Hi Folks,
I just put a new version of a program on moon. The first version has been
on moon for about a month, but was never announced, but if you got it
already, you might want to get the newer version for better quality output.
The file on moon is r.out.mpeg.tar.Z
and here's the manual page for r.out.mpeg:
r.out.mpeg <contrib> GRASS Reference Manual <contrib> r.out.mpeg
NAME
_r._o_u_t._m_p_e_g - Raster File Series to MPEG Conversion Program
SYNOPSIS
r.out.mpeg
r.out.mpeg help
r.out.mpeg [-q] view1=_n_a_m_e[,_n_a_m_e,...]
[view2=_n_a_m_e[,_n_a_m_e,...]] [view3=_n_a_m_e[,_n_a_m_e,...]]
[view4=_n_a_m_e[,_n_a_m_e,...]] [output=_n_a_m_e] [qual=_v_a_l_u_e]
DESCRIPTION
_r._o_u_t._m_p_e_g is a tool for combining a series of GRASS raster
files into a single MPEG-1 (Motion Pictures Expert Group)
format file. MPEG-1 is a "lossy" video compression format,
so the quality of each resulting frame of the animation will
be much diminished from the original raster image. The
resulting output file may then be viewed using your favorite
mpeg-format viewing program.
The user may define up to four "views", or sub-windows, to
animate simultaneously. e.g., View 1 could be rainfall,
View 2 flooded areas, View 3 damage to bridges or levees,
View 4 other economic damage, all animated as a time series.
A black border 2 pixels wide is drawn around each view.
There is an arbitrary limit of 100 files per view (100
animation frames). Temporary files are created in the
conversion process, so lack of adequate tmp space could also
limit the number of frames you are able to convert.
The environment variable GMPEG_SIZE is checked for a value
to use as the dimension, in pixels, of the longest dimension
of the animation image. If GMPEG_SIZE is not set, the
animation size defaults to the rows & columns in the current
GRASS region, scaling if necessary to a default minimum size
of 200 and maximum of 500. The resolution of the current
GRASS region is maintained, independent of image size.
Playback programs have to decode the compressed data "on-
the-fly", therefore smaller dimensioned animations will
provide higher frame rates and smoother animations.
UNIX - style wild cards may be used with the command line
version in place of a raster file name, but it _m_u_s_t _b_e
_q_u_o_t_e_d.
Example:
r.out.mpeg view1="rain[1-9]","rain1[0-2]" view2="temp*"
If the number of files differs for each view, the view with
the fewest files will determine the number of frames in the
animation.
GRASS 4.1 U.S. Army CERL 1
r.out.mpeg <contrib> GRASS Reference Manual <contrib> r.out.mpeg
COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
Flags:
-_q Quiet - suppress progress report
Parameters:
_v_i_e_w_1
Raster file(s) for View1
_v_i_e_w_2
Raster file(s) for View2
_v_i_e_w_3
Raster file(s) for View3
_v_i_e_w_4
Raster file(s) for View4
_o_u_t_p_u_t
Name for MPEG output file (default gmovie.mpg)
_q_u_a_l Quality factor (1-5) (default 3)
A quality value of qual=1 will yield higher quality
images, but with less compression (larger MPEG file
size). Compression ratios will vary depending on the
number of frames in the animation, but an MPEG produced
using qual=5 will usually be about 60% the size of the
MPEG produced using qual=1;
BUGS
MPEG images must be 16-pixel aligned for successful
compression, so if the rows & columns of the calculated
image size (scaled, with borders added) are not evenly
divisible by 16, a few rows/columns will be cut off the
bottom & right sides of the image.
The MPEG format is optimized to recognize image MOTION, so
abrupt changes from one frame to another will cause a
"noisy" encoding.
This program requires the program _m_p_e_g__e_n_c_o_d_e :
MPEG-1 Video Software Encoder
(Version 1.3; March 14, 1994)
Lawrence A. Rowe, Kevin Gong, Ketan Patel, and Dan Wallach
Computer Science Division-EECS, Univ. of Calif. at Berkeley
Available by anonymous ftp from: s2k-ftp.CS.Berkeley.EDU
2 U.S. Army CERL GRASS 4.1
r.out.mpeg <contrib> GRASS Reference Manual <contrib> r.out.mpeg
AUTHOR
Bill Brown, U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research
Laboratories (brown@zorro.cecer.army.mil)
GRASS 4.1 U.S. Army CERL 3