File names with frame number from smokeview GUI

obscureed commented 1 month ago

It used to be that images saved to disk by pressing "r" would be labelled with frame number by default. (This is assuming that some results are loaded.) This worked in (I think) SMV6.7.21 (corresponding to FDS6.7.9). Now, in SMV6.9.1 (on Linux), it seems to be broken; all image files are saved with frame number 0000. If I change to the time-based suffix, that still works (but see below for an enhancement request). Frame suffixing still works for RENDERALL in a .ssf script, but not in the GUI.

As an enhancement request, it would be really convenient for me if the time suffix could have a controllable format, and/or if the default/hardwired format could be changed to have leading zeros, something like "%07.1f". This would allow files to be sortable by name in the correct order. Currently casename_2.000s.png comes after casename_12.00.png.

Another enhancement request: it would also often be really convenient if the automatically named image files could avoid clobbering (ie, overwriting) existing image files (presumably at the same frame number or time). Maybe if casename_0001.png exists, the new file would have an additional suffix and become casename_0001_01.png, casename_0001_02.png, casename_0001_03.png, etc. Something like this currently happens with the geometry-only files, which have sequential suffixes _s0000, _s0001, etc -- but this is controlled by a counter (rather than checking whether image files already exist). The counter resets and starts clobbering the previous files if smokeview is restarted, and I have lost many images that way.

As far as I know, the bug about frame-number suffix is always present, but I'll include a testcase just so that we can talk about the same run if necessary: open-fire0002.fds.txt

Thanks! Ed

drjfloyd commented 1 month ago

Ed,

In case you are not aware, in the Motion/Vierw/Render dialog box you can define a prefix for the file names written by render. So if you were rendering a temperature slice and a velocity slice to different sets of png files, you could edit the file prefix to be casename_T and casename_V (which IMO is more meaningful later on when working with multiple sets of images than _1 and _2 would be). Then files would not clobber. My two cents is I would not want anti-clobber to be the default behavior for rendering.

On your render by keypress, are you saying that if you set smokeview to a frame > 0 and hit r, that the file name is always 0000? I just tried doing some single frame renders using the windows SMV test version from a couple of days ago and it is correctly using the frame number in the filename. If you are using an old version of SMV, try the current test release (https://github.com/firemodels/test_bundles/releases).

Jason

obscureed commented 1 month ago

Yes, your second paragraph describes the bug I see on Linux using the current release, SMV-6.9.1-0-gd0b04d001-release.

I mostly use the keypress to save a few snapshots, so I would be happy to sift through them and work out which is which with any kind of differentiation. (For methodical sets of images, I use RENDERDIR and the second argument to RENDERALL in .ssf scripts.) Currently, though, if I want to have a record of velocity and temperature at the end of the simulation, I have to press "r", move the file to a new name, load some new results (or a new viewpoint), and repeat.

If I could control default behavior in my smokeview.ini, I would pick no-clobber: definitely for the -s0000.png geometry images, and probably for the _0000.png results images.

One alternative would be to have the option to add a timestamp suffix (of date and clocktime to the nearest second, say), as well as (and after) the frame-number suffix.