Rendering Tours to Frames to Video
General discussion
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One very powerful feature in WWT is rendering a tour to video. However, there are a few nuances to this functionality that are worth knowing about.
- First open or create a New Tour using the Tour functionality.
- Under the Guided Tours menu, select Render to Video
- A dialog will appear with options.
- Render to frames is set up to render to image files. I prefer to render frames to png files. Simply browse to the location you would like the outputted frames to be saved. Choose the folder and enter a filename such as OutputFrames.png.
- Be sure to add the extension .png (or .jpg or whatever output image file you’d like).
- In the dialog, select the video resolution or select Custom to change the resolution defaults.
- Two checkbox options allow for further tweaking:
- Dome Master if you are planning to produce a video for playback in a Dome setting
- Wait for all downloads –checking this option essentially ensures the each frame will load with full fidelity (highest detail) before writing the frame and moving on to the next. I highly recommend checking this option.
- Next open your video editor (such as Windows Movie Maker) and import all the images outputted from the Tour Rendering.
- When played back in your video editor, you should see the frames aligned in sequence such that the playback is seamless. (If each frame plays too long, you may need to adjust/reduce the duration of the frame to make the playback smooth depending on your video editor.)
- Export/save your video in your preferred video format.
