[mgp-users 00775] Re: Problem with MagicPoint1.09 and mng-animations

[Michael Felsberg <mfe@isy.liu.se>]

I found it too unconvenient to have X without a window manager. I used to 
have the %xsystem command working together with xanim fairly well (note that 
xanim don't know b-frames in contrast to mpeg_play). Unfortunately, since the 
%area command (which is itself a great improvement!) was introduced, the 
%xsystem places my xanim output always on the left border of the screen :-(

Since I am using synthetic movies, mpeg compression is contraproductive and 
having mng-animations is optimal wrt. quality AND file size. Anyway, %anim 
does not seem to work properly...

The compres option of convert does NOT seem to have any effect on the 
produced mng-animation, although it works well for all kinds of still images. 
Btw. mng-animation can basically contain jpeg-frames, so that mng-animations 
can be much smaller than similar gif-animations.

Michael

On Friday 25 January 2002 13:05, you wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > since I encountered various problems with the %system and %xsystem
> > command (positioning / decoration) I was very interested in the %anim
> > command (since 1.08).
>
> I had problems with those as well. I checked the past emails in this
> group, and the following recipe works for me:
>
> - start X without windowmanager (maybe start just an xterm)
> - start mgp
> - use the system command to call mpeg_play like this
>   %system "mpeg_play -quiet -dither color -controls none -position
> +350+300 -loop file_to_show.mpg"
> - put the system command last on the slide, so everything else in drawn
> first.
>
> This is not ideal, as the position is now fixed  (and will be wrong on
> another screen resolution), but I couldn't get xsystem to work (partly,
> because mpeg_play doesn't support the -geometry parameter ...).
>
> I also tried to convert my mpeg into an mng using ImageMagick as you
> described, but the movie became very big (50MB) so this was pointless. I
> didn't try the -compress switch of convert. Does that make the file
> smaller?
>
> Hope this is of interest,
>
> Hans
>
>
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Hans Fangohr, fangohr@soton.ac.uk
>
> High Performance Computing Group,
> Dept. Electronics and Computer Science
> Building 59, Level 3, Room 3237,
> University of Southampton, Southampton,
> SO17 1BJ, Great Britain
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~hf99r
> -----------------------------------------