SSW WWW movie making techniques

As befitting a software system with many imaging instruments and software contributors, there are many low, mid and high level movie making routines available under SolarSoft. Evolution to take advantage of improving WWW capabilities is continuous . As with the highest level SSW applications, one routine may reference hundreds of lower level routines and functions representing the work of many contributors. We will discuss two high level movie applications: image2movie and special_movie (an image2movie driver) as suggested starting points for WWW movie making.

For representative samples of image2movie and special_movie output (as well as seeing recent solar activity in 4D), see:

• Recent SXT movies: http://www.lmsal.com/S XT/movies/lastsfd.html
• Recent TRACE movies : http://vestige.lmsal.co m/TRACE/last_movies/
• Recent EIT movies : http: //sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/sdb/http/movies/eit_fullfov_java.html

image2movie.pro

image2movie is a single point application which contains hooks to generate mpeg (mpeg_encode), gif-animate (whirlgif), JavaScript (jsmovie.pro), and still movies (a table of thumnails).

Calling sequence is:
IDL> image2movie, data [,r,g,b] [, /java, /mpeg, /gif, /still] [,OPTIONS]

where OPTIONS is an extensive list of optional keyword settings. The minimal input is a data cube or a list of image file names - the data should be scaled to the users preference prior to the call. Output format (the movie format) is selectable by one of the format switches. Note that movie data management tasks of rebinning, color table loading, labeling, time tagging, making thumbnails, html generation etc, are independent of the desired movie format and the input data is fully instrument (and even solar data) independent. The routine optionally generates thumbnails (movie icons) and returns the html including thumbnails and movie links as an output parameter for automated insertion into a WWW document.

Some of the available keyword OPTIONS are:

movie_name='xxxx' ; strongly suggested

Name of movie (and root of associated files)

movie_dir='/moviepath'

Where to put the files (default is $path_http/movies)

outsize=[nx,ny]

output movie frame size

thumbsize=nn

thumbnail frame size (in movie icon)

table=nn

The number of an IDL color table (in lieu of supplying r,g,b)

gamma=factor ;gamma applied to color table

/reverse ; if set, reverse the color table

uttimes=index

time tags for images, may be in form of SSW index

/label ; label movie frames with uttimes

label=label_array ; label movie frames with user supplied label array

html_array=html_array ; OUTPUT

html string array including thumbnails and links for including movie in an WWW document

/inctime ; include time range in output HTML

A WWW interface to image2movie.pro applied dynamically to a Yohkoh/SXT ddatabase is demonstrated at the SXT customized movie maker. Browser FORM parameters provide input parameters described above for frame size, movie format, color table, etc.

special_movie.pro

Calling sequence is:
IDL> special_movie, index, data [,r,g,b] [,OPTIONS]
where OPTIONS can include any of the image2movie options.

An actual call with some suggested OPTIONS and possible values filled in might look like:

IDL> special_movie, index, data, outsize=320, thumbsize=128, /inctimes, $
movie_dir=curdir(), movie_name='mymovie', table=1, /reverse

The above call will produce movies in gif animation, mpeg, and JavaScript, thumbnails (movie icon), and an html document linking them all together in the users current directory. Movie frames would be 320x320 and include time lables - movie icon frame size would be 128x128xNN Note that movie icons are actual subsampled movie data. A reversed blue color table (IDL #1) is used. The top level document would be available to a WWW browser via local URL file:/currentdirectory/mymovie.html

See the documentation header for additional details on options and to keep abreast of new capabilities. You can see example reference to special_movie for context within the routine ssw_track_demo.pro

A note about WWW movie output