R help - Jul 2005 - HOW to Create Movies with R with repeated plot()?

Dear R-helpers,

 

Is it possible to create a type of 'movie' in R based on the output of
several figures (e.g., jpegs) via the plot() function.  I obtained dynamic
results with the plotting function and would like to save these as a movie
(e.g., avi or other formats)?

 

Regards,

Jan

_________________________________________________________________
Ir. Jan Verbesselt
Research Associate
Group of Geomatics Engineering
Department Biosystems ~ M³-BIORES
Vital Decosterstraat 102, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Tel: +32-16-329750   Fax: +32-16-329760
http://gloveg.kuleuven.ac.be/
_______________________________________________________________________

 


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On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 12:11 +0200, Jan Verbesselt wrote:
> Dear R-helpers,
> 
>  
> 
> Is it possible to create a type of 'movie' in R based on the output
of
> several figures (e.g., jpegs) via the plot() function.  I obtained dynamic
> results with the plotting function and would like to save these as a movie
> (e.g., avi or other formats)?
You can use ImageMagick tools to convert a set of bitmap files into an
animated GIF. For example, in R, this creates 101 separate png files:

x <- seq(-1,1,length=101)
y <- x^2
png()
for (i in 1:length(y)) {
  plot(x[1:i], y[1:i], xlim=c(-1,1), ylim=c(0,1), type="l")
}
dev.off()

Then, on the command line (on Linux) this joins them together

convert -delay 10 Rplot*.png Rplot.gif
animate Rplot.gif

You can also create MNG format, but this is less widely supported.

Martyn 


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This message and its attachments are strictly confidential. ...{{dropped}}

[Jan Verbesselt]
> Is it possible to create a type of 'movie' in R based on the output
> of several figures (e.g., jpegs) via the plot() function.  I obtained
> dynamic results with the plotting function and would like to save
> these as a movie (e.g., avi or other formats)?
You may also peek at an actual example of using R for mini-movies:

   http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca/plaisirs/animations/index.html

I wrote this toy about the same week I started to learn R, and it was a
hell of a good exercise for the poor little me! :-)

-- 
Fran??ois Pinard   http://pinard.progiciels-bpi.ca

"Jan Verbesselt" <Jan.Verbesselt at biw.kuleuven.be> wrote in
message
news:000e01c59293$80ee5d00$1145210a at agr.ad10.intern.kuleuven.ac.be...
Dear R-helpers,

Is it possible to create a type of 'movie' in R based on the output of
several figures (e.g., jpegs) via the plot() function.  I obtained dynamic
results with the plotting function and would like to save these as a movie
(e.g., avi or other formats)?

1) You can create animated GIFs with the caTools package.

2) ImageMagick (clipped from R-Help)
It is quite easy to do with ImageMagick (www.imagemagick.org), which can be
installed on most OSes.  I tried this simple sequence and it worked

beautifully.



In R:


> for(i in 1:5) {
+ jpeg(paste("fig", i, ".jpg", sep = ""))

+ hist(rnorm(100))

+ dev.off()

+ }



Then from the command line (I tried it using Linux, though it should be the

same on any platform):



% convert -delay 50 -loop 50 fig*.jpg animated.gif



This created animated.gif, a nice animation of my sequence of files.  You

can control the timing of the animation by playing with -delay and -loop.



3) TCL/TK Animation (clipped from R-Help)



The tcltk package also has ways of doing this kind of stuff:



 library(tcltk)

 f <- function(){plot(rnorm(1000)); tkcmd("after", 1000,f)}

 f()



(To stop, set  f <- NULL)





efg

On 27-Jul-05 Jan Verbesselt wrote:
> Dear R-helpers,
> 
> Is it possible to create a type of 'movie' in R based on the
> output of several figures (e.g., jpegs) via the plot() function.
> I obtained dynamic results with the plotting function and would
> like to save these as a movie (e.g., avi or other formats)?
A similar question was discussed on R-help some months ago: Start
at

  Cari G Kaufman <cgk at stat.cmu.edu>, 
  "[R] animation without intermediate files?"
  Thu, 6 Jan 2005 16:21:36 -0500 (EST)

However, this is not quite your question! It seems you would be
content with making a movie out of files already saved from R,
so it's not a "real-time" situation.

There are several approaches you could adopt.

One (if you are using Linux with ImageMagick installed -- or if
this is available for your platform if different) is to use the
program 'animate' in that suite of programs.

The format of the image files does not matter for 'animate'
(though I think all should have the same format), so they could
be .jpg, .gif, etc. Suppose you had a set of files

  graph001.jpg
  graph001.jpg
  ...
  graph100.jpg

then the command

  animate graph*.jpg

would present them as an animation in due order. There are several
options to the 'animate' command which you can use to control
features of how they are displayed. One you would probably want to
use is "-delay" -- e.g.

  animate -delay 7 graph*.jpg

would pause for 7/100 seconds between successive images.

Another option is to create an "animated GIF" -- a single file
which encapsulates several images and displays them in sequence
when the file is opened with suitable software (most Web browsers
do this well; likewise so does ImageMagick's 'display').

Programs which can create animated GIFs include the GIMP and
gifsicle in the Free Software world. There are also several programs
for non-Linux platforms.

Sorry I can't help with suggestions for creating .avi files.

Best wishes,
Ted.


--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 27-Jul-05                                       Time: 14:08:00
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

Hi,

Here was a short tutorial about howto do that:
http://r.vsthost.com/wordpress/2005/07/01/creating-video-files-on-gnulinux-using-r/

PS: You can submit such short articles or tutorials, if you have time. I
 was thinking to add more stuff, but these days I don't have much time.

--Vehbi Sinan

Jan Verbesselt wrote:
> Dear R-helpers,
> 
>  
> 
> Is it possible to create a type of 'movie' in R based on the output
of
> several figures (e.g., jpegs) via the plot() function.  I obtained dynamic
> results with the plotting function and would like to save these as a movie
> (e.g., avi or other formats)?
> 
>  
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jan
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> Ir. Jan Verbesselt
> Research Associate
> Group of Geomatics Engineering
> Department Biosystems ~ M??-BIORES
> Vital Decosterstraat 102, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
> Tel: +32-16-329750   Fax: +32-16-329760
> http://gloveg.kuleuven.ac.be/
> _______________________________________________________________________
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
> 
> 
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