Recent changes to 566: Option to generate animation as video file (mpeg or mp4)

#566 Option to generate animation as video file (mpeg or mp4)

2023-11-18T21:07:17.390000Z

My apologies for providing misleading information. I had thought that the webp terminal was introduced sometime during the development of gnuplot version 5.4. But I was mistaken; it exists only in gnuplot 6, which has been the development version for some years. The first official release of version 6.0 is expected by the end of 2023.

If you decide to try again at building from source, please use the release candidate for gnuplot 6
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot/files/gnuplot/testing/gnuplot-6.0.rc3.tar.gz
The INSTALL file has a section with hints for building on Ubuntu. I append the relevant section below.

Ubuntu  
------   
  These instructions were tested on Ubuntu 22.04

  Install build tools, libraries, and documentation tools (TeX) for
  building gnuplot binary (5.4.2).
        sudo apt build-dep gnuplot

  Install additonal tools and libraries for development version

        sudo apt install gfortran libcerf-dev libwebp-dev adwaita-icon-theme-full \
                unzip texlive-science

        # openspecfun provides the Amos routines (except for cexint)
        git clone https://github.com/JuliaMath/openspecfun.git
        cd openspecfun
        make
        sudo make install

  Debian packages required to configure with Qt5:
        qtbase5-dev
        qtbase5-dev-tools
        qttools5-dev-tools
        libqt5svg5-dev

  Add the below to ~/.profile
        export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/lib

#566 Option to generate animation as video file (mpeg or mp4)

2023-11-17T05:55:08.483000Z

[1] My version doesn't accept that option

You'll have to take that up with Ubuntu, or ask for help on an Ubuntu forum. Or you could build from source. Current version is 5.4, released July 2020. Release of version 6 is imminent, release candidate 6.0.rc3 is available for testing. There are some contributed guidelines for building under Ubuntu in the INSTALL file of the version 6 source distribution package.

[2] Solution Fulfills Needs

Good to hear.

[3] GIF option

Yeah. Animated gifs were OK when it was mostly cartoon kitty icons waving a paw but they are not really suited for larger use. Also the library used to create them does lower-quality graphics than the newer terminals can produce.

[4] Selective scope redirect ?

Is there a way to limit which portions of the file are "redirected" to a
webp file? Namely, can I set up such a WEBP creation only for each
segment of the file (one each for the 6 resonance frequency simulation
modes)? The file you provided lumped all 7 groupings into one video
file. I will look at the documentation to see what I need to do, but if
you have any examples that specifically show how to close a first
redirect file and open a second/third/etc. target file would be very
much appreciated.

I didn't really look at your script in detail. I just ran it as-is after editing to read files from the current directory rather than /tmp. Here's a quick go at a script that creates a separate file for each mode. I may not understand the file naming system correctly but it does produce reasonable looking output. FWIW the run time was about 2 seconds total for the two 50-frame animations.

set term web size 400,400 animate

#
# Mode 1
#
set output 'mode1.webp'
meshfile = "Icosahedron__1v_iter5_Results-msh"
do for [i=1:50] {
   j = (i > 25) ? 50-i : i
   polyfile = sprintf("Icosahedron__1v_iter5-m-01.%03d", j)
   splot meshfile u 2:3:4 w l lw 1 lt 5, polyfile u 1:2:3 w l lw 1 lt 3
}
unset output

#
# Mode 2
#
set output 'mode2.webp'
meshfile = "Icosahedron__1v_iter5_Results-msh"
do for [i=1:50] {
   j = (i > 25) ? 50-i : i
   polyfile = sprintf("Icosahedron__1v_iter5-m-02.%03d", j)
   splot meshfile u 2:3:4 w l lw 1 lt 5, polyfile u 1:2:3 w l lw 1 lt 3
}
unset output

#566 Option to generate animation as video file (mpeg or mp4)

2023-11-17T01:58:39.218000Z

Current gnuplot supports creating animation as a webp file, although it uses the rather limited API provided in WebPAnimEncoder rather than the full API used by the standalone webpmux encoding utility.

I attach the result of running your test script with 2 lines added at the top

set term webp size 400,400 animate
set output 'icosahedron.webp'

# FRAME3DD ANALYSIS RESULTS  http://frame3dd.sf.net/ VERSION 20140514+ 
# Proof-of-concept problem:  Icosahedron frame - static and dynamic analysis (in  kip) 
# Thu Nov 16 14:35:13 2023

Does that meet your needs? If not, what modifications to the existing driver capabilities would you like to see?

Option to generate animation as video file (mpeg or mp4)

2023-11-16T23:58:55.182000Z

Is it possible to expand Gnuplot's relevance by adding a built-in function to generate a mpeg or mp4 format file as an alternate to displaying the animation in a window?

Such an option would permit the results of Gnuplot to be shared away from the environment/point of creation and present those results to a wider audience (in their more receptive mode/environment) when trying to communicate results from various research/analyses (i.e. Frame3DD animations of multiple structural analysis dynamic modal simulations).

The attached plot instruction file (Icosahedron__1v_iter5_Results.plt) gives you an idea of the "script" file that calls upon a large number of data files (other files in the tar file) to create dynamic simulations of structure vibrational modes.

Thank you,
Eric Marceau, 68, retired
member of Google Geodesic Help Group