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mne_make_movie

Overview​

mne_make_movie renders source-estimate activity overlaid on a FreeSurfer cortical surface and exports each time frame as a PNG image. The resulting frame sequence can then be assembled into a movie with external tools such as ffmpeg.

The tool can either consume a precomputed STC file pair (--stcin) or compute the source estimate on the fly from an inverse operator and a measurement file (--inv + --meas). In addition to PNG rendering it can extract per-label time courses to a text file for downstream analysis.

This is a C++ port of the original MNE-C mne_make_movie utility by Matti Hämäläinen.

Usage​

mne_make_movie [options]

Options​

Input​

OptionDescription
--stcin <prefix>Input STC file prefix (left hemisphere assumed; -rh.stc auto-loaded)
--inv <file>Inverse operator file (alternative to --stcin: compute on the fly)
--meas <file>Measurement file (used with --inv)
--set <number>Data set number (default: 0)
--snr <value>SNR for inverse regularization (default: 3.0)
--method <name>Inverse method: MNE, dSPM, sLORETA (default: dSPM)

Time range​

OptionDescription
--tmin <seconds>Start time
--tmax <seconds>End time
--tstep <seconds>Time step between frames

Surface and view​

OptionDescription
--subject <name>FreeSurfer subject name
--subjects-dir <dir>FreeSurfer SUBJECTS_DIR (default: $SUBJECTS_DIR)
--surface <name>Surface to render on (default: inflated)
--lhLeft hemisphere only
--rhRight hemisphere only
--view <name>View: lat, med, dor, ven, ros, cau (default: lat)

Color scale​

OptionDescription
--fthresh <value>Activation threshold (default: 3.0)
--fmid <value>Mid-scale value (default: 6.0)
--fmax <value>Maximum scale value (default: 10.0)
--signedShow signed values (positive + negative)

Output​

OptionDescription
--png <prefix>Output PNG prefix
--width <pixels>Image width (default: 800)
--height <pixels>Image height (default: 600)
--label <file>Label file(s) for ROI extraction (may be repeated)
--labelout <file>Output text file for label time courses

Example​

Render dSPM frames between 50 ms and 200 ms in 10 ms steps from an existing STC pair:

mne_make_movie \
    --stcin sample-dSPM \
    --subject sample --subjects-dir $SUBJECTS_DIR \
    --tmin 0.050 --tmax 0.200 --tstep 0.010 \
    --view lat --png frames/sample-dSPM-

Then assemble a movie with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -framerate 10 -pattern_type glob \
       -i 'frames/sample-dSPM-*.png' \
       -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p sample-dSPM.mp4

See Also​