Survey: use of OggTheora writer to save animations

Does anyone use the OggTheora animation writer in ParaView? We are pondering deprecating the writer if it isn’t useful to anyone.

I use it / have used it – though primarily recently when using nightly / RC builds of ParaView in client-server mode where it seemed only the .ogv format worked (saving to MP4 / AVI would cause segfaults).

Definitely not my first choice of format (mostly due to unfamiliarity), but it does play in VLC and Handbrake is able to convert it to other formats.

1 Like

No, no one here uses it that I know of. I would be in favor of deprecating the OggTheora writer. It just causes confusion.

Thanks for the feedback. That’s all fixed now in 5.12.0.

@cory.quammen – I tried to save an MP4 today and got these output messages:

It seems to have worked, it saved an MP4 file and it’s valid. But errors / messages like these keep pushing me back to the OGV file. Note that I’m running in server-client mode, not sure if that’s the reason…


Client Information:
Version: 5.12.0
VTK Version: 9.3.20231030
Qt Version: 5.15.2
vtkIdType size: 64bits
Embedded Python: On
Python Library Path: C:\Program Files\ParaView 5.12.0\bin\lib
Python Library Version: 3.10.11 (tags/v3.10.11:7d4cc5a, Apr  5 2023, 00:38:17) [MSC v.1929 64 bit (AMD64)]
Python Numpy Support: On
Python Numpy Path: C:\Program Files\ParaView 5.12.0\bin\Lib\site-packages\numpy
Python Numpy Version: 1.25.2
Python Matplotlib Support: On
Python Matplotlib Path: C:\Program Files\ParaView 5.12.0\bin\Lib\site-packages\matplotlib
Python Matplotlib Version: 3.7.2
Python Testing: Off
MPI Enabled: Off
ParaView Build ID: superbuild 2891f7bc1038636e1e1abd941be85832dfd65d01 (!1178)
Disable Registry: Off
Test Directory: 
Data Directory: 
SMP Backend: TBB
SMP Max Number of Threads: 16
OpenGL Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL Version: 3.2.0 NVIDIA 546.33
OpenGL Renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU/PCIe/SSE2
Accelerated filters overrides available: No

Connection Information:
Remote Connection: Yes
Separate Render Server: No
Reverse Connection: No
Number of Processes: 8
Disable Remote Rendering: Off
IceT: On
Tile Display: Off
vtkIdType size: 64bits
SMP Backend: TBB
SMP Max Number of Threads: 128
Embedded Python: On
Python Library Path: /home/gvernon2/cf/master/conda_deps_lin64/paraview_headless/lib/python3.10
Python Library Version: 3.10.13 (main, Feb 29 2024, 17:45:57) [GCC 10.2.1 20210130 (Red Hat 10.2.1-11)]
Python Numpy Support: On
Python Numpy Path: /home/gvernon2/cf/master/conda_deps_lin64/paraview_headless/lib/python3.10/site-packages/numpy
Python Numpy Version: 1.25.2
Python Matplotlib Support: On
Python Matplotlib Path: /home/gvernon2/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/matplotlib
Python Matplotlib Version: 3.6.0
OpenGL Vendor: Mesa
OpenGL Version: 4.5 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1
OpenGL Renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 15.0.7, 256 bits)
Headless support: EGL 
Accelerated filters overrides available: No

Hi @GregVernon thanks for the report. Will take a look.

Greg, I had a look and could reproduce. This is caused by the Windows version of ParaView supporting a MP4 writer while the Linux version does not. The error message you are getting is basically saving the server doesn’t know about an MP4 writer, and it’s not lying. Since you are writing the animation on the client side, saving the animation works in the end.

This started when ParaView began offering the ability to save animations on the server side. We need to figure out a way to make this cleaner when different animation writers are available on different systems - or make all available on all systems.

I’ve filed a bug here: https://gitlab.kitware.com/paraview/paraview/-/issues/22589

1 Like