VSPAERO 6.2.0 Movie Maker Bug

[Brandon Litherland]

I've created a few movies with the new version of vspviewer by running some rotating blade cases and then using File > Save As > Movie File > "rpm_vinf.mp4" which is an awesome new feature.  Thanks!

Something odd is happening, however.  I'm able to create movies automatically through Viewer as long as I'm under an unnamed vsp3 model but not for saved models.  For example, if I load an existing model, run vspaero fresh, then try to create the movie, the process runs (as far as I can tell from how hard my laptop is working) but no PNG files are saved in the Movie PNG directory nor is the mp4 file saved.  However, if I _insert_ the same model into a new vsp3 model (unnamed) then I can run the same case again and it saves as "Unnamed_DegenGeom.rpm_vinf.mp4".  This is true for models saved in the VSP Path directory as well.  I tried checking out the source code for any write issues but didn't see anything jumping at me.

I've got ffmpeg in my path but only the essentials.  Perhaps I need the full release?  Not quite sure how to debug where it's failing.  If I find something out in the meantime I'll post a reply.

Thank you.

[Rob McDonald]

Are you up for building your own version with some debug statements?

It is likely something to do with differences between Linux and Windows path handling (\ vs /) as it makes the directory and writes out the image files that then get turned into the movie.

This is something that needs to be tested and debugged on a Windows machine -- which Dave and I do not have.

I do not think there is anything wrong with your ffmpeg.

Rob

[Brandon Litherland]

I've talked to Jason and Justin about building a debug version before but I've never gone down that rabbit hole.  Probably worth doing this time around with some of these updates.  I'll see if Jason wants to work on a build with me.

If I can't figure it out I'll reach out offline.

[Rob McDonald]

Don't actually use the 'Debug' option when building -- that will make it far too slow to use.  You could use a RWDI - Release with Debug Info - that is sometimes useful.

All I really meant was that you could add a few print statements (that I could help you with) build a normal executable - and then run it to see what the messages say.  Those messages would help us track down the issue(s).

I recall you had spent some time getting set up to build - if you can build 3.25.0 'normal', then you can handle this...

Rob

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[Brandon Litherland]

I think it's somewhere in here: https://github.com/OpenVSP/OpenVSP/blob/main/src/vsp_aero/viewer/glviewer.C#L1143

This seems to be where all of the ffmpeg checks and PNG write operations happen.  We can setup a 'debug' version that will print those messages to see what's going on.  

[jvgr...@gmail.com]

I've had this feature working on Windows successfully just by placing the ffmpeg executable in the same directory as the vspviewer executable. Some other users at ESAero have also been using this feature on Windows. 

The issue with saved models is strange and I was able to replicate it. If I save a model, run VSPAERO, and then try to generate a movie output in the Viewer, nothing is output. However, if I launch the Viewer through the command line using the same input geometry file as was saved earlier, I'm able to generate the movie file without issue. I'm not sure why there would be any difference between the GUI and command line but apparently there is. 

If you run your unsteady case through the GUI but then launch the Viewer through the command line, the terminal should output more information than what OpenVSP does when controlling the viewer. Hopefully you can generate the movie file with the command line approach as a workaround until we figure out the GUI issues. 

-Justin