# Plotting with Makie safe frames

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plotting-with-makie-safe-frames/22450>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** plotting\
**Created:** [March 28, 2019, 11:52am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plotting-with-makie-safe-frames/22450 "2019-03-28T11:52:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Noobie76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee59a6/32.png) [@Noobie76](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Noobie76)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 11:52am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plotting-with-makie-safe-frames/22450/1 "2019-03-28T11:52:45Z")

</div>

Hi there,

I’m new in the world of Julia. At the moment I’m working on a little project developing a solver on my GPU. To plot my results I’m using ` Makie.jl` since I’m working on the GPU anyway.  
So far I used the `Makie.record` command to record my solution evolving in time, but I want to edit some details in the video and therefore it seems to be reasonable just to save the plots at every single time step as a `.png` and render all pictures afterwards in a separate program. Unfortunately I run into problems using the following little sample code ( `initial_data` just return a 3D Arrays depending on the vector ` k_in`)

```julia
using Makie
using CuArrays
alpha=0
i=1
for i=1:10
    k_in=[i,-i,i^2]
    scene = Scene()
    z=initial_data(N, k_in, x_min, x_max, y_min, y_max, z_min, z_max)
    Makie.volume!(scene, real(z), algorithm=:iso, isovalue=alpha,transparency=true,color=:red)
    Makie.save("test$i.png", scene)
end

```

Here all timesteps are plottet into a single scene which is definetly nowt what I want, by neglecting the broadcast command `!` I run into the following error

```julia
ERROR: LoadError: No overload for Volume{...} and also no overload for trait AbstractPlotting.VolumeLike() found! Arguments: (Scene, Array{Float64,3})
Stacktrace:
 [1] #convert_arguments#214(::Base.Iterators.Pairs{Union{},Union{},Tuple{},NamedTuple{(),Tuple{}}}, ::Function, ::Type{Volume{...}}, ::Scene, ::Vararg{Any,N} where N) at C:\Users\Noobie\.julia\packages\AbstractPlotting\NOT5R\src\conversions.jl:54
 [2] convert_arguments(::Type{Volume{...}}, ::Scene, ::Array{Float64,3}) at C:\Users\Noobie\.julia\packages\AbstractPlotting\NOT5R\src\conversions.jl:49
 [3] #plot!#195(::Base.Iterators.Pairs{Union{},Union{},Tuple{},NamedTuple{(),Tuple{}}}, ::Function, ::Scene, ::Type{Volume{...}}, ::Attributes, ::Scene, ::Vararg{Any,N} where N) at C:\Users\Noobie\.julia\packages\AbstractPlotting\NOT5R\src\interfaces.jl:494
 [4] plot!(::Scene, ::Type{Volume{...}}, ::Attributes, ::Scene, ::Array{Float64,3}) at C:\Users\Noobie\.julia\packages\AbstractPlotting\NOT5R\src\interfaces.jl:481
 [5] #volume#96(::Base.Iterators.Pairs{Symbol,Any,NTuple{4,Symbol},NamedTuple{(:algorithm, :isovalue, :transparency, :color),Tuple{Symbol,Int64,Bool,Symbol}}}, ::Function, ::Scene, ::Vararg{Any,N} where N) at C:\Users\Noobie\.julia\packages\AbstractPlotting\NOT5R\src\recipes.jl:17
 [6] (::getfield(AbstractPlotting, Symbol("#kw##volume")))(::NamedTuple{(:algorithm, :isovalue, :transparency, :color),Tuple{Symbol,Int64,Bool,Symbol}}, ::typeof(volume), ::Scene, ::Array{Float64,3}) at .\none:0
 [7] top-level scope at C:\Users\Noobie\Documents\TESTJULIAGPU\03\testplotpng.jl:9 [inlined]
 [8] top-level scope at .\none:0
in expression starting at C:\Users\Noobie\Documents\TESTJULIAGPU\03\testplotpng.jl:5

```

So my question is if there is some way to clear your scene before plotting the next time step and store it into a `.png` file? Or there are other useful tools in `Makie.record` to achieve something similar? I don’t find anything useful for my concrete problem in the [Makie documentation](https://makie.juliaplots.org/stable/output.html).

PS: I have one further little question, is there any similar string formatting operator as ` %04d` in Phyton to name your output files in the following manner `test0001.png`,`test0002.png` ,… . This would be very convenient for post-processing.

Cheers

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sdanisch](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/sdanisch/32/1406_2.png) [@sdanisch](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sdanisch)\
**Post date:** [March 28, 2019, 12:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plotting-with-makie-safe-frames/22450/2 "2019-03-28T12:21:29Z")

</div>

> but I want to edit some details in the video and therefore it seems to be reasonable just to save the plots at every single time step as a `.png`

What video editing software do you use, that doesn’t support importing videos? 😃

Anyways, this is how you should do this:

```julia
using Makie, FileIO, Printf
alpha=0
# initialize plot
z = zeros(Float32, 200, 200, 200)
scene = Makie.volume(z, algorithm=:iso, isovalue=alpha,transparency=true,color=:red)
volplot = scene[end] # last plot
screen = display(scene) 
for i in 1:10
    k_in = [i, -i, i^2]
    z2 = initial_data(N, k_in, x_min, x_max, y_min, y_max, z_min, z_max)
    # update first argument (volume(z)) with new values in place
    volplot[1] = (z .= Float32.(real.(z2)))
    # Save colorbuffer (more efficient then save(scene))
    save(@sprintf("test_%04d.png", i) , AbstractPlotting.colorbuffer(screen))
end

```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Noobie76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee59a6/32.png) [@Noobie76](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Noobie76)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2019, 3:21pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plotting-with-makie-safe-frames/22450/3 "2019-03-29T15:21:57Z")

</div>

I’m using OpenShot, I achieve the best output by doing so 😃

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Noobie76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee59a6/32.png) [@Noobie76](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Noobie76)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2019, 3:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/plotting-with-makie-safe-frames/22450/4 "2019-04-01T15:41:32Z")

</div>

Hi,

sry I have to ask you a last question,. First your sample codes works well, but I can’t apply it in the 2D case, when I not want to plot the evolution a a single component. But I’m very confused about the data types and I can’t adapt your code above to that circumstances. Here x denotes a vector which entries are my grid points in the x-direction

```julia
#initialize the scene
z=CuArrays.zeros(ComplexF64, Jx)
    scene = Makie.lines(x,z)
    volplot = scene[end] # last plot
    screen = display(scene)

for t=1:M

...update z...

    volplot[1] = ((x,z) .= tuple.(x,real(z))
    save(@sprintf("test_%04d.png", t) , AbstractPlotting.colorbuffer(screen))

end

```

What did I do? First I looked up the data type of `scene[end][1]` and it gives me

```julia
Observable{Array{Point{2,Float32},1}} with 2 listeners. Value: ...

```

Then I said to me if the above syntax works for the volume plot then I just should do something natural similar in the case of lines(). But this ended up in an error message, also slight variations and multiple searches at the ` Makie.jl` side didn’t bring the enlightenment.

Can u maybe help me by explaining what `scene[end]` exactly represents and how I can overhand the data that I want to its first component ` [1]` exactly?

Thank you in any case!

Cheers