Thanks!
1) I ran a perl script from the velvet developer to find the insert size http://github.com/dzerbino/velvet/blob/master/contrib/observed-insert-length.pl/observed-insert-length.pl
perl observed-insert-length.pl Velvet_67 > Velvet_ins_size.txt
Outcome:
Observed **median insert length: 352**
Observed mode of insert length: 347
Observed sample standard deviation: 868.138129940986
Suggested velvetg parameters: -ins_length 352 -ins_length_sd 868.138129940986
2) I ran bbmap to actually map the short reads to the Velvet contigs to calculate the insert size.
bbmap.sh in1=oenopla-reads1.fastq in2=oenopla-reads2.fastq ref=Velvet_67/contigs.fa reads=-1 ihist=ihist.txt
Outcome:
Pairing data: pct pairs num pairs pct bases num bases
mated pairs: 9.1591% 730308 9.1591% 109546200
bad pairs: 5.9061% 470928 5.9061% 70639200
insert size avg: 862.75
insert 25th %: 91.00
**insert median: 193.00**
insert 75th %: 374.00
insert std dev: 3468.98
insert mode: 78
I got two different median insert size, 352 and 193. Which number should I pick? How to decide the max and min?