random error with frame size making a video

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Juan Luis
Juan Luis on 16 Mar 2012
Commented: Walter Roberson on 13 Sep 2021
Hi everyone,
I am quite surprised and stuck with this problem.
I am processing some results, so I create a series of figures by using the commands:
contourf (eii, v, 'linestyle','none'); axis equal
xlim([0 401]); ylim([0 201]); colorbar; caxis([min(v) max(v)])
where eii is my variable to be plotted {size(eii)=[201 401])} and v is a matrix with the values I want to be plotted.
Then, I make an avi video with another loop and the commands:
open(nameoffigure);
legend('sometext', 'Location', 'South');
Mv(ff)=getframe;
close
where ff is a counter for the diffent figures I am opening. And, after the loop, the commands:
movie(Mv, 1, 1)
movie2avi(Mv, 'nameoffile', 'fps',3)
Well, I have made hundreds of videos this way. But, just from yesterday, without having change anything, I am receiving randomly some messages saying that "Error using avifile/addframe>ValidateFrame Frame must be 370 by 186."
I am puzzled of why this error appears now even when I try to make again videos with figures that I used for making a video just few days ago.
I have been googleing, but I cannot fix this. It seems to me that matlab resize the frame authomatically and some days ago it did it right but now it is doingly wrong by some reason. So, how can I set the frame size in order to avoid this? Or there is other reason for this problem?
  6 Comments
Tong Zhao
Tong Zhao on 13 Sep 2021
@Walter Roberson Yes I think you're correct. If I use getFrame(gca), I'll get a sequence of cdata with sizes like: 798x600, 799x599, 799x598, etc.
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 13 Sep 2021
One work-around is to imresize() to the desired size.

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Answers (5)

Minoru Tsuzaki
Minoru Tsuzaki on 9 Jun 2012
Edited: Walter Roberson on 31 Jul 2016
Hi, Juan
I've got the same problem. My suggestion of the workaround is to change the line:
Mv(ff) = getframe;
to:
Mv(ff)=getframe(gcf);
The (current, or new?) default behavior of the function, "getframe" is to getframe(gca) rather than get frame(gcf). My case was that I changes the camera position at every frame, which changes the size of data. I don't know the details of your figures, but I suppose a similar change may happen between frames. I don't either know why it did not happen before, but hope that they modify the environment for a certain higher goal ;-)
  4 Comments
Tadashi
Tadashi on 10 Jul 2018
Thanks! This also worked for me.
Mario
Mario on 1 Jun 2020
Thanks! That also worked for me in matlab R2019b.

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Brandon Dewberry
Brandon Dewberry on 28 Feb 2013
I had the same issue but found the answer.
I was attempting to save two different frames (plot windows) to the same movie. One of these plot windows had the figure toolbar showing, while the other did not. This caused the number of pixels in frames(end).cdata to be off by ~20 rows.
Once I turned the toolbar off in the second plot window and made sure size(frames(ii).cdata) was the same for all ii the problem went away.
  1 Comment
MoonKnight
MoonKnight on 3 Oct 2013
I had exactly the same issue and your solution works for me. Thank you!

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Roman Voronov
Roman Voronov on 29 May 2013
a stupid workaround is to use make a tiff stack instead of a movie. you can use the http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/frame2im.html command, resize all the images appropriately and then write them by appending a tiff file. tiffs can be animated in software like ImageJ

Shobhan Roy
Shobhan Roy on 6 Aug 2018
Hi,
'pause' indeed works.
I was bugged by this problem for a long time. The issue with getframe is that it sometimes captures the frame before the figure itself can fully load; hence it ends up capturing a smaller frame-size. I especially noticed that the occurrence of the error was not consistent, meaning on some occasions my hardware was able to load the frame before getframe.
I recommend defining the figure window with all subplots, and then giving a generous pause of 1 second before moving on.
figure;
subplot(2,1,1);
subplot(2,1,2);
pause(1)
  2 Comments
Christoph
Christoph on 4 Oct 2019
Pausing worked for me, too.
Thanks a lot!
Tong Zhao
Tong Zhao on 12 Sep 2021
The best practice is :
desiredPosition = [left bottom width height]
set(gcf,'Position',desiredPosition)
pause(0.01) % doesn't have to be long
getFrame(gcf)

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Onomitra Ghosh
Onomitra Ghosh on 16 Mar 2012
Based on the error message, it seems that the not all of the frames in Mv are of the same size. Something in the way the figure is displayed is changing the size. You can confirm that by adding the following after the GETFRAME command:
size(Mv(ff).cdata)
You can have Figures (and corresponding frame captures) of the same sizes by modifying the Position property of the Figure window
  2 Comments
Juan Luis
Juan Luis on 16 Mar 2012
Yes, I knew that...
I have different examples with the same error, so I have the opportunity of test different things.
I have checked the properties I know (with inspect(gcf) and inspect(gca). Some of the figures fixed when I modify the Position, some others fixed when I modify the Zlim. But still I got some models in which all the properties in the figure (inspect(gcf)) and in the axes (inspect(gca)) where the same. However, I can see very small differences at the position of the colorbar, which I cannot change with "set" (because I don´t know the command to do it). But, apparently, the workaround was to set "colorbar('off'). I am still testing, but, till the moments, I can make all the videos again just by setting "colorbar('off')" after the "open(nameoffigure)" command...
Therefore, still working on it... And still wondering why this appears, and how to fix it properly.... ¿any ideas?
Onomitra Ghosh
Onomitra Ghosh on 19 Mar 2012
I have not tried it myself but found another thread that discusses COLORBAR positioning.
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/270800
May be this will help you to get an exact figure window every time.

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