XCrySDen can display several snapshots of crystal (or molecular) structures as animation. See here how to specify multiple structures in a single animated XSF file.

To create an MPEG or animated-GIF movie, XCrySDen needs external MPEG and GIF encoders. Currently, the mpeg_encode and whirlgif encoders are used for the MPEG and GIF encoding, respectively. The two encoders can be downloaded from:

mpeg_encode:
- Home page: http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/research/mpeg/mpeg_encode.html
- Download: http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/ftp/pub/multimedia/mpeg/encode/mpeg_encode-1.5b-src.tar.gz
whirlgif:
- Home page:http://www.danbbs.dk/~dino/whirlgif/
- Download: http://www.danbbs.dk/~dino/whirlgif/whirlgif304.tar.gz

IMPORTANT: the creation of MPEG or GIF movies is possible only when MPEG and/or GIF encoders are defined in the $HOME/.xcrysden/custom-definitions file (read more).

To make a movie, use the Modify-->Animation Controls menu. The following window will appear:

The [Animated GIF/MPEG >>] button is enabled only when the GIF and/or MPEG encoders are defined in the the $HOME/.xcrysden/custom-definitions file. By pressing this button, the following new information will appear on the window aimed at creating animated-GIF and MPEG movies (the description of check- and radio-buttons is hopefully self-explanatory):

How to record a movie

Here is a short recipe of how to make an MPEG/GIF movie:

set all the parameters in the Animation Control Center window accordingly
press the Start Recording Animated-GIF/MPEG button; the button will appear red-colored to indicate the record mode is on:
use the animation buttons to animate the structure forth and back ...
press the red [Stop Recording and Save] and specify the filename to save into
if the [Edit flag/parameter-file before encoding] checkbutton was checked-on, a text-editor with the content of the encoding script will appear; edit the script-file if needed