Movie Image Processing

3D image stacks and time lapse series may be viewed and processed as digital movies. Movies file formats are pic, avi, mov. Avi is the microsoft movie format and mov is the Apple format. All 3 formats may be viewed on a PC and only the mov format may be easily viewed on Apple systems.

• VidEdit: avi files and tif or bmp image series only. Simple but good for resizing, cropping and pasting together movies. Can convert between avi and bmp image series. Also good for movie file conpression.
• Confocal Assistant: Bio-rad pic format files. Fastest movie viewer. Will also display avi movies. Due to bugs can not convert between Bio-rad pic and avi formats.
• Autodesk Animator: sophisticated movie editor. Has many effects designed for generating cartoons, which are useful for scientific movie porduction. Supports multiple movie formats but not Bio-rad pic, which must be converted to for example avi or bitmap series.
• Premiere: sophisticated movie editor. Supports multiple movie formats but not Bio-rad pic.
• bmfunctions: a group of command line programs that process bitmap stacks or series. These programs are run from a DOS Box and use command line parameters. pic format images must first be converted to bitmap series using Confocal Assistant or pic2bmp.exe.

3D Rotating renders using transparency model (alpha channel) projections.

• Slicer: good volume processing. Uses more accurate transparency redereing model. Allows z-axis scaling to correct for rectangular voxels. (ie. z-scale is different from x-y scale). Generates rotation animation. Is difficult to use and is slower than brightest point 3D rendering. Uses tif or bmp format file stacks, but not Bio-rad pic format.
• Voxel Blast: rapid rendering. Allows multiple channel renders of double labelled images. Choice of render models. Can generate rotation animations. Supports bmp, tif, bio-rad pic, raw binary and many other image formats.

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