problem processing folder of images

[Michael Theodore]

Hello,

 

So I'm having a strange problem where I

 

1) process a movie to a folder of images: folder X.

 

2) then, I process (with a different PASeq) the images of folder X to a new folder of images , folder Y.

 

Here's the problem: processing the movie to folder X resulted in a series of frames: f1, f2, f3, etc. However, processing the images from folder X to a new set of images in folder Y results in frames with the following order: f1, f2, then skips to f10-20, then to f100, etc. In other words, the frames aren't being written from 1 to n, but in the order I described.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks, Michael

[Michael Theodore]

Just tried it with another set of images, and got a resulting frame order of

f1, f10-f19, f100, etc

[Synthetik]

Are you on a mac or windows? And what os version?

 

Maybe we need to move to an explicit preference based numbering scheme of something like name0001,name0002, etc for our numbered output. I don't have any real control over the results of a folder scan, it gets passed back to me in what it thinks is alphabetical order. And different operating systems can interpret name numbering differently, even between different version of an os on the same computer platform, let alone different computer platform.

 

I actually thought we had dealt with this before at some point.  What Action menu commands are you using for your processing? I can look under the hood at how it's currently implemented try and get a fix in the next 4.04 beta.

[Michael Theodore]

I'm on a mac, OS 10.5.8.

 

This happens when I write an image sequence using the "Process with Paint Action Sequence->image to image," (actually this happens with "movie to image" as well), and then read those images in to create another sequence. In other words, this happens when the image sequence that I'm reading in was created by SA. I'm pretty sure, but not 100% positive that this does not happen when I try to read in an image sequence that was written by QT Pro (I can try to verify this).

 

[Michael Theodore]

The problem, at least on this computer/system, seems to be in the way that SA writes out the image sequence. When I have SA write the image sequence, and then read it back in with either SA or Photoshop, it gets read in the wrong order. When I use Quicktime to write out the image sequence, it gets read in properly by both SA and PS.

PS uses "<nameoffile> 0001" , which seems to work...

[Synthetik]

I'll fix it in 4.04, and try to include the fix in the next beta build i promised you. I really thought we dealt with this whole issue in the past a long time ago, but maybe as a part of the version 4 rewrite or some other 'fix' the extra proceeding 000x part of the name generation got changed.

[Michael Theodore]

thanks so much, again no hurry, but just wanted to see if there was some fix in the preferences or something that I didn't know about.

 

I can confirm that on my system, image sequences written by SA are named file1, file2, etc., with no 000x thing...

 

[Donna Kuhn]

i had the same problem a couple of days ago.

[Synthetik]

So i'm currently fixing this issue. I had a few questions for anyone who cares about this particular frame numbering issue.

 

Is it ok to just have a fixed number of digits for the numbering, and if so what should that be? Or do people feel a need to specify it as a preference option.

 

Also, any other special requests for frame naming or numbering features, while i'm reworking this code?

[Michael Theodore]

The way Photoshop does it seems to work with all my other apps: "filename 000x" (there is a space). Thanks for looking at this!

[liveart]

I mentioned this once before, but will repeat it here. I would find it infinitely more useful if the numbering of movie files followed the frame number vs the image processed number. Right now if I am processing a movie to a list of images the image numbering is such that the first frame processed is image 001.. now if it happens that I am starting at the first frame and don't stop or crash this is fine. But if I am starting at frame 500 or if the process is stopped and I have to re-start then the numbering from 001 (all over again) can create massive confusion. I have a kludged workaround. But it would be great if the numbering followed the frame sequence such that if I start or restart from frame 500 the numbering would start at 500.