[Paraview] Animation with sudden large intervals between consecutive frames

[Tom Fahner]

Hello Utkarsh,

Well in fact I have used both. I had used a python script before, which
gave a similar behavior, but in that case the unusual large intervals were
about 15 minutes instead of 8 hours. I also noticed that there was
something wrong in my setup using the python script, so when I redid the
animation I simply used the GUI to check the setup more rigorously and
decided not to use the python script.

A bit more info on the python script:

With the python script I also assumed it may have been related to the
actual screen being rendered at the moment that the large intervals showed
up. This because I used VNC to log into the machine for rendering and the
screen was locked with ParaView running for most of the time. I just
unlocked the screen occasionally to have a look at the progress from time
to time and I could imagine this may have influenced the rendering. Later I
also saw a 15 min. interval between two pngs which were created in the
middle of the night, meaning the screen was probably still locked, so I
assumed that me unlocking the screen could not have been the reason.
Fifteen minutes between two frames can be accepted if this happens once in
100 frames or so, but 8 hours is just too much.

At the moment I started the animation from the GUI again, but with the
"Cache Geometry" unchecked as you suggested. I will check the results of
that setting tonight.

Regards,
Tom


2013/1/14 Utkarsh Ayachit <utkarsh.ayachit at kitware.com>

> Tom,
>
> I wonder if caching is causing these issues. Are you using the
> ParaView GUI or a Python script? If  the GUI, can you disable caching
> (uncheck "Cache Geometry" from the "Animation" page in the "Settings"
> dialog.
>
> Utkarsh
>
> On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 5:50 AM, Tom Fahner <tom.fahner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > For some reason I noticed that ParaView has some large intervals between
> > writing a PNG for consecutive frames of an animation. Normally there is
> > about one minute between the timestamp of two PNGs, but sometimes there
> is
> > suddendly a gap of 8 hours:
> >
> >  141K Jan 13 15:56 New_Volume_.0118.png
> >  141K Jan 13 15:58 New_Volume_.0119.png
> >  139K Jan 13 15:59 New_Volume_.0120.png
> >  139K Jan 13 16:00 New_Volume_.0121.png
> >  138K Jan 14 00:34 New_Volume_.0122.png
> >  139K Jan 14 00:35 New_Volume_.0123.png
> >  139K Jan 14 00:36 New_Volume_.0124.png
> >
> > There are multiple occasions where these large intervals happen but this
> > does not happen at a regular interval of the animation. There does seem
> to
> > be a relation with the amount of memory that is used, since there is a
> > sudden decrease in memory used right after "Jan 14 00:34". Below I will
> > describe my animation and setup. I hope anyone can give an explanation
> for
> > the behavior.
> >
> > During the weekend I have created an animation of a mixing tank using
> volume
> > rendering of the concentration of some chemicals in the tank. It is a
> > reasonably large CFD simulation performed with OpenFOAM. There are about
> 15
> > million cells (tetrahedrals and prismatic layer), but not extremely
> large. I
> > saved the concentration every 0.25 seconds for a 120s simulation. We have
> > ParaView 3.98.0 installed on this machine and it was the only program
> > running at the time. I have made the animation with ffmpeg after ParaView
> > made the frames as consecutive pngs. Besides the volume rendering of the
> > concentration, the walls of the tank where shown with a fixed opacity of
> 0.3
> > and the internal structure (some rotors and baffles) where present as
> well.
> > Although the simulation use the MRF concept, I did mimick the rotation of
> > the rotors using the transform filter. Using the "cool to warm" preset
> for
> > visualization I could nicely set the opacity to 0 when the concentration
> was
> > in the allowed range and it showed red in case of too high
> concentration, of
> > blue when too low. The resulting animation is satisfactory, I just wonder
> > what can be done to make sure these large intervals between writing
> images
> > do not happen.
> >
> > Hope someone can help, if you need more information, please let me know.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Tom
> >
> > --
> > T.C. Fahner
> > e: tom.fahner at gmail.com
> >
> >
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-- 
T.C. Fahner
e: tom.fahner at gmail.com
t: +31-6-52642814
a: van Lodensteynstraat 24
    2612 SE Delft
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