Peter Santo wrote:
> 
> Maybe many of the readers have the same problem I have: disk space. As
> far as I understand the mpeg standard it should be possible to generate
> mpeg output directly from pov, without having to store every one and
> single frame of an animaton on disk before compressing.
> 
> Here is the idea:
> 
> - Tell povray the sequence scheme of I/P/B frames.
> 
> - Write single frames into files (e.g. ppm)
> 
> - Every time an I-frame is generated, compress the last I-to-I sequence,
> append it to the mpeg file, generate a valid mpeg header and delete the
> uncompressed images.
> 
> Of course, one could do this without modifying Povray:
> 
> - Generate a Povray INI file depending on the I/P/B scheme.
> 
> - Shell out from the Povray animation loop after every I-frame has
> finished rendering and call a program that does the same as descibed
> above.
> 
> That way you would only have to store a few uncompressed images (e.g. 10
> if you use IBBPBBPBBI). I am not volunteering for writing such a program
> or asking anyone to do so. I would just like to get some comments, if
> you think this would work and/or be a good idea to do.
> 
> /PETER/
> 
> --
> Peter Santo (PUMP development)
> HP: http://www.exaweb.de
> > Ever heard of .cshrc?
> That's a city in Bosnia.  Right?

I can see the advantage. On the other hand: you trash your raw material on the
fly, so what if you find you need that in the end after all? I'm also suffering
from a chronical shortage of diskspace, but I don't think I would go this far.
As it is, i even keep the raw pov-output in a zip even after an animation is
finished. Of course I keep those zips on a cd, not on my harddisk.
My point is: mpeg-compression destroys part of the image-quality so if you need
part of the frames for another purpose, or want to change them, you'll have to
rerender them (or even the whole animation).

Regards,

Remco

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