TIFF Movie

Overview

This utility generates a sequence of TIFF image files from the contents of an image window. The process is not a direct conversion of the data from the image window (use Mrc2tiff for that); instead, each element of the sequence is generated by changing the current section displayed in the image window and doing a screen capture to record the image displayed. This has several consequences:

The TIFF frames are all stored in one directory (as set on the Output dir line) and have file names that begin with the same set of letters (as set on the File prefix line). As a convenience, you can automatically run SGI's makemovie utility to generate an SGI or QuickTime movie from the TIFF frames by turning on the makemovie toggle.

Because of the technique used to do the screen capture, this application can only be run when the display is attached to an SGI; it will not work when displaying remotely on other systems that support X. You may also notice colormap changes when this application is started; these are not permanent, but you'll need to move the mouse pointer to an image window to restore the old colors.

Topics

Overview | Region processing | Output directory | File prefix | Compression | RGB configuration | Greyscale | Makemovie

Related Priism Topics

Priism | mrc2tiff | Categories | Applications


Output directory

All the generated TIFF images are stored in the directory set in this field. By default, your home directory is used, or if your home directory can not be determined, /usr/tmp is used.

Topics

Overview | Region processing | Output directory | File prefix | Compression | RGB configuration | Greyscale | Makemovie


File prefix

The TIFF images are saved one per file. If there are multiple z points and multiple time points, the filenames have the form, prefix_z#_t#.tif, where the # sign is replaced by the z or time index. The number of digits used for the index is sufficient to hold the largest index in that dimension.

When there is just a single time point and multiple z points, the file names are similar but the part for the time index is dropped: prefix_z#.tif. Similarly, when there are multiple time points and one z point, the file names have the form, prefix_t#.tif. When only a single frame is converted the file name is simply prefix.tif.

Topics

Overview | Region processing | Output directory | File prefix | Compression | RGB configuration | Greyscale | Makemovie


Compression

Use this menu to select how the TIFF images should be compressed (this is independent of the compression that can be applied when the makemovie toggle is on and a movie is generated.

The compression options are:

LZW
The images are compressed with the Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression algorithm which is lossless. LZW is a TIFF extension (because of copyright issues) so it may not be supported by some packages which read TIFF files.
NONE
No compression is performed.
PACKBITS
Applies a simple byte-oriented run length compression scheme. It is lossless, but is often no better than no compression.

Topics

Overview | Region processing | Output directory | File prefix | Compression | RGB configuration | Greyscale | Makemovie


RGB configuration

Use this menu to select how the different color components are ordered in the output TIFF images. With the Contig option, the red, green, and blue components for each pixel are adjacent to each other. With the Separate option, each component is stored as a separate plane; this form is a TIFF extension and many TIFF packages may not support it.

Topics

Overview | Region processing | Output directory | File prefix | Compression | RGB configuration | Greyscale | Makemovie


Greyscale

When this toggle is on, the image is saved as greyscale (single component) image with the minimum value assigned to black. The RGB components of a captured image are converted to a single component with a weighted average: floor((71 * red + 150 * green + 28 * blue) / 256).

When this toggle is off, the RGB components of the captured image are saved without modification.

Topics

Overview | Region processing | Output directory | File prefix | Compression | RGB configuration | Greyscale | Makemovie


Makemovie

When this toggle is on, an SGI utility (dmconvert) is automatically invoked to create a movie from the TIFF images. The name of the movie file is prefix.mv if an SGI movie is created and prefix.qt if a QuickTime movie is created.

There are some options you can specify when making a movie file; press the options... button to display a dialog with which to edit them. The options are:

Format
Use this menu to select whether an SGI format movie or QuickTime movie is created.
Compression
The movie can be compressed in one of many ways:
None
No compression is applied.
MVC1
For SGI movies only, this is a lossy algorithm which typically compresses by a factor of 5 (generally worse than JPEG does).
MVC2
For SGI movies only, its output is similar in quality to MVC1 but the files are smaller - typically files are compressed by a factor of 20.
JPEG
Applies a standard lossy compression algorithm.
8-bit RLE
This is a lossless compression scheme (8-bit run-length encoding) best used on a sequence of rendered or drawn still images. It can only be applied to SGI movies.
24-bit RLE
This is similar to the 8-bit RLE but uses a 24-bit scheme.
QuickTime Animation
Applies a lossless compression scheme appropriate for animation sequences.
QuickTime Video
Applies a lossy compression scheme designed for desktop video.
QuickTime Compact Video
Is like QuickTime Video but decompresses more quickly at the expense of much longer compression times.
Frames per second
Use this field to enter the default frame rate for the movie in frames per second.

For more flexibility in creating the movie, use mediaconvert, dmconvert, makemovie, or some other package to manipulate the TIFF images.

Topics

Overview | Region processing | Output directory | File prefix | Compression | RGB configuration | Greyscale | Makemovie