MATLAB: Making a video using writeVideo - matlab

Question

I am currently trying to make a video using the writeVideo function in MATLAB. I have made a GUI using GUIDE which includes a slider, a few checkboxs, and a single axes (tagged as axes1). When I move the slider, the axes will plot certain shapes that change according to the slider value.
What I am trying to do is record a video of the GUI being used to show the functionality in a presentation. However, when I play back the video (after making it using writeVideo), it shows the slider value moving and the checkboxes being checked correctly, but the plot never changes (i.e. it will only show the original shape). This seems to be some refresh error, however, anything I have tried has not worked (refresh, drawnow, etc.)
Any idea why this is happening? The following is the code I am trying to implement:
vidObj = VideoWriter('test.avi','Motion JPEG AVI');
open(vidObj);
flag = 0;
if flag<12 %movie will be 12 frames long
flag = flag+1;
if slider<1
plot something...
elseif slider>=1 && slider<2
plot something else...
etc...
elseif slider<=5
plot something else...
end
hFigure = findobj('Name','gui');
currFrame = getframe(hFigure);
writeVideo(vidObj,currFrame);
clear hfigure currFrame image;
else
fprintf('done\n')
close(vidObj);
end
As stated, I can then use implay to play back the test.avi file, however, the plot never updates.
Thanks in advance
Note: I am using MATLAB R2012b
EDIT:
The following is how I ended up creating my video: maybe this will help someone who was facing similar issues to the one stated above.
I basically gave up on using getframe and decided to 1) get screenshots, then 2) turn the screenshots into a movie. To get the screenshots, I first ran my program then, in the command window, invoked the following code using the java toolkit
i = 1;
while true
robo = java.awt.Robot;
t = java.awt.Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
%# Set screen size
rectangle = java.awt.Rectangle(0,0,1000,640);
%# Get the capture
image = robo.createScreenCapture(rectangle);
%# Save it to file
filehandle = java.io.File(sprintf('capture%d.jpg', i));
javax.imageio.ImageIO.write(image,'jpg',filehandle);
pause(.4) %# Wait for 0.4 seconds
i = i + 1;
end
This then continually ran in the background and took snap shots of the screen and stored them into the current directory. to stop it from running, just use Ctrl C. Once I had the screen shots, I used the following code to create the movie:
vidObj = VideoWriter('test.avi','Motion JPEG AVI');
open(vidObj);
for i=7:87 %these are the frames I wanted in my movie
x = num2str(i);
im = horzcat('capture',x);
im1 = horzcat(im,'.jpg')
imdata = imread(im1);
writeVideo(vidObj,imdata);
end
close(vidObj);

Answer 1

getframe is sometimes problematic. I'm not sure I can give an answer, and I can't simply comment because of my reputation, but this link might be of help. After you get the figure from the GUI, turn it into an image and then into a frame. Worth a shot.

Answer 2

If you change your monitor settings to 16 bit color it will solve the problem you are having. This has been documented on the link provided. My previous answer was deleted because I only supplied the link and told you how to solve the problem (sorry) but if you actually click on the link and see what they say or change your monitor settings to 16 bit color everything will work. From the link you can see that people have had this problem since 2009 but it was updated in april 2013 so it is still a problem and changing your monitor settings to 16 bit color is still a solution.
Hope this helps!
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/257389