Recording High Quality MD Trajectory Movie in ChimeraX
Dear ChimeraX users, I am recording the MD trajectory of a simulation as a movie in ChimeraX. However, the output quality of the movie is very low. How can I improve the quality of the movie? I would appreciate your guidance regarding this issue. Thank you for your support. With regards, Gourav Das Research Scholar Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur West Bengal, India-721302 Mob: +91-6295251060 --
Hi Gourav, Firstly make the window size the same as you want for the movie. If it is small, the pixel dimensions of the movie images will also be small. You did not say how you were recording this movie. If you are using the red button on the playback GUI, then it will use some default parameters. Put the slider all the way to the left and then click the red button. You can see the commands it uses by looking in the Log. <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/coordset.html#slider> When I use that approach the movie quality looks fine to me, but maybe you did some other things differently that I don't know about. If you want more control over parameters, then you could use commands yourself, instead of just clicking the red button. In general you would make a plain text file that contains commands (a ChimeraX commands file, name ending in .cxc) with the "movie record" command to start recording, "coordset" command to play back your trajectory, and "movie encode" to encode into a movie file. The "movie encode" command has various quality options. See the "making movies" help and links therein. <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/movies.html> I hope this helps, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Chimera(X) team Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco
On Dec 2, 2025, at 1:43 AM, Gourav Das via ChimeraX-users <chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
Dear ChimeraX users,
I am recording the MD trajectory of a simulation as a movie in ChimeraX. However, the output quality of the movie is very low. How can I improve the quality of the movie? I would appreciate your guidance regarding this issue.
Thank you for your support.
With regards,
Gourav Das Research Scholar Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur West Bengal, India-721302 Mob: +91-6295251060--
Thank you Elaine, for your kind response. I adjusted the Window size to 1920*1080. Now, I can record high resolution movies. Thank you for your support. With regards, Gourav Das Research Scholar Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur West Bengal, India-721302 -- On Tue, Dec 2, 2025 at 11:30 PM Elaine Meng <meng@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
Hi Gourav, Firstly make the window size the same as you want for the movie. If it is small, the pixel dimensions of the movie images will also be small.
You did not say how you were recording this movie. If you are using the red button on the playback GUI, then it will use some default parameters. Put the slider all the way to the left and then click the red button. You can see the commands it uses by looking in the Log. <https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/commands/coordset.html#slider>
When I use that approach the movie quality looks fine to me, but maybe you did some other things differently that I don't know about.
If you want more control over parameters, then you could use commands yourself, instead of just clicking the red button. In general you would make a plain text file that contains commands (a ChimeraX commands file, name ending in .cxc) with the "movie record" command to start recording, "coordset" command to play back your trajectory, and "movie encode" to encode into a movie file. The "movie encode" command has various quality options. See the "making movies" help and links therein.
<https://rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/user/movies.html>
I hope this helps, Elaine ----- Elaine C. Meng, Ph.D. UCSF Chimera(X) team Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry University of California, San Francisco
On Dec 2, 2025, at 1:43 AM, Gourav Das via ChimeraX-users < chimerax-users@cgl.ucsf.edu> wrote:
Dear ChimeraX users,
I am recording the MD trajectory of a simulation as a movie in ChimeraX. However, the output quality of the movie is very low. How can I improve the quality of the movie? I would appreciate your guidance regarding this issue.
Thank you for your support.
With regards,
Gourav Das Research Scholar Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur West Bengal, India-721302 Mob: +91-6295251060--
participants (2)
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Elaine Meng -
Gourav Das