Folding movies

[Mikhail M]

Is there any tool for storing video during the calculation? I think it would be nice to see the folding process 100x or 10000x faster than during the calculation?

[7im]

Hello Mikhail M, welcome to the forum.

If there is one, it would be listed in the 3rd Party Software, Tools section. I don't recall one...

[Jesse_V]

The closest I've ever seen is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFcp2Xpd29I but that's a rendering of a folding pathway after all the WUs are collected.
V7's FAHViewer has yet to show a non-demo protein to most people, but they're working on that.

[7im]

Fahviewer works great with the fahcore_78, but all the other fahcores need an update to show the actual protein data.

[iceman1992]

What about using a screen/window recorder to record the fahviewer window?

[codysluder]

What about using a screen/window recorder to record the fahviewer window?

That would be nice if FAHViewer actually worked on the WU we're folding. We have to wait for that to happen unless you happen to have a PS3.

The real disadvantage is that each WU is only a small part of a trajectory. We would need to concatenate Gen 0, Gen 1, Gen 2, ....up to however many Gens are simulated to get the rest of the movie. Some of the movies included with the technical papers incorporate many years worth of folding by hundreds of people before there's enough movie to be scientifically interesting.

[Mikhail M]

Ok then, I will try to develop a tool for writing/playing of such movies just for fun. It's a pity that it will not provide any sensible results, but at least...

Actually it already works with Folding@Home-GPU 6.41. I have found some FaH Viewer's source code and have modified it. Atoms coordinates are stored so you may rotate and zoom the model during playback. This is very nice. It looks as if some compression is necessary because one minute of video may take 100 MB now. I haven't found suitable file format so I will try to invent something.

I was unable to connect to the latest 7-th version nor find suitable sources. Is it possible to get them anywhere?

[Mikhail M]

Please try my program that can write and play folding movies. You may download it from http://refplane.com/folding/Viewer.exe. I have optimized data storage format a bit, but a real compression still awaits.

For the GUI commands listing press ‘H’. In order to start you don’t need to specify anything in the command line. But some options are only available through the command:

Code: Select all

  Viewer.exe <file to play>: the specified file will be played when you press <P>,
  or
  Viewer.exe [<options>]
Options:
  -play <file name>: the specified file will be played when you press <P>,
  -address <URL>: Folding@Home client's address from which to download the current data. Localhost by default,
  -port <port number>: Folding@Home client's port. 61469 by default
  -writeFreq <iterations count>: approximately every N-th iteration's result will be written to file when you press <W>. 5000 by default. If you have a fast machine (GeForce GTX 580 for example), you may set –writeFreq say to 50000.

You may download a couple of sample videos from
http://refplane.com/folding/video/1982_2.fhm,
http://refplane.com/folding/video/1982_4.fhm.

For every file above there is .zip version. I didn’t test the program on ATI videocards. On an intel graphic card it crashes as well as the source Viewer.

[compdewd]

I ran it, but I don't think I quite understand what it is or should be doing. Currently it seems to be showing a predefined molecule, but is counting frames as if it were loading still even though it appears to be already fully loaded. Same for the supplied sample videos. If it is loading more of the molecule, the ETA of 7 hours it shows isn't very appealing and I don't feel like slowing my currently folding WU down by running the viewer for 7 hours. Also I don't have v6 of the client to test if it works for me or not in that regard and plus I don't even know how I would do that.

Looks like a lot more work to get this to where you want it. I think this may be something the FAH developers have the best shot at doing though

[Mikhail M]

compdewd, if you see something like this



the program cannot connect to the Folding@Home calculation process and to get the current data. This is what I saw with version 7. But if you specify the file in the command line (viewer.exe c:\downloads\1982_2.fhm) and press 'P', you should be able to see molecule that moves relatively fast. And the "Playback" inscription.

... I haven't implemented printing of the extended information on ATI videocards... I will better give such opportunity to somebody else

[compdewd]

Ahh I see now! Thank you for the explanation

[Mikhail M]

One more movie : http://refplane.com/folding/video/1982_21.fhm (or http://refplane.com/folding/video/1982_21.zip). Each frame in it corresponds to 5000 iterations. In the previous movies - 500 iterations.

What is interesting, is that this movie doesn't differ considerably. Each frame was calculated by averaging many states so termal-motion is mainly filtered out. And nothing serious has happened during the calculated time interval.

Publish your movies, let's collect a set of them. If you do not have file hosting, you may send movie to me, I have a bit of space on a server (refplane at mail.ru).

[compdewd]

Since they are all .fhm extensions, how do we go about making these movies? If I were to send you something, what would I send?

[Mikhail M]

The video is saved in this fhm custom format. When you press W in the Viewer, a new Folding....fhm file is created in the current folder (where you started Viewer from) and is appended during calculation. So if you send me new .fhm files, everybody who would download them will be able to see your movie.

One trick: when frames count is multiple of 8 you can copy .fhm file. And for example open it in the second instance of the Viewer. You will not need to stop writing in the first one.

[Mikhail M]

I have created a small site about the program http://www.refplane.com/folding