Exporting Movies

Movies can be exported in various formats, for inclusion in Web pages, presentations, documents etc.

Note: if you import an animated GIF file into a Microsoft Powerpoint presentation, the GIF image will not appear animated unless you are in Slide Show mode.

Set up the movie to appear as you want it when exported: set the start and end frames, colour mapping, image brightness and contrast, zoom and scroll.

To export your movie, select Export Movie ... from the File menu of the Movie frame:

Menu item to export a movie in Jim

This brings up the Export Movie dialog:

Dialog to set up the movie export in Jim

First, choose what format you want for the exported movie:

  • Select export the movie as an animated GIF image Animated GIF image.
  • Select export the movie as a Quick Time video Quick time movie
  • Select export the movie as an AVI file Audio Video Interleave (AVI) file

Select the settings you want for the exported movie:

  • Time between successive frames of the movie, in milliseconds. Note that if your computer is not fast enough to achieve the selected frame rate, frames may either be skipped, or the movie will not run at the requested frame rate.
  • Whether to loop continuously - applicable to animated GIF images only. If not selected, the animation will run just once through, and then stop at the last frame. With other formats, the looping behaviour is controlled by the media player.
  • Scale. The movie will be exported so that one image pixel corresponds to one screen pixel in the movie. If you want to scale the image up or down to make its on-screen appearance bigger or smaller, select an appropriate scaling by clicking on one of the buttons. Note: if you have image interpolation turned on, the exported movie will have four times as many pixels (twice as many in each linear dimension) compared to when interpolation is off.

When the export is set up, click on the Button to export the movie button. You will then be prompted to select a file into which the exported movie will be written. The animated GIF file below, showing a cardiac cine MRI, was created using the export feature.

A Cardiac Movie exported as an animated GIF (Animated: View cine on-line version)

Note: If you change the on-screen appearance of the image (for example, by changing the contrast or colour mapping) while the export is in progress, some of the frames of the movie may not have the appearance that you expect.