Contact Information

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Fax: 951 827 4643

Internals and FAQ's

Table of contents

1. How to mount an external HDD
2. How to create MPEG from images in any format
3. How to view mpegs under linux - mplayer (and mencoder)
4. How to manipulate/view images under linux
5. How to find software in lab (MatLab, Antivirus, etc.)
6. What is OBJloader and how to use it?
7. What is ODE and where to find it?

The directory where it is mounted is /mnt/external1 and /mnt/external2

Connect the HDD to the USB port, turn it on and then go to the above directory, there you will type 'mount external1' and then cd into the directory and you should be able to access it.

2.- How to create MPEG from images in any format
A directory must be full of the images files (any format) other than .PPM, if your directory contains already PPM image files then skip this step.
Type in:
>mogrify -format ppm * // This will convert your files into PPM files

Then, we need to use the paramFile.
In line 31 you will specify the output, meaning the name of your mpg file
In line 34 you will give in the directory where the ppm files are (path)
In line 48 you will specify the range of the images 'image*.pp' if you want to use all the image files for the creation of the .mpg file

Now run:
>ppmtompeg paramfile

Play with:
>mplayer - loop 0

There are included samples in the parameter file to help guide.

Another easier way to view your images is with the command 'aminate'
>animate image*.ppm

If want to animate every 5 images for example:
>animate image*[05].ppm

3.- README file for mplayer and mencoder software in RGL
MPlayer currently works best from the command line. MPlayer can play most standard video formats out of the box.

MEncoder is a command line video encoder for advanced users that can be built from the MPlayer source tree.

To start playing movies, open a command line and try:

mplayer <moviefile>

To play a VCD track or a DVD title, try:

mplayer -vcd 2 -cdrom-device /dev/hdc
mplayer -dvd 1 -alang en -slang hu -dvd-device /dev/hdd

See 'mplayer -help' and 'man mplayer' for further options.

To see a detailed documentation for mplayer go to:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/index.html

In there you can also see documentation for mencoder, this is a direct link:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/mencoder.html

4.- Viewing images usign XV - README file for XV
XV is an interactive image manipulation program for the X Window System. It can operate on images in the GIF, JPEG, TIFF, PBM, PGM, PPM, XPM, X11 bitmap, Sun Rasterfile, Targa, RLE, RGB, BMP, PCX, FITS, and PM formats on all known types of X displays. It can generate PostScript files, and if you have ghostscript 1 (version 2.6 or above) installed on your machine, it can also display them.
XV lets you do a large number of things (many of them actually useful), including, but not limited to, the following:
- display an image in a window on the screen
- display an image on the root window, in a variety of styles
- grab any rectangular portion of the screen and turn it into an image
- arbitrarily stretch, compress, rotate or flip the image
- crop or pad images
- view files as ASCII text or hexadecimal data
- magnify any portion of the image by any amount, up to the size of the screen
- determine pixel values and x,y coordinates in the imagehod = 1
- and much more.........

To run XV in Linux once you are looged in with X-window (graphical interface)
> xv (enter)

OR

> xv imagefile.whatever_format (enter)

Bring up the XV controls window by pressing the ? key or clicking the Right mouse button inside the image window.

For a detailed easy to read documentation on XV, google search on XV

5.- How to find software in lab
Look in the rgl bin or ask Bhrigu
The latter also works for finding good deals =)

6.- What is OBJloader and how to use it?
OBJloader is our custom sofware that enables us to load and view .obj files.
This software is located in the rgl grfx/bin as all other sofware is. You should have included this file in your PATH variable. It then will be available to run from your console.

>OBJloader OBJfile.obj

This will open up a window that shows your image/scene. The controls are easy and intuitive. Navigate with the right buttom of your mouse and to move around use the left, middle and both at the same time for different movements in your scene.

7.- What is ODE and where to find it?
ODE is an open source, high performance library for simulating rigid body dynamics. It has advanced joint types and integrated collision detection with friction. ODE is useful for simulating vehicles, objects in virtual reality environments and virtual creatures.

web site: http://ode.org/