MantisBT - ParaView
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IDProjectCategoryView StatusDate SubmittedLast Update
0011272ParaViewBugpublic2010-09-28 13:242010-12-20 16:29
ReporterAlan Scott 
Assigned ToDavid Partyka 
PriorityhighSeveritymajorReproducibilityalways
StatusclosedResolutionfixed 
PlatformOSOS Version
Product Version 
Target VersionFixed in Version3.10 
Project
Topic Name
Type
Summary0011272: Windows .avi files look like 8 bit color.
Descriptionthis shows with the 3.8.0 and 3.8.1 release. Local server, windows.

Open can.exo.
Save Animation to a .avi file.
Save Animation to .png files.
Compare them. They are different.

Since movies are one of our main products, I am marking this as high priority. It must be fixed for 3.10. Since it is in 3.8.0 (and had not been found), not holding the 3.8.1 release for it.

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Issue History
Date ModifiedUsernameFieldChange
2010-09-28 13:24Alan ScottNew Issue
2010-11-05 13:37Utkarsh AyachitStatusbacklog => tabled
2010-11-05 13:37Utkarsh AyachitAssigned To => David Partyka
2010-11-11 08:21David PartykaNote Added: 0023165
2010-11-11 08:21David PartykaStatustabled => @80@
2010-11-11 08:21David PartykaResolutionopen => fixed
2010-11-11 10:04David PartykaNote Added: 0023172
2010-11-11 10:04David PartykaStatus@80@ => @20@
2010-11-11 10:04David PartykaResolutionfixed => reopened
2010-11-16 10:11David PartykaNote Added: 0023287
2010-11-16 10:11David PartykaStatus@20@ => @80@
2010-11-16 10:11David PartykaFixed in Version => 3.10.shortlist
2010-11-16 10:11David PartykaResolutionreopened => fixed
2010-12-01 15:31Utkarsh AyachitFixed in Version3.10.shortlist => 3.10
2010-12-20 16:29Alan ScottNote Added: 0024301
2010-12-20 16:29Alan ScottStatus@80@ => closed

Notes
(0023165)
David Partyka   
2010-11-11 08:21   
I did some experimentation with the vtkAviWriter and can conclude that what we are seeing are compression artifacts due to the small variations in the grey color of the can. If you color by some array it does look a bit better.

That said, If I disable all compression in vtkAviWriter and write out raw avi it looks perfect but produces around 6MB of video per second resulting in a 255MB file. With compression we get a 2MB file.

The only built in codec Windows provides is MJPEG wich isn't a very code codec. Perhaps we should leverage this to provide an option to save animations using the oggtheora library in vtk which I assume performs much better. Though the trade off is that it may not play out of the box without the user installing the necessary codec.
(0023172)
David Partyka   
2010-11-11 10:04   
After further discussion with Utkarsh I am going to change the default compressor that vtkAviWriter uses to be DIB instead of MSVC. This produces better quality images but at the expense of a fair amount of diskspace. Please try it out and let us know what you think.
(0023287)
David Partyka   
2010-11-16 10:11   
Resolving this for now. Feel free to reopen.
(0024301)
Alan Scott   
2010-12-20 16:29   
I think this is good enough. If we get any complaints, we will reopen.

tested Windows client, remote server, trunk.