Hi Yoshihiro Sato,

I have tried that on MMA 10.0.2 and OS X Mavericks and it is running without any problem. A little slow, but it does run.

Vitaliy, that is very useful. I have been using terminal commands such as convert to generate animated gifs. Promoted by your post I tried to find alternative approaches. I started out trying to use the GUIKit package

Needs["GUIKit`"] 

but I failed miserably. I have, however, an alternative approach to yours. I am not saying that it is better in any way. I am just posting it because I think that the approach is different from yours. Also it runs a bit faster on my machine, it avoids exporting mov or avi files and it gives a lot of control over the slider movement. Here it is:

frames = Flatten@
   Table[Manipulate[
     ContourPlot[q1/Norm[{x, y} - p[[1]]] + q2/Norm[{x, y} - p[[2]]], {x, -2, 2}, {y, -2, 2}, Contours -> 20, PlotRangePadding -> 0, 
      Frame -> False, PlotPoints -> 40, ImageSize -> 230, ColorFunction -> "DarkRainbow"], {{q1, n1}, -3, 3}, {{q2, m1}, -3, 3}, {{p, {{-1, 0}, {1, 0}}}, {-1, -1}, {1, 1}, Locator}, Deployed -> True, FrameMargins -> 0], {n1, -3, 3}, {m1, -3, 3}];
Export["~/Desktop/frames.gif", frames];

It lacks the elegance of your approach but it gives a video:

It should be easy to see how to change the positions of the locators etc in a predefined way.

Cheers,

M.

Dear Vitaliy,

this is indeed very nice and useful. I was trying to implement something where I would have a Manipulate window. A Dynamic or RunScheduledTask would regularly check whether my Manipulate window has changed. If so, it would save a gif frame of the current Manipulate-window and save it into a frame-list. The advantage would be that you can manipulate the sliders directly and whatever you do would be "recorded" by the frame-list. Of course, I could use a program such as GifGrabber to just capture the Manipulate interface. But it is more fun to do it with Mathematica directly.

Cheers,

M.

PS: Did you mean use "AVI" for Mac and "MOV" for Windows?

Vitaliy, I love this function, it comes in handy for demonstrating a Manipulate functionality. But I had to modify it a bit to account for the Linux OS, and also I added a line to delete the exported AVI file (which meant I had to make it a Module).

A couple of points: I had to replace OperatingSystem with $OperatingSystem. Then I went ahead and used If instead of Which and === instead of ==, and then I put a default argument for the step because I just personally prefer it to loop forwards then backwards.

ManToGif[man_, name_String, step_Integer: 1] := Module[{moviename},
  moviename = 
   name <> If[$OperatingSystem === "MacOSX", ".mov", ".avi"];
  Export[name <> ".gif", 
   Import[Export[moviename, man], "ImageList"][[1 ;; -1 ;; step]]]; 
  DeleteFile[moviename];
  ]

Hello, Vitaly, I use your ManToGif a lot. Thanks... But I have some questions:

1. ControlAppearance->NoneI would like in some cases to hide the controls. You mention: To NOT display controls - use "ControlAppearance"->None. Where and in what function (Export, Manipulate, ?) do I put "ControlAppearance"->None?

2. I noticed that most GIFs published in the community keep repeating infinitely. Mine do not. Do you have to put AnimationRepetitions->Infinity to get this effect or is it some Export setting?

Thanks,Vitaly.

Point 2. is clear to me. As to point1, I did the following:

frames = Flatten@
   ParallelTable[
    Manipulate[
     ContourPlot[
      q1/Norm[{x, y} - {p, 0}] + q2/Norm[{x, y} - {1, 0}], {x, -2, 
       2}, {y, -2, 2}, Contours -> 20, PlotRangePadding -> 0, 
      Frame -> False, PlotPoints -> 40, ImageSize -> 230, 
      ColorFunction -> "DarkRainbow"], {{q1, -1}, None}, {{q2, 2}, 
      None}, {{p, p1}, -1, 1, .1}, Deployed -> True, 
     FrameMargins -> 0], {p1, -1, 1, .1}];
Export["~/Documents/Mathematica Notebooks/Demos in \
Preparation/frames.gif", frames, "ControlAppearance" -> None];

As you can see, adding None in the Slider specs eliminates the q1 and q2 sliders but the p1 slider stays visible notwithstanding the "ControlAppearance"->None setting. I did not see the example you wanted to add and maybe that will solve my problem?

Got it! Works perfectly now. Thanks. Sorry for the confusion on my part...

hello, Jeremy, You can easily change the speed by adding or removing frames. You can e.g. change the step of the Table function that crestes the frames. here is an example of a fast and a slow version"

framesFast = 
  Flatten@Table[
    Manipulate[
     ContourPlot[
      q1/Norm[{x, y} - {p, 0}] + q2/Norm[{x, y} - {1, 0}], {x, -2, 
       2}, {y, -2, 2}, Contours -> 20, PlotRangePadding -> 0, 
      Frame -> False, PlotPoints -> 40, ImageSize -> 230, 
      ColorFunction -> "DarkRainbow"], {{q1, -1}, None}, {{q2, 2}, 
      None}, {{p, p1}, -1, 1, .1}, Deployed -> True, 
     FrameMargins -> 0], {p1, -1, 1, .25}];
Export["~/Documents/Mathematica Notebooks/Demos in \
Preparation/framesFast.gif", framesFast, "ControlAppearance" -> None]

framesSlow = 
  Flatten@Table[
    Manipulate[
     ContourPlot[
      q1/Norm[{x, y} - {p, 0}] + q2/Norm[{x, y} - {1, 0}], {x, -2, 
       2}, {y, -2, 2}, Contours -> 20, PlotRangePadding -> 0, 
      Frame -> False, PlotPoints -> 40, ImageSize -> 230, 
      ColorFunction -> "DarkRainbow"], {{q1, -1}, None}, {{q2, 2}, 
      None}, {{p, p1}, -1, 1, .1}, Deployed -> True, 
     FrameMargins -> 0], {p1, -1, 1, .025}];
Export["~/Documents/Mathematica Notebooks/Demos in \
Preparation/framesSlow.gif", framesSlow, "ControlAppearance" -> None]