Re: tools for animation

[Shankar Doraiswamy <shankar@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Glenn,
XDS is (at least was) available for Solaris 2.5.x, and it works fine
with Solaris 7 also.  It may work with Solaris 8, but I've not tried
it.
Since I could not find XDS for Linux and could not compile the source
code on Linux, I switched to mpeg_encode, which can convert FERRET's
GIF outputs to an MPEG video stream.  The source code of mpeg_encode
should be available and should compile on Solaris.  (Sorry, but I do
the encoding on Linux, and play the animations occassionally on
Solaris using mpeg_play.)
The conversion of the GIFs to MPEG video is user-controllable --- you
can set the parameters to define the quality and compression required.
Compression ensures that the MPEG video is smaller than the
corresponding HDF version.  An added advantage of using MPEG is the
possibility of playing the animation on other OSs, including MS
Windows 9x/NT (using vmpeg, a freely available player, not the default
MS MPEG player).
Regards, Shankar.

D. Shankar                           Ph. (O): [91](832) 22 6253 * 4312/4400
Physical Oceanography Division,                         22 1322 * 4312/4400
National Institute of Oceanography,      (R): [91](832) 23 8208      
Dona Paula,                          Fax    : [91](832) 22 3340/9102
Goa 403 004,                         email  : shankar@darya.nio.org
India.                                        shankar@csnio.ren.nic.in

On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Glenn Carver wrote:

> I'm having difficulties getting the suggested tools, XDslice and yavconvert,
> running on our Solaris 8 system. These codes are very old and I was wondering
> if anyone has any other suggestions for creating mpegs from HDF files
> produced according to the ferret manual?