ParaView - Saving Videos in pvpython and pvbatch

ParaView Support
1

Hello,
Running my script, which loads a ParaView state file (with animation) and saving it to video format (mp4 or avi specifically - picture formats such as png functioned as expected) was working fine when launching it on a client GUI (in a pvserver session), however, running it on pvpython or pvbatch (on a cluster node) has caused this error:

vtkSMSaveAnimationProxy: Failed to determine format for myanimationoutput.mp4

Running a search on Google for this error has yielded no results. Same happens if I use .avi

Looking at 5.10 documentation, to save an animation, the format is implicitly determined like this:

SaveAnimation('myanimationoutput.mp4', renderView1, ImageResolution=[1100, 512],
    FrameRate=24,
    FrameWindow=[0, 189])

So, in code we only explicitly specify ImageResolution, FrameRate and FrameWindow - and .mp4 in the file name automatically determines the file writer.

My only idea so far - since writing in a client GUI (locally) was working, but while running it on a cluster - did not, can this be a cluster issue somehow not supporting video formats?

2

Hi,

mp4 is available on windows only and avi requires the ffmpeg library (you need to build paraview with ffmpeg available)

3

Thanks, that answers my question! Was so surprised to find nothing with my Google Search for error: vtkSMSaveAnimationProxy “Failed to determine format”. This makes sense now.