Chimera Commands Index

Usage:
movie  action  options

Movie is the command-line implementation of Movie Recorder, which captures image frames from Chimera and assembles them into a movie file. See also: making movies, movie-related commands, tips on preparing images

One of the following action keywords must be specified:

Actions may have specific options and arguments, described below. Action and option keywords can be truncated. Default values are indicated with bold. A vertical bar “|” designates mutually exclusive values.

movie record options:
supersample N
Whether to render each image at a higher resolution and then sample it down to the final size (does not apply to raytracing). Increasing N increases the smoothness of edges within images and the calculation time with little effect on file size. N is the number of pixels sampled in the X and Y dimensions for each pixel in the final saved image (default 1, no supersampling). Useful values range from 1 to 4, with 3 generally recommended when supersampling is done. In addition, a value of 0 can be used to indicate onscreen rather than offscreen rendering, without supersampling. A potential disadvantage of over-supersampling is that lines such as silhouettes or hydrogen-bond representations in the final images may become unacceptably thin because there is a limit to how wide they can be in the initial images. Smoothness is also affected by other settings.
raytrace true | false
Whether to raytrace with POV-Ray rather than saving the contents of the Chimera graphics window. Raytraced images include fancier effects like shadows, but take longer to compute. Raytracing parameters can be adjusted in the POV-Ray Options preferences (see balancing time requirements and results).
size width,height
Generate images at the specified pixel width and height by offscreen rendering. This option allows creating movies with image dimensions larger than the Chimera window; if size is not given, the dimensions of the Chimera graphics window will be used. If the specified aspect ratio (the ratio of width to height) does not match that of the graphics window, the movie will show more or less of the scene vertically than is visible in the graphics window.
format jpeg | png | ppm
The format of saved image files. Regardless of which format is specified, however, frames are always saved in the png format when raytracing is used.
directory image-directory
Where image files should be saved; the default varies by platform.
pattern filename-pattern
The filename-pattern is a string to use when naming the image files; the default is chimovie_xxxx-*, where xxxx is replaced by random characters and * is replaced by the frame number (for example, 00001, 00002, etc.). Any specified filename-pattern should include one and only one *, which will be replaced by the frame number.
limit  maxframes
Record no more than maxframes image frames (default 15000). This safeguards against creating too many image files, as may occur with certain scripting errors.
movie encode options:
output  pathname
The pathname is the name and location of the output movie file (default ~/Desktop/movie.mp4). If file name but not location is given, the default location is the current directory, typically the same location as the movie-making script. The output file format can be indicated by filename suffix or with the format option. The output keyword can be omitted if the pathname precedes any other options, and in that case, multiple pathnames with different suffixes can be given to produce multiple outputs of different formats (example: movie encode a.mp4 b.webm). If the output keyword is used, the option can appear anywhere in the command, even multiple times in a single command, but only a single pathname can be given per use of the keyword.
format  h264 | vp8 | theora | mov | avi | mp4 | mp2 | mpeg | wmv | apng
Encode the movie in the specified format. Format keywords and their synonyms are listed in the table below. Alternatively, the format can be specified by output filename suffix; where formats share a suffix, the newer format (higher in the table) will be used. The available formats can be listed with the command movie formats.
format keyword,
synonyms
format filename suffix
h264H.264
(default on Mac, Windows)
.mp4
vp8
webm
VP8/WebM
(default on Linux)
.webm
theora
ogg
ogv
Theora .ogv
mov
qt
quicktime
Quicktime .mov
aviAVI MSMPEG-4v2 .avi
mp4MPEG-4 .mp4
mp2MPEG-2 .mpg
mpegMPEG-1 .mpg
wmvWMV2 .wmv
apngAPNG .png
quality highest | higher | high | good | medium | fair | low
Encode the movie to play back at a variable bit rate appropriate for the specified quality level. Higher quality corresponds to a higher bit rate and a larger file (at a given window size and frame rate). For constant bit rate encoding, the bitrate option should be used instead. Does not apply to the lossless format APNG.
bitrate rate
Encode the movie to play back at a constant bit rate, where rate is the target rate in Kbits/s. Generally, 200 Kbits/s gives low quality, 1000 medium, and 6000 high, but this strongly depends on image dimensions and the amount of motion. For HD movies (1920 x 1080 pixels), a rate of 25000 Kbits/s would be expected to give high quality. For variable bit rate encoding, the quality option should be used instead. Does not apply to the lossless format APNG.
framerate fps
The frame rate is the rate of playback in terms of image frames. The frame rate fps is an integer and defaults to 25 frames/s.
roundtrip true | false
Whether to include the frames in reverse order as the second half of the movie.
resetMode clear | keep | none
By default, a reset of the frame counter to zero will occur when movie encoding is complete. At the same time, the image files can be deleted (clear, default) or retained (keep) for some other purpose, such as movie encoding with a different program. The third option, none, indicates that no reset should occur: the frame counter should not be zeroed and the images should not be deleted. This allows subsequently re-encoding the movie using the same set of images.
wait true | false
Whether to wait for encoding to finish before proceeding. If multiple movies are being recorded back-to-back, it is necessary to wait until one is encoded before starting to record the next, because any recording will be halted automatically when encoding finishes.
movie resetresetMode clear | keep ]
Reset the frame counter to zero, either deleting the image files (clear, default) or retaining them (keep) for some other purpose such as movie encoding with a different program.
movie crossfadeframes  N ]
N is the number of frames in the crossfade transition (default 25), and can be given without the frames keyword. The transition is a linear interpolation from the preceding image frame to the image frame specified right after the crossfade. The crossfade transition will not be shown during recording, but will be in the resulting movie. See the video mini-example.
movie duplicateframes  N ]
N is the number of times to duplicate the preceding image frame (default 25), and can be given without the frames keyword. The duplicates will not be shown during recording, but will be in the resulting movie.
movie ignoreon | off ]
Start ignoring subsequent movie commands (no keyword, or equivalently the keyword on, true, or 1) or stop ignoring them (keyword off, false, or 0). Ignoring movie commands may be useful during script (movie content) development.