[IPython-dev] display protocol: animation and video

[Chris Kees]

I'd like to include animations in the notebook and am trying to think
through the options for connecting to the display protocol.  The case I'm
targeting is one with a small number of high-resolution frames (e.g. 50 to
500 frames). Each frame is generated by compositing portions of the frame
rendered on (possibly many) mpi engines.  At the moment I generate a png or
svg of the composite image on the root engine and just bring the last image
in the sequence over to the client, which I can display with something like

c = Client()
view = c[:]
view.activate()
Image(view['imageSequence'][rootEngine][-1])

All I want to do now is make the whole sequence of images available with
"VCR buttons" (rewind, pause, play, fast forward, maybe a slider to look at
specific frames).  Should I 1) generate a single SVG of the entire
animation on the root engine, 2) use ffmpeg via matplotlib or some other
wrapper to ffmpeg to generate a video on the root engine, or 3) continue
bringing over the entire image sequence and do the  conversion to animated
SVG or mpeg on the client.

On 1: I've tried including the SVG for the animation here
http://srufaculty.sru.edu/david.dailey/svg/ovaling.svg using
SVG(data="""..."""), but it doesn't show up in the notebook.    Maybe SVG
animations aren't fully supported in the notebook yet?

On 2: How do I bring the mpeg over? Just read the mpeg file on the root
engine, write it back out on the client, and display using
HTML(file="filename.mp4")?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Chris
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