Hi Maya, Please send the error message. You can press the Report a Bug button if an error dialog appears with that option to send us the error message. Here are several factors that would improve the quality of the movie you sent me. First use a higher bitrate. Using 4000 Kbits/sec for a 1280x667 movie frame is too little. The maximum will depend on the codec but you can try 10000. Most movies are not at that high resolution (1280x667) and your machine may not be able to play it at full speed in for example powerpoint. Almost all of your window waas white space. Use a smaller window, or zoom in to make the molecule fill more of the frame. Instead of using raytracing you can use several other options (that have no effect if you raytrace). Use supersampling when recording the movie to reduce jagged edges on the spheres (movie record supersample 3). Use glossy lighting in Chimera 1.4 (Tools / Viewing Controls / Lighting). Use silhouette edges (Tools / Viewing Controls / Effects) for better edge definition. Tom maya shcushan wrote:

Dear Tom, I added the "stop" but still get a runtime error. The examples do not include using the ray-pov option, but the movie without it is of very low quality.

I am sure you could see that from the attached movie in the last email.

Do you have an advice on how to produce a movie with good quality, or should I just resort to PyMol, even though I am a better fan of Chimera... :) ? Thanks, Maya

-----Original Message----- From: Tom Goddard [mailto:goddard@cgl.ucsf.edu] Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 9:43 PM To: maya shcushan Cc: 'Chimera BB' Subject: Problem recording raytraced movie

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Dear Tom, Thanks, this was very helpful... I have a new question: I want to make a simple movie in which the molecule rotates. Using the commands script I found on the internet, the movie is of very low quality (attached). Moreover, running it with windows media

maya shcushan wrote: player

...

shows the opening in the script, embedded in the movie. This were the commands:

"movie record turn y 3 150 wait 150 movie encode mformat avi output spin.avi bitrate 4000"

I want to record the same movie in good quality, like the pictures I get with pov-raying. I tried running: "movie record raytrace true turn y 3 150 wait 150 movie encode mformat avi output spin.avi bitrate 4000" But it falls all the time.

I looked in the internet for scripts but didn't find an answer. Can you please help me to create a simple script in which the molecule rotates and presented in ray-tracing and high quality?

Thanksm Maya

Hi Maya,

In Chimera 1.3 before the movie encode command you need the command "movie stop".

movie record raytrace true turn y 3 150 wait 150 movie stop movie encode mformat avi output spin.avi bitrate 4000

Otherwise it keeps on recording frames forever. In Chimera 1.4 (daily builds) this is unnecessary and your original script works correctly because in 1.4 movie encode does a movie stop implicitly.

Tom