Subsections

- Filelist format
- Image2ffmpeg

##
Timelapse Sequence of Images, and Animation

The next areas covered in this section are the following: Filelist format such as jpeglist and Image2ffmpeg.

In order to be reasonably fast to use, you will most likely want to prepare them by creating a script and then load by utilizing this file generated script.

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Filelist format

An image sequence is a series of ordered still pictures; for example a bunch of camera shots, frames of an animated scene, or series of frame shots. These can be loaded as multiple files. For timelapse sequences, as the size of camera images increases to 70 megabytes and beyond, and more images can be stored on a memory stick, more cache, memory, and system resources (such as file descriptors) are used by CINELERRA-GG to load the images when you use the concatenate tracks or paste at insertion point strategies. It is very time consuming and resource consuming when each of the image files is loaded and concatenated as edits, and it also plays super poorly. Here is an alternative to the usual load. This technique may also be useful for just a bunch of pictures.

File lists formats can be utilized in some way for the following list of types of Sequence files The first line of the sequence list file identifies the list codec.

PNGLIST = *.png | PPMLIST = *.ppm | TGALIST = *.tga | TIFFLIST = *.tiff |  |  |
EXRLIST = *.exr | CR2LIST = *.cr2 | JPEGLIST = *.jpg | GIFLIST = *.gif |  |  |

Using the example of jpeg’s, the jpeg list sequence file type is the easiest and fastest way to access a sequence of jpg images as a single asset. First build a jpeglist sequence file and name it something like jpeglist.sh. There is an example script of how to do this in the Auxiliary Programs section of the Appendix (C.2). Once the jpeglist.sh file is built and made executable you can then run it similar to this line:

    ./jpeglist.sh   /<same_path>/outputfile.jpgs   /<same_path>/inputfilesDSC*.jpg

The <path> must be the same on both outputfile and inputfiles so that they can be successfully loaded in CINELERRA-GG. Since this creates outputfile list as a single asset, the memory demand and access time is much lower. When you load the outputfile in CINELERRA-GG, you might need to set Try ffmpeg last if ffmpeg does not work with that particular type of sequence files.

An example output file from running this script residing in the directory where DSC*.jpg files exist is shown below. To use this, turn off ffmpeg probes first, and open outputfile.jpgs using File → Load files. Of course, you can edit this file to change frame rate or names of files to include. The width and height should always be the same size for each included file and the file type must be the same. For example, if you include a JPEG file in a GIF list, you will get undesirable results.

Listing: Example: outputfile.jpgs
    JPEGLIST
    # First line is always JPEGLIST and all files must be JPEGs
    # Frame rate:
    29.970030
    # Width - all files must be the same size in width:
    6016
    # Height - all files must be the same size in height:
    4016
    # List of image files follows
    ./DSC04948.jpg
    ./DSC04949.jpg
    ./DSC04950.jpg
    ./DSC04951.jpg
    ...(files in between)
    ./DSC04997.jpg
    ./DSC04998.jpg

Another advantage of using image sequences of exr, jpeg, png, ppm tiff, and tga is that if you then render to anoher of the same sequence type, a direct copy speed up can be used for any of the unmodified frames.

###
Image2ffmpeg

Image2file format is an alternative method to open an image sequence via ffmpeg. To do this, create 2 files in the same directory as the DSC*.jpg files named: DSC0%04d.opts, and DSC0%04d.jpg. DSC0%04d.opts should contain the following lines which have to be modified to fit your exact requirements for duration, start_number, and frame_rate.

Listing: Example DSC0%04d.opts
    loglevel=verbose
    threads=auto
    format=image2
    codec=mjpeg
    start_number=4948
    frame_rate=29.97
    duration=17.36

Example of the contents of the file DSC0%04d.jpg would be just a single line as: JPEG In this case, make sure Try ffmpeg first is enabled, and load DSC0%04d.jpg. This will access the media using ffmpeg which is slower so be patient.