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I have a series of txyz coordinates, which I am plotting in space to create a movie of the objects' time evolution. With something along the lines of (simplified):

Table[Show[
    Graphics3D[Table[Sphere[{x,y,z}, 0.5], {i, 1, lengthofFiber}],
        Epilog -> Text[StringForm["t=``",  t], 
        Scaled[{0.85, 0.05}]
        ]
    Axes -> True,
    PlotRange-> {ranges here},
    AxesLabel->{"x","y","z"}
], {j,1,frames}]

and then an Export["path",%] to make a .avi movie file. (there are other Graphics3D objects to draw arrows and such, I've omitted them here)

A single frame looks nice, like this:

enter image description here

however, the movie looks a bit odd. While it exports properly (i.e. each image from the outer Table loop is one frame of the movie), the axes will shift slightly between certain frames. I might get 15-20 frames that look fine, and then the axes jump a few pixels off to another position and stay there for another sequence.

It's not the biggest problem, but is a bit irritating when preparing the videos for a presentation, as it looks very jerky. Is there a way to fix the axes so that they are drawn consistently from frame to frame?

(As a secondary question, does anybody have tips on how to process the movies either in Mathematica or afterwards for embedding into a powerpoint? My output movie files reach almost a GB in size, which is clunky for a powerpoint. Are there built-in methods to compress video, or external programs that convert a .tif stack nicely?)

I'm afraid I'm pretty new to Mathematica, so if I am doing something horribly inefficiently, do let me know!

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1) Can you add working code; 2) can you export to animated GIF and upload so we can see the issue? – Vitaliy Kaurov Sep 19 '12 at 21:23
1  
It's quite probable that this export to avi yields uncompressed video. For animations on this site I always use animated GIFs, which works well for most Mathematica plots. As to the jumps: do you keep the ViewPoint and the PlotRanges and the other settings the same between frames? – Sjoerd C. de Vries Sep 19 '12 at 21:23
1  
To avoid the changes in axes position you might try to add SphericalRegion->True to the options of Graphics3D. – VLC Sep 20 '12 at 7:34
1  
You might also consider exporting each frame separately, as a numbered sequence of PNG or JPG images, and then creating a movie from the images outside Mathematica with something like ffmpeg, which will let you adjust sizes, codecs, etc. – cormullion Sep 20 '12 at 7:50

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