Table of contents
No headers The gifmovie plugin allows you to create an animated .GIF file from the plot window.
When enabled, it operates in one of two modes:
- scan-by-scan: during Play mode, one .GIF file is written after each radar scan. When you hit Stop, a .GIF movie is built by combining the individual .GIF files. Scan-by-scan capture only works when the gifmovie plugin is enabled.
- periodic capture: continually write .GIF files at a fixed time interval specified in the gifmovie controls, regardless of what radR is doing. You enter this mode by choosing "Start" from the gifmovie plugin menu, and the .GIF movie is built when you manually stop capture from that menu. Periodic capture can be turned on whether or not the gifmovie plugin is enabled.
In both modes, you can manually capture a frame at any time, provided the plugin is not in the middle of capturing one itself. Manually-captured frames will be included the next time a .GIF movie is built.
This plugin uses a patched version of the wonderful open source gifsicle utility.
For windows, the patched gifsicle.exe is distributed in the folder radR/plugins/gifmovie, but if it
is missing, you can download it from here (make sure to save it as radR/plugins/gifmovie/gifsicle.exe)
For unix, gifsicle 1.52 can be patched using the file radR/plugins/gifmovie/gifsicle-patch.txt
and then built for your platform.
Note: on both windows and unix, you can usually obtain a full colour snapshot of any window using the Alt-PrintScreen
key combination. The gifmovie plugin is intended to automate this process. Unfortunately, it uses a reduced palette,
so some colour gradients will appear chunky in the .GIF movie.
There are some examples of radR animated .GIFs here.
You may have to load this plugin manually the first time.
To capture scan-by-scan, check "Enabled".
You can choose where to store individual movie frames, and what to call the final movie.
Normally, the plot window is captured after each radar scan is processed in Play mode, but you can take a snapshot any time, and have it included in the .GIF movie.
You can capture the bare plot window, the framed plot window, or the whole desktop.
The loop flag causes a .GIF movie to be shown repeatedly when it is viewed.
To capture an "instructional video", where the movie frames reflect real time, use periodic capture.
This captures frames continuously, with a specified interframe delay, regardless of what radR is doing at the time. You must stop this manually to merge the frames into a .GIF movie, or you may cancel the capture. The plugin does not need to be enabled.
The controls let you set the delay between .GIF movie frames (i.e. the speed of playback) and the interval between frames during periodic capture
Warning: setting the interval between captures too small will make radR very slow.
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