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| Re: animated png: a new format for scientific animations [message #60450 is a reply to message #60448] |
Wed, 21 May 2008 10:45   |
jeffnettles4870
Messages: 111
Registered: October 2006
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Senior Member |
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On May 21, 11:38 am, Vince Hradil <hrad...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On May 21, 9:28 am, pgri...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
>> 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
>
> Nice - thanks for the demo. I'd also like to point out that XnView
> (v1.92 or greater) can view the APNG.
I wouldn't be surprised if ImageMagick didn't also support these files
very soon. I know they already support creating .MNG files which I
believe is an older specification of the animated PNG format. I
mention this because ImageMagick has popped up in other discussions on
this newsgroup recently :)
Jeff
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| Re: animated png: a new format for scientific animations [message #60460 is a reply to message #60450] |
Wed, 21 May 2008 08:38 |
Vince Hradil
Messages: 574
Registered: December 1999
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Senior Member |
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On May 21, 9:28 am, pgri...@gmail.com wrote:
> 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
Nice - thanks for the demo. I'd also like to point out that XnView
(v1.92 or greater) can view the APNG.
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| Re: animated png: a new format for scientific animations [message #60554 is a reply to message #60442] |
Thu, 22 May 2008 15:04 |
Mark[1]
Messages: 66
Registered: February 2008
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Member |
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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.
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