Re: MPEG and IDL 5.4

["Rick Towler" <rtowler(at)u.washington.edu>]

After using the new and improved MPEG features in 5.4 I suggest brewing your
own animation.  The improvements are much appreciated but the MPEG
compression scheme isn't really designed for the types of animations created
from within IDL.

Try it, if you are unhappy with the results write a PNG image for each frame
and use a program to string them together.  I have used videomach on windows
(a shareware program) to create .avi files with great success but there are
many other programs that can do this.

-Rick Towler

"Mark Rivers" <rivers@cars.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
xZ_m6.129$Ox3.4079@newsfeed.uchicago.edu">news:xZ_m6.129$Ox3.4079@newsfeed.uchicago.edu...
> I just discovered that IDL 5.4 won't let me run my procedure which
generates
> MPEG files.
>
> I get the error:
> DL> make_movie, vol, mpeg='b_w_test.mpg'
> % LICENSE MANAGER: MPEG feature not licensed for use.
> % Error occurred at:  MPEG_OPEN          58 U:\RSI\IDL54\lib\mpeg_open.pro
> %                     MAKE_MOVIE        183
> U:\Rivers\IDL\Imaging\make_movie.pro
> %                     $MAIN$
> % Execution halted at:  MAKE_MOVIE        183
> U:\Rivers\IDL\Imaging\make_movie.pro
>
> I don't recall seeing anything about this in the newsgroup. I also seem to
> find it discussed in the Release Notes or on the RSI Web site.  The only I
> see is the entry in the help file for mpeg_open:
>
>    Note - MPEG support in IDL requires a special license. For more
> information, contact your
>    Research Systems sales representative or technical support.
>
> Does this cost $$$?  I don't see special licensing for it on their Web
page.
> Why do they do this?
>
> Mark
>
>
>