Capture axes or figure as movie frame (2024)

Plot two lines. Capture the axes and return the image data. getframe captures the interior of the axes and the axes outline. It does not capture content that extends beyond the axes outline.

plot([0 1; 1 2])F = getframe;

F is a structure with the field cdata that contains the captured image data.

Display the captured image data using imshow.

figureimshow(F.cdata)

Create a surface plot. Capture the interior of the figurewindow, excluding the menu and tool bars.

surf(peaks)F = getframe(gcf);

F is a structure with the field cdata thatcontains the captured image data.

Display the captured image data in a figure with a darker background using imshow, so you can see captured area.

figure('Color',[0.5 0.5 0.5])imshow(F.cdata)

Plot two lines.

plot([0 1; 1 2])

Change the axes units to pixels and return the currentaxes position. The third and fourth elements of the position vectorspecify the axes width and height in pixels.

drawnowax = gca;ax.Units = 'pixels';pos = ax.Position

pos = 73.8000 47.2000 434.0000 342.3000

Create a four-element vector, rect,that defines a rectangular area covering the axes plus the desiredmargin. The first two elements of rect specifythe lower left corner of the rectangle relative to the lower leftcorner of the axes. The last two elements of rect specifythe width and height of the rectangle. Reset the axes units to thedefault value of 'normalized'.

marg = 30;rect = [-marg, -marg, pos(3)+2*marg, pos(4)+2*marg];F = getframe(gca,rect);ax.Units = 'normalized';

Display the captured image data in a figure with a darker background using imshow, so you can see captured area.

figure('Color',[0.5 0.5 0.5])imshow(F.cdata)

Create a plot with a title and an x-axis label.

plot([0 1; 1 2])xlabel('x values')title('Plot of Two Lines')

Change the axes units to pixels and store the Position and TightInset propertyvalues for the axes. The TighInset property isa four-element vector of the form [left bottom right top].The values are the margins used around the axes for the tick valuesand text labels.

drawnowax = gca;ax.Units = 'pixels';pos = ax.Position;ti = ax.TightInset;

Create a four-element vector, rect,that defines a rectangular area covering the axes plus the automaticallycalculated margin. The first two elements of rect specifythe lower left corner of the rectangle relative to the lower leftcorner of the axes. The last two elements of rect specifythe width and height of the rectangle.

rect = [-ti(1), -ti(2), pos(3)+ti(1)+ti(3), pos(4)+ti(2)+ti(4)];F = getframe(ax,rect);

Display the captured image data in a figure with a darker background using imshow, so you can see captured area.

figure('Color',[0.5 0.5 0.5])imshow(F.cdata)

Call the tiledlayout function to create a 2-by-1 tiled chart layout. Call the nexttile function to create the axes objects ax1 and ax2. Plot a line in each axes.

tiledlayout(2,1)ax1 = nexttile;plot(1:10,'b')ax2 = nexttile;plot(1:10,'r')

Capture the contents of the lower axes. getframe captures the interior and border of the plot. It does not capture tick values or labels that extend beyond the outline of the plot.

F = getframe(ax2);

Display the captured image data using imshow.

figureimshow(F.cdata)

Record frames of thepeaksfunctionvibrating by using getframe in a loop.Preallocate an array to store the movie frames.

Z = peaks;surf(Z)axis tight manualax = gca;ax.NextPlot = 'replaceChildren';loops = 40;F(loops) = struct('cdata',[],'colormap',[]);for j = 1:loops X = sin(j*pi/10)*Z; surf(X,Z) drawnow F(j) = getframe(gcf);end

Playback the movie two times.

fig = figure;movie(fig,F,2)

ax — Axes to capture
Axes object | GeographicAxes object

fig — Figure to capture
figure object

Figure to capture, specified as a Figure object.

rect — Rectangular area to capture
four-element vector of the form [left bottom widthheight]

Movie frame, returned as a structure with two fields: