Is it possible to expand Gnuplot's relevance by adding a built-in function to generate a mpeg or mp4 format file as an alternate to displaying the animation in a window?
Such an option would permit the results of Gnuplot to be shared away from the environment/point of creation and present those results to a wider audience (in their more receptive mode/environment) when trying to communicate results from various research/analyses (i.e. Frame3DD animations of multiple structural analysis dynamic modal simulations).
The attached plot instruction file (Icosahedron__1v_iter5_Results.plt) gives you an idea of the "script" file that calls upon a large number of data files (other files in the tar file) to create dynamic simulations of structure vibrational modes.
Thank you,
Eric Marceau, 68, retired
member of Google Geodesic Help Group
Current gnuplot supports creating animation as a webp file, although it uses the rather limited API provided in WebPAnimEncoder rather than the full API used by the standalone webpmux encoding utility.
I attach the result of running your test script with 2 lines added at the top
Does that meet your needs? If not, what modifications to the existing driver capabilities would you like to see?
Thank you very much, Ethan!
[1] My version doesn't accept that option
The WEBP file you provided look very good but, for some reason, my
version is not offering that option.
I just re-ran "apt install gnuplot", and it is only providing me with
the above version and options.
I am running UbuntuMATE 20.04 LTS.
Is there a way to force the install of a more recent gnuplot which would
give me access to that option?
[2] Solution Fulfills Needs
The WEBP option would indeed satisfy the need completely, since I could
convert the webp to an mpeg, if and when that is needed.
[3] GIF option
I tried the GIF option, but that took a very long time (10 minutes
???)! Any hints? Also, that looks like an all or nothing option. I
need to run the program twice, once without the header lines (for visual
inspection) and once with the header lines (to create the animation
file). Correct? or is there another trick that would let me have both
(screen display while background conversion and storage for GIF)?
[4] Selective scope redirect ?
Is there a way to limit which portions of the file are "redirected" to a
webp file? Namely, can I set up such a WEBP creation only for each
segment of the file (one each for the 6 resonance frequency simulation
modes)? The file you provided lumped all 7 groupings into one video
file. I will look at the documentation to see what I need to do, but if
you have any examples that specifically show how to close a first
redirect file and open a second/third/etc. target file would be very
much appreciated.
Thank you in advance for your consideration of my request and for all
your assistance.
Eric
On 2023-11-16 20:58, Ethan Merritt wrote:
Related
Feature Requests: #566
[1] My version doesn't accept that option
You'll have to take that up with Ubuntu, or ask for help on an Ubuntu forum. Or you could build from source. Current version is 5.4, released July 2020. Release of version 6 is imminent, release candidate 6.0.rc3 is available for testing. There are some contributed guidelines for building under Ubuntu in the INSTALL file of the version 6 source distribution package.
[2] Solution Fulfills Needs
Good to hear.
[3] GIF option
Yeah. Animated gifs were OK when it was mostly cartoon kitty icons waving a paw but they are not really suited for larger use. Also the library used to create them does lower-quality graphics than the newer terminals can produce.
[4] Selective scope redirect ?
I didn't really look at your script in detail. I just ran it as-is after editing to read files from the current directory rather than /tmp. Here's a quick go at a script that creates a separate file for each mode. I may not understand the file naming system correctly but it does produce reasonable looking output. FWIW the run time was about 2 seconds total for the two 50-frame animations.
Last edit: Ethan Merritt 2023-11-17
Hello again Ethan,
I am going thru the configure process and finding that required packages
are missing. I installed all the ones the config.log stated were
missing, but it is still not accepting to offer the webp as an option.
libgd
glib
libwebp 0.6.1-2ubuntu0.20.04.3
pango1-tools 1.44.7-2ubuntu4
cairo
But from the log files that I created from the "configure" run, it seems
it is looking for other packages or versions which Ubuntu does not have
... at the UbuntuMATE 20.04 distro level.
I plan to migrate to 24.04 when that comes out, but ugrading distro
versions is always a pain, and prefer to skip both the non-LTS and
everyother LTS distro.
I may have to wait until the coming April/May to test with 24.04, but I
have 23.04 installed on a second disk for verifying packages, so I will
give it a try there some time soon (1-2 weeks). I hope you can keep
this request open/on-hold until then.
Thank you for your guidance and assistance.
Eric
On 2023-11-17 00:55, Ethan Merritt wrote:
Related
Feature Requests: #566
My apologies for providing misleading information. I had thought that the webp terminal was introduced sometime during the development of gnuplot version 5.4. But I was mistaken; it exists only in gnuplot 6, which has been the development version for some years. The first official release of version 6.0 is expected by the end of 2023.
If you decide to try again at building from source, please use the release candidate for gnuplot 6
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnuplot/files/gnuplot/testing/gnuplot-6.0.rc3.tar.gz
The INSTALL file has a section with hints for building on Ubuntu. I append the relevant section below.
Thank you for replying, Ethan.
Just an FYI, I did try to compile 6.0 RC3 but it did not allow the webp
because it can't find, and I can't download, the necessary packages that
it needs to build the cairo as precursor for webp.
So ... I will live with what I have for now, as I said, until the spring
when I can look at the new release of UbuntuMATE 24.04 .
Thank you again for all your help and for contributing and making such a
high-quality tool available to the general public.
Eric
On 2023-11-18 16:07, Ethan Merritt wrote:
Related
Feature Requests: #566