Video Recording Issue – Wrong Path

[Diogo]

Hello everyone!

Let me just staryt by saying that I am relatively new to the SOFA world, and I am currently working on my master thesis in Soft Robotics using SOFA. The framework is amazing and I feel that it largely outgrows my needs and skills!

My issue is that I need to record a small video of my simulation. I’m using the latest binary that includes the Soft Robotics and associated plugins, V20.12.00, and when try to get the video in FFMPEG (the screenshot sequence option works correctly) by pressing V , I get a message saying:

Start recording to D:/Tese/SOFA_v20.12.00_Win64/screenshots/CilindroFuradoData__r60_0001.mp4 ( yuv420p, 60 FPS, 5120000 b/s) using D:\Tese\SOFA_v20.12.00_Win64/bin/
'D:\Tese\SOFA_v20.12.00_Win64/bin/' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

I’m in Windows 10, and so far I have not found a way to correct the error in the path, since I cannot seem to find where that piece is defined. After pressing V again, I get the message
that the video has been written in mp4 in the screenshots folder, but it’s not present.

Apologies for any english mistakes as it’s not my native language, and thank you in advance for the help!

[Hugo]

Ser @c4rs200

Welcome to SOFA then, we are glad to accompany you during your master thesis!

It sounds like a problem from SOFA. We will take a look at it and get back to you. Thanks for letting us know.
Best

Hugo

[Diogo]

Hello @hugo

Thank you very much! This community has been incredible so far, and you do an amazing job.

Kind regards,
Diogo

[Froy]

Hello,

it seems you dont have ffmpeg (or at least SOFA does not know where it is).
With the SOFA binaries, you have 3 ways:
– put ffmpeg.exe in the same dir as runSofa.exe
– add the path of ffmpeg.exe into the PATH environment variable.
– edit the file plugins/SofaGuiQt/etc/SofaGuiQt.ini and modify the value of FFMPEG_EXEC_PATH

(Here is a link where to get binaries for ffmpeg: https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ if you dont want to compile it yourself.)

We realized that there is nothing in the doc about ffmpeg, so we will update the doc accordingly.

[Diogo]

Hello @froy

I’m sorry I took so long to reply, exams forced me to pause work on my thesis and on Sofa, and I deeply appreciate your answer!

I’ve tried both the 1st and 3rd methods, and I don’t think that’s the problem, since the exact same error happened.

For some reason the video record function uses a forward slash after the SOFA folder name instead of the backslash in the rest of the Windows directory. I tried changing the SofaGuiQt.ini file to …\bin\ instead of …/bin/ and that did not work, nor did it work to add …\\bin\. I can’t find any sort of path option to fix that forward slash

Just to add to the original post, the error shows after [VideoRecorderFFMPEG] in the Sofa Information Window

Thank you once again,

Diogo

[Froy]

Hello,

It seems that this issue was fixed in the master branch, so two solutions (again)
– you compile by yourself the current master (could be bothersome)
– a new release will be available very soon so if you could wait a few days… 😉

Sorry for the inconvenience!

[Author]

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