Animation from Player

[sarkadava]

Any suggestions how to get the ouput from player as a video file? :) Thanks!

[felixchenier]

UPDATE March 2024

From v0.14, we can export to an mp4 video using Player.to_video().

Original answer below

Hi @sarkadava
There is no official way yet, but there are two good solutions that may work well. The first is to simply use a screen recorder to create a video from what is shown on the screen. The second, which is probably more what you are looking for, is to use a private method of the Player that I use to generate the website: Player._to_animation.

Step 1. Imports

We import Kinetics Toolkit and the animation module from Matplotlib (since the Player uses Matplotlib).

import kineticstoolkit.lab as ktk
import matplotlib.animation as animation

Step 2. Create the player instance and assign a variable name to it

player = ktk.Player(markers, ..., interconnections)  # As you would do normally to view your scene

Step 3. Navigate using the mouse to find the correct zoom, view point, etc.

Step 4. Generate the animation and convert it to a video file

For example, to generate test.mp4:

# Convert the Player from an interactive window to a Maplotlib animation
anim = player._to_animation()  

# Create a video writer with the selected fps. Every single frame will be drawn,
# and you choose at which speed they should be played in the video file.
writervideo = animation.FFMpegWriter(fps=30)

# Save the Matplotlib animation to an mp4 file
anim.save("test.mp4", writer=writervideo)

This may take a little time to complete if your acquisition is long. If you want to only playback a portion of your acquisition, then you can use the TimeSeries' get_ts_between_times function to select which portion to keep before creating the Player instance.

You may have to install the ffmpeg package if it's not already installed.

Important: This is an undocumented feature and it may break in any future release. But if you ask it, it may be because it's a common need. Do you think I should add a proper "to_mp4" method to the Player? It think I may.

[sarkadava]

Dear @felixchenier ,
thanks a lot, it works like magic :) I find it super important feature - as very often with c3d data this is the only visualization of the 'real' movement. So I think it would be great to have such a feature build in.

[felixchenier]

Hi @sarkadava
Just to tell you that a new version of Kinetics Toolkit has been released this week and I added to_image() and to_video() to the Player. This along with multiple styling options. Thanks for suggesting the feature!

[sarkadava]

Amazin @felixchenier , thanks for this :)