Multiple “File Exchange” Animated GIF codes work for R2010a but not for R2011a

All of the matlab figure to animated GIF codes on the matlab file exchange that I have tested so far will work for Matlab version 7.10.0.499 (R2010a) but not for Matlab version 7.12.0.635 (R2011a). Two examples are http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/21944-animated-gif and http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/21407-gifaddframe. I have the Image Processing Toolbox for the 2011 version but not the 2010 version. Any suggestions?

[Walter Roberson]

What difficulties do you encounter?

[Tim]

The 2011 version produces a file with the first image in the animation and a "ghost" of what is behind the matlab figure window. The 2010 version works just fine.

[Walter Roberson]

Hmmm, some kind of change in what happens when you snapshot, it sounds like.

There is a possibility that if you set the figure Renderer property to something else that the behavior might change. Also, if you are using the opengl renderer, try using "opengl software" to switch to software rendering.

[Jan]

Whenever you write something like "does not work" in the forum, more details are obligatory. Either the error message or a description of the difference between the results and your expectation is required, because it is impossible to guess such details.

@Walter: While I do not suffer from the term "urgent", it hurts me to read "it does not work". It's like: "Hey, I have a problem you could solve, but I do not tell it!".

Answer 1

[Tim]

Thank you Walter Roberson! I added the line

set(h,'Renderer','zbuffer')

It fixed the problem for R2011

Answer 2

[Jan]

You need a pause(0.02) before getframe.

A drawnow is not enough. With pause(0.01) there are still some dropouts, but less, while I did not observe any problem with 0.02 seconds on a Core2Duo Win7/64 even under high system load.

When this does not help, and there are some Matlab/Java/OS combinations which worked better, but not perfect, with pause(0.1), try this:

fig_Paperposmode = get(aFigH, 'PaperPositionMode');
fig_PaperOrient  = get(aFigH, 'PaperOrientation');
fig_Invhardcopy  = get(aFigH, 'InvertHardcopy');
set(aFigH, ...
   'PaperPositionMode', 'auto', ...
   'PaperOrientation',  'portrait', ...
   'InvertHardcopy',    'off');

print(aFigH, '-dpng', '-r0', FileName);

% Restore properties of the original image:
set(aFigH, ...
   'InvertHardcopy',    fig_Invhardcopy, ...
   'PaperPositionMode', fig_Paperposmode, ...
   'PaperOrientation',  fig_PaperOrient);

Answer 3

[Oliver Woodford]

im2gif works fine in R2012a