How to capture movie 
For CS4451B and CS6491

prepared  by Mitch Parry <parry@cc.gatech.edu>

            Here are some suggestions for how to create movie files from your graphics program.

SGI
If you are programming in C or C++ on a UNIX machine, you can use the dmedia and moviefile libraries.  These libraries only run on SGI machines (SGI lab in CoC).  To help you do this, you can cut-and-paste the code in movie.c into your OpenGL program.  At the bottom of the file there is a sample main program.  Before you draw anything, call createMovie().  Every time you update the framebuffer with a new image, call addMovieFrame().  When the animation is over, call endMovie().  You will have to modify the code in movie.c to fit with your program.  For example the variable ‘win’ does not exist.  It’s really a placeholder for attributes of your window (width and height).  The code is well commented and requires that you add the libraries “-ldmedia –lmoviefile” to your Makefile.  This code generates VERY big movie files.  Once you create one, you will want to compress it with “mediaconvert”.  You can view a movie with “mediaplayer”
 
Other Operating Systems
If you don’t have access to the SGI cluster, or aren’t too keen on UNIX, you can cut-and-paste movie-win.c into your OpenGL program.  This code will write the contents of the frame buffer to a specified image filename in PPM format.  You will need to make small changes to the code to make it fit with your program.
 
Windows
The next step is converting the PPM files to JPG (PPMs are VERY big).  If you are using windows, you can download Image Converter .EXE 2.0.36 for free from http://download.com.com/3000-2192-10133489.html?tag=lst-0-5 .  You can use it to convert a folder full of PPM files into JPG files.  To combine your JPG images into an AVI movie file you can download Slide Show Movie Maker free from http://download.com.com/3000-2194-8471301.html?tag=lst-0-3 .
 
Other Programming Languages
The code in movie-win.c uses the GL function glReadPixels().  There is surely a comparable command in other graphics APIs.  The rest you’ll need to translate to the programming language of your choice.  If you have trouble finding image converters or movie makers, you can always scoot over to a windows machine and follow the above advice for making movies from a series of images.