saveMovie {animation}R Documentation

Convert Images to A Single Animated Movie

Description

This function opens a graphical device first to generate a sequence of images based on expr, then makes use of the command convert in `ImageMagick' to convert these images to a single animated movie (in formats such as GIF and MPG, etc).

Usage

saveMovie(expr, interval = 1, moviename = "movie", movietype = "gif", 
    loop = 0, dev = png, filename = "Rplot", fmt = "%03d", 
    outdir = tempdir(), para = par(no.readonly = TRUE), ...)

Arguments

expr an expression to generate animations; use either the animation functions (e.g. brownian.motion()) in this package or a custom expression (e.g. for(i in 1:10) plot(runif(10), ylim = 0:1)).
interval duration between animation frames (unit in seconds)
moviename file name of the movie (base only, without extension)
movietype format of the movie ('gif', 'mpg', ...; as long as it's supported by ImageMagick)
loop iterations of the movie; set iterations to zero to repeat the animation an infinite number of times, otherwise the animation repeats itself up to loop times (N.B. for GIF only!)
dev a function for a graphical device such as png, jpeg and bmp, etc.
filename file name of the sequence of images (`pure' name; without any format or extension)
fmt a C-style string formatting command, such as %3d
outdir the directory for the movie frames and the movie itself
para a list: the graphics parameters to be set before plotting; passed to par
... other arguments passed to the graphical device, such as height and width, ...

Details

The convenience of this function is that it can create a single movie file, however, two drawbacks are obvious too: (1) we need a special (free) software ImageMagick; (2) the speed of the animation cannot be conveniently controlled, as we have specified a fixed interval. So just go ahead with this function to create your movies if you don't mind these two points.

Value

An integer indicating failure (-1) or success (0) of the converting (refer to system).

Note

Please make sure ImageMagick has been installed in your system: http://www.imagemagick.org

Author(s)

Yihui Xie

References

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php

http://animation.yihui.name/animation:start

See Also

saveSWF, system, png, jpeg and bmp

Examples

## make sure ImageMagick has been installed in your system 
## Not run: 

saveMovie(for(i in 1:10) plot(runif(10), ylim = 0:1), loop = 1)
oopt = ani.options(interval = 0.05, nmax = 100)
saveMovie(brownian.motion(pch = 21, cex = 5, col = "red", bg = "yellow"),
    width = 600, height = 600)
ani.options(oopt)
## End(Not run)

[Package animation version 1.0-4 Index]