On Aug 14, 2009, at 12:34 PM, Tom Guu wrote:

Dear Dr. Meng,

This is Tom Guu from Rice University. I am using chimera to make some animation for my virus structure, that I would like to present at my defense ten days from today. I encountered a problem with Chimera with the image storage issues.

I am able to make movies, but they are generally very short, last for a few seconds, and the frames are generally stored at a /tmp folder. Since the /tmp folder in our computer server has quite limited spaces, once I perform a more complex animation, errors messages would pop up (each ppm is about 4MB and sometime that's over 300 frames will fill up the tmp dictory). I am thinking about storing frame files onto an external hard drive (200-300GB), which can handle many more frames. So I go into 'movie recorder" under which there is a "frame options". I specified the dictory for frames to my external dirve (also clicked on "Set Input Location"). Then re-execute my command (Open, click on cmd file which cotains the script), well... the frames seemed to be stored at the same /tmp location (nothing was written onto my external drive). Is there a way that I can do to make the frames stored at the external drive? If the frames are stored on the external drive, is it going to affect the encoding process?

In addition, I am also trying Chimera on my windows system (Vista). I was able to excute the command (cmd files) without any problem. The molecule is spinning as it should in the chimera. However, when I opened up the encoded movie, it is just a blank screen (with no molecule in sight). I check the directory (also another /tmp directory), and I can see the ppm files were being written. Then a screen popped up on my computer, C:\Program Files \Chimera\bin\ffmpeg.exe The screen was on for at lesat 20-30 secs, then the movie is made. However, as I said, I didn't see any movie on my computer screen though I did find the "help command" and I am currently don't seem to be able to find the answers to my problems. Any suggestion?

Thanks for such a long email. I much appreciate your help.

Regards, Tom

Hi Tom, If you are using the movie command to record the movie, you should use the movie command options to specify the directory (for example, a command something like "movie record directory my-directory-path"). <http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/UsersGuide/midas/movie.html> The "frame options" in the Movie Recorder graphical interface only affect recording with that graphical interface, not with the command. However, if you *are* using the Movie Recorder to record and it seems to be ignoring your setting, please use "Help... Report a Bug" in the Chimera menu to send us a problem report. Include a description, and if you want feedback, your email address. I am not sure I understand your second issue. All I can say is that even though a movie file may appear, it takes a while for the ffmpeg program to fully create it, so you have to be patient and wait until ffmpeg is done before you can open the movie and play it back. Was the movie OK after ffmpeg was done? If not, again you may want to use "Help... Report a Bug" and include any relevant information. This mechanism also allows files to be attached to the report. Besides "help command" for commands (for example, "help movie" to see your local copy of the URL given above), the Chimera Help menu provides several routes into the documentation (including "Help... Search documentation") and you can click the Help button on most dialogs to see the corresponding manual pages. For future reference, it is better to send Chimera questions to chimera-users@cgl.ucsf.edu than to me personally, unless you are including private data. This allows others to benefit from the information, and other staff to answer your question if I am unavailable or don't know the answer. Best wishes for success and triumph at your defense! Elaine ===== Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Computer Graphics Lab (Chimera team) and Babbitt Lab Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco