MATLAB animations

There are many ways to generate animations of data from MATLAB. This page describes a few relatively painless approaches.

Creating sequentially named frames

First you will need to create a bunch of frames in MATLAB and save them with sequential file names. For example if you are saving PNG files, you should have something like frame0001.png, frame0002.png, etc. Example MATLAB code to generate files follows:

figure(1); clf; set(gcf,'renderer','zbuffer');
for ii=1:10
  pcolor(randn(20));
  shading flat;
  filename=sprintf('frame%05d.png',ii);
  print('-dpng', '-r100', filename);
end

Option 1: Creating an AVI file

First create sequentially named PNG files, then run mkavi.sh in the directory with the PNG files. The code for mkavi.sh follows:

#!/bin/bash
# mkavi.sh - Create a DIVX movie from a bunch of PNG frames, store it in an AVI container.
#          - Requires mencoder.

# set frame rate
FPS=8
# set bitrate, larger = better quality but larger file
BITRATE=1000

# this should not be changed
THREADS=1
PASS=2

# Make an MPEG-4 file and put it in an AVI container for Windows playback
AVCOPTS="vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=$BITRATE:threads=$THREADS"
FOURCC=DIVX
if [ $PASS -eq 1 ]; then
  mencoder "mf://*.png" -mf fps=$FPS -o movie.avi -ovc lavc -ffourcc $FOURCC -lavcopts $AVCOPTS
else
  mencoder "mf://*.png" -mf fps=$FPS -o /dev/null -ovc lavc -ffourcc $FOURCC -lavcopts $AVCOPTS:vpass=1
  mencoder "mf://*.png" -mf fps=$FPS -o movie.avi -ovc lavc -ffourcc $FOURCC -lavcopts $AVCOPTS:vpass=2
  rm -f divx2pass.log
fi

Option 2: Creating an MP4 file

First create sequentially named PNG files, then run mkmp4.sh in the directory with the PNG files. The code for mkmp4.sh follows:

#!/bin/bash
# mkmp4.sh - Create a H264 movie from a bunch of PNG frames, store it in a MP4 container.
#          - Requires mencoder and MP4Box.

# set frame rate
FPS=8
# set bitrate, larger = better quality but larger file
BITRATE=1000

# this should not be changed
THREADS=1
PASS=2

# Make an H264 file and put it in a MP4 container for Quicktime playback
X264OPTS=bitrate=$BITRATE:threads=auto:frameref=5:bframes=0:nob_pyramid:nob_adapt:direct_pred=auto:subq=6:mixed_refs:nodct_decimate:no_psnr
if [ $PASS -eq 1 ]; then
  mencoder "mf://*.png" -mf fps=$FPS -ovc x264 -x264encopts $X264OPTS -of rawvideo -o movie.264
else
  mencoder "mf://*.png" -mf fps=$FPS -ovc x264 -x264encopts pass=1:$X264OPTS -of rawvideo -o /dev/null
  mencoder "mf://*.png" -mf fps=$FPS -ovc x264 -x264encopts pass=2:$X264OPTS -of rawvideo -o movie.264
fi
echo "Now calling MP4box ..."
MP4Box -fps $FPS -add movie.264 movie.mp4
rm -f movie.264

Option 3: Creating an animated GIF file

First create sequentially named GIF files.

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