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Choosing movie formats

The Save movie wizard's second screen, shown in Figure figure, allows you to pick the types of movies that you want to create. You can select as many image and movie formats as you want and you can even specify multiple resolutions of the same movie. VisIt allows you to order multiple versions of your movie because it is often easier to create different versions of the movie all at once as opposed to doing it later once you've discovered that you need a new version to play on a laptop computer or a tiled display wall.


Figure 5

The Save movie wizard's second screen is divided vertically into two main areas. On the left you will find the Format and resolution area, which displays the format and resolution for the current movie. On the right, you will find the Output area, which lists the formats and resolutions for all of the movies that you have ordered. By default no movie formats are present in the Output area's list of movies. You cannot proceed to the next screen until you add at least one movie format to the list of movies in the Output area.

To add a movie format to the list of movies in the Output area, first choose the desired movie format from the Format combo box in the Format and resolution area. Next, choose the movie resolution. The movie resolution can be specified in terms of the visualization window's current size or it can be specified in absolute pixels. The default movie resolution uses the visualization window's current size with a scale of 1. You can change the scale to shrink or grow the movie while keeping the visualization window's current aspect ratio. If you want to specify an absolute pixel size for the movie, click on the Specify movie size radio button and type the desired movie width and height into the Width and Height text fields. Note that if you specify a width and height that causes the movie's shape to differ from the visualization window's shape, you might want to double-check that the view used for the visualization window's plots does not change appreciably.

Once you have selected the desired movie format, width, and height, click on the right-arrow button that separates the Format and resolution area from the Output area. Clicking the right-arrow button adds your movie to the list of movies that you want to make. Once you have at least one movie in the Output area, the screen's Next button will become active. Click the Next button to go to the next screen in the Save movie wizard.