Solar Movie Maker - Future Improvements

Event-based movie:

Here the user provides as input a string containing a query to one of the lists part of the Solar Event Catalogue (SEC). Possibly provide a link to egso/sec page in the interface, so that a user can test the query and have an idea of the output. If the output of the SEC query is a list of 'events' the idea is that this workflow will give the user one movie for each event. (Typically several movies will be output of this workflow).

Input parameters

• SEC query (string), e.g.: 'select * from sgas_event AS s where s.nar>9850 and s.nar<9880 and s.xray_class>'M5' '
• Instrument name (string), wavelength (integer)
• Overlay flag Y/N (boolean)

Main workflow steps

• SEC query string is written into template SEC query file and query is executed.
• Loop over elements of VOTable output of SEC query
• Start and end time of event are written into a template query and query is sent to datacenter.
• List of files output of the query is fed to movie maker tool
• Movie maker runs and produces mpeg movie

Workflow exits if:

• SEC query returns empty votable
• Total size of movies created exceeds a given size

Overlay option:

The user specifies a time interval for movie. If one instrument is selected the output is 1 movie. If more than one instrument is selected, and the overlay flag is set to N , then one movie per instrument is produced. If 2 instruments are selected and the overlay flag is set to Y, the output is 1 movie of overlaid images. If more than 2 instruments are selected and the overlay flag is set to Y, the workflow exits (we don't want to overlay more than 2 instruments).

Main workflow steps (with overlay)

• If 2 instruments are selected and the overlay option is set to Y, then start and end time are written into 2 template queries (one per instrument) and queries are sent to datacenters.
• Output of the queries are sent to the Overlay tool which looks at the times of images from the two instruments and produces a set of overlaid images using the mapping software.
• Overlaid images are combined into a movie.

Workflow returns no movie if:

• End time is before start time
• More than 2 instruments selected and overlay flag is Y (overlay is for just 2 instruments)
• Input start and end time would result in a huge movie
• Query to instrument dataset returns no files
• There are not enough images to make a movie (e.g. just a few images (say 3-4 images) in the time interval specified - single images are returned instead of movie)

Other possible cases

• Within overlay option, if there are only a few images for 1 of the 2 instruments for the specified time interval, output will a movie of 1 instrument, and a set of single overlaid images.

-- SilviaDalla - 29 Apr 2005