senior Member |
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On May 25, 6:00 pm, Mark <mark.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On May 24, 2:40 am, Vince Hradil <hrad...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> On May 22, 5:04 pm, Mark <mark.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> AVI with MS Video 1 codec, 85% quality. Play it with Imagen. All you
>>> need (on Windows, anyway).
>
>> That codec looks really "blotchy" to me.
>
> Odd. I don't find that at all. You've set the quality high enough? On
> the scenes I use (with lots of lines and 256-colour plots) 85% quality
> is pretty well lossless. This codec supports only 16-bit colour, so
> smooth gradients in colour can be reduced to bands in some
> circumstances.
>
> Here's a couple of examples:
>
> ftp://ftp.niwa.co.nz/incoming/hadfieldm/animation/example/ex ample-msv...ftp://ftp.niwa.co.nz/incoming/hadfieldm/animatio n/example2/example2-m...
>
>> P.S. ImageN for scientific animations?
>
> What's the question? I was referring to Gromada's Imagen:
>
> http://www.gromada.com/imagen.html
Ah - different Imagen...
I have image series from mri, not just lines. It's the mri that look
that way. Thanks.
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| Re: animated png: a new format for scientific animations [message #60532 is a reply to message #60463] |
Sun, 25 May 2008 16:08 |
Mark[1]
Messages: 66
Registered: February 2008
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Member |
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On May 23, 2:49 pm, David Fanning <n...@dfanning.com> wrote:
> Mark writes:
>> AVI with MS Video 1 codec, 85% quality. Play it with Imagen. All you
>> need (on Windows, anyway).
>
> I'm trying to download that codec right now. I'm told it's,
> uh, obsolete.
What OS/version are you downloading it for? It is bundled with all
Windows versions up to XP.
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| Re: animated png: a new format for scientific animations [message #60545 is a reply to message #60463] |
Fri, 23 May 2008 07:40 |
Vince Hradil
Messages: 574
Registered: December 1999
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Senior Member |
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On May 22, 5:04 pm, Mark <mark.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> AVI with MS Video 1 codec, 85% quality. Play it with Imagen. All you
> need (on Windows, anyway).
>
> Re animated PNG, I'm sceptical. A group of enthusiastic, very smart
> people spent years developing MNG with the intention it would replace
> animated GIFs. All that effort came to nothing, basically, because 10
> years on there are very few applications that support it. As to the
> reasons for the failure, I'm sure someone could write a book about it.
That codec looks really "blotchy" to me. Not the type of quality I
want. I would prefer my videos to look like a slide-show of very high
quality images - I've used huffyuv lossless compression for avis, but
then you have to worry about the decode part if you want someone else
to look at it on his/her computer.
For these reasons, I think aPNG or MNG are great alternatives, but I
agree with you assessment - not enough support. aGIFs are nice, but
then there's that patent issue.
What else should I try? Flash...?
Cheers,
Vince
P.S. ImageN for scientific animations?
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| Re: animated png: a new format for scientific animations [message #60551 is a reply to message #60463] |
Thu, 22 May 2008 19:49 |
David Fanning
Messages: 11724
Registered: August 2001
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Senior Member |
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Mark writes:
> AVI with MS Video 1 codec, 85% quality. Play it with Imagen. All you
> need (on Windows, anyway).
I'm trying to download that codec right now. I'm told it's,
uh, obsolete. Course if you wanted to pair it up with IDL 5.6,
you'd have a hell of a package! ;-)
Cheers,
David
--
David Fanning, Ph.D.
Fanning Software Consulting, Inc.
Coyote's Guide to IDL Programming: http://www.dfanning.com/
Sepore ma de ni thui. ("Perhaps thou speakest truth.")
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