McIDAS-V can display a sequence of time-stamped images as an animation.

One can write their own xml file and display the images within McIDAS-V using this xml format.

There are really two xml formats used. The first defines a set of imagesets:

<imagesets base="http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/georesources/webcams/images" name="McIDAS-V Webcams">
    <group name="Rockies">
        <imageset name="Boulder, CO"  
                  index="boulder_co/index.xml"  
                  lat="40.0" lon="-105.27"/>
        <imageset name="Denver, CO"  
                  index="denver_co/index.xml"  
                  lat="39.75" lon="-105"/>
    </group>
    <group name="National Parks">
        <imageset name="Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND"  
                  index="theodorerooseveltnationalpark_nd/index.xml"  
                  lat="46.94889" lon="-103.43306"/>
        <imageset name="Big Bend National Park,TX"  
                  index="bigbendnationalpark_tx/index.xml"  
                  lat="29.25" lon="-103.25"/>
        <imageset name="Olympic National Park"  
                  index="olympicnationalpark/index.xml"  
                  lat="48.26667" lon="-124.675"/>
    </group>
    ...
</imagesets>

This is a "table of contents". The base attribute, if defined, is used as a url base to prepend to the urls defined by the index attributes. The lat and lon attributes are optional and are used to locate the source of the movie on a map for the user to select.

Each of the index attributes refers to an images xml file of the form:

<images base="http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/georesources/webcams/images/boulder_co" 
        name="Boulder, CO" 
        group="Rockies" 
        format="yyyyMMddHHmmz" desc="From: http://9news.com">
    <image time="200607251446GMT" file="image_200607251446GMT.jpeg"/>
    <image time="200607251430GMT" file="image_200607251430GMT.jpeg"/>
    <image time="200607251414GMT" file="image_200607251414GMT.jpeg"/>
    <image time="200607251357GMT" file="image_200607251357GMT.jpeg"/>
    <image time="200607251344GMT" file="image_200607251344GMT.jpeg"/>
    ...
</images>

The images tag defines a base attribute (optional, used to prepend to any image urls), a name, a (optional) group and a date format and a description (desc). Each image tag has a time in the format specified in the images tag and a file attribute which refers to some image. This may be an absolute or relative url or file path.