animation (version 2.0-5)

saveVideo: Convert a sequence of images to a video by FFmpeg

Description

This function opens a graphics device to record the images produced in the code expr, then uses FFmpeg to convert these images to a video.

Usage

saveVideo(expr, video.name = "animation.mp4", img.name = "Rplot", 
    ffmpeg = "ffmpeg", other.opts = "", clean = FALSE, ...)

Arguments

expr

the R code to draw (several) plots

img.name

the file name of the sequence of images to be generated

video.name

the file name of the output video (e.g. animation.mp4 or animation.avi)

ffmpeg

the command to call FFmpeg (e.g. "C:/Software/ffmpeg/bin/ffmpeg.exe" under Windows); note the full path of FFmpeg can be pre-specified in ani.options('ffmpeg')

other.opts

other options to be passed to ffmpeg, e.g. we can specify the bitrate as other.opts = "-b 400k"

clean

whether to remove the sequence of images after conversion

...

other arguments to be passed to ani.options

Value

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

Details

This function uses system to call FFmpeg to convert the images to a single video. The command line used in this function is: ffmpeg -y -r <1 interval=""> -i %d. other.opts video.name

where interval comes from ani.options('interval'), and ani.type is from ani.options('ani.type'). For more details on the numerous options of FFmpeg, please see the reference.

References

http://ffmpeg.org/documentation.html

See Also

saveGIF, saveLatex, saveHTML, saveSWF

Examples

oopts = ani.options(ffmpeg = "D:/Installer/ffmpeg/bin/ffmpeg.exe")
## usually Linux users do not need to worry about the path
#   as long as FFmpeg has been installed
if (.Platform$OS.type != "windows") ani.options(ffmpeg = "ffmpeg")

saveVideo({
    par(mar = c(3, 3, 1, 0.5), mgp = c(2, 0.5, 0), tcl = -0.3, 
        cex.axis = 0.8, cex.lab = 0.8, cex.main = 1)
    ani.options(interval = 0.05, nmax = 300)
    brownian.motion(pch = 21, cex = 5, col = "red", bg = "yellow")
}, video.name = "BM.mp4", other.opts = "-b 300k")  # higher bitrate, better quality

ani.options(oopts)