Paraview 3.12 - How to compile with ffmpeg for animation
 

Hello, In the previous version of OpenFoam 1.7.1 and paraview 3.8, I could easily create an animation of my results in AVI format.

I have recently upgraded to OpenFoam 2.1.0 / Paraview 3.12. Now when I try to save an animation in paraview, the only options are jpg, png, tif. There is no option for AVI. However Paraview does create a whole series of jpgs in the case folder.

I think I need to recompile paraview with ffmpeg support. I already have ffmpeg installed. In the file

/mnt/data3/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty-2.1.0/ParaView-3.12.0/VTK/CMakeLists.txt,

I changed the following line to TRUE:

OPTION (VTK_USE_FFMPEG_ENCODER "If the FFMPEG library is available, should VTK use it for saving .avi animation files?" TRUE)

but now I'm getting a compilation error when I rebuild paraview:
Now the problem is that I'm not sure where to set these variables that point to ffmpeg. Can someone give me a hint?

Thanks,

Eric

Why not create a movie from the jpg files (=frames)?
I used the command:

mencoder -ovc copy -mf w=1164:h=752:fps=20:type=jpg 'mf://*.jpg' -o output.avi

and then you can convert it to anything you want.

Your suggestion works well! Thanks anon_a

Or, if you want to take the long way out and actually compile ParaView with ffmpeg support, toggle advanced options during ccmake (if you have CMake installed with libcurses support, or use the -D[option-name] at the command line), and search/specify the FFMPEG-related entries, where you have to specify the location of your ffmpeg headers and libraries.

After cycling through configuration in cmake, generate the Makefile and compile ParaView as usual. You should then see avi output support for animations.

Hi Sandeep, Thanks for the tip, I installed ccmake and now the cmake gui works. If I run ccmake in the main folder /mnt/data3/OpenFOAM/ThirdParty-2.1.0/ParaView-3.12.0 and toggle advanced options, I get a list of the following configuration flags, but none of them seem related to ffmeg. Maybe the paraview that comes with the openfoam thirdparty tools is somehow packaged differently? Any ideas?

Not sure if you're doing the build process correctly. Follow the instructions at:

http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaView:Build_And_Install

Hope this helps.

Greetings to all!

Here's a few more solutions:

• It shouldn't be necessary to edit the file directly, because you can send those values via makeParaView:
  Code:

  ---

  ./makeParaView VTK_USE_FFMPEG_ENCODER=TRUE

  ---

  Nonetheless, you'll need a compatible version of FFMPEG for this to work. ParaView 3.12.0 seems to have been tested well with FFMPEG 0.6.1: http://www.paraview.org/Wiki/ParaVie...12.0_and_above
  It fails with me on Ubuntu 11.10 x86_64 and the system default FFMPEG 0.7.3.
• You can also try the "SuperBuild" folder, which takes care of building everything that ParaView needs. I've finished writing the instructions: ParaView 3.12.0 SuperBuild on OpenFOAM

The list of variables that might come in handy if you need to manually set them all via command line (these were adapted from the "SuperBuild"):
Best regards,
Bruno