A bit OT: Image Sequences to FCP

Hi all,

Has anybody ever tried to import a 34000 picture sequence into FCP? With success?

I know very stupid question!
Possible answers:
Use QT Player: hangs!
Use AE: 6.5 on Tiger works somehow on my G5 but there are frames missing first on import then in composition (always a few less then in the step before) - without any error report or "missing frame color bars". CS3 on Leopard 8 Core Mac even won't import.

FCP at least let me wait for some hours without crashing - only being unresponsive.

What would work are 17000 frames on G5, but I would like to avoid distribute the sequences to even more different folders as this would make the media management of all 1000000+ files even more complicated.

Thanks for any thoughts/experience on that.
Andreas

Each picture is a frame? You trying to do some stop motion effect?

Michael Horton
-------------------

Some update on this:
FCP 6.0.2 (8 Core Intel, Leopard) succeeded after 1 1/2 hours - unfortunately the first 12000+x frames are missing - now working to get the rest to the timeline.
(There are still 6 image sequences to come.)
QT Player on G5 Tiger still tries to display the source directory - not crashed yet.
QT Player on 8 Core Intel Leopard does crash after the first file is selected and frame rate is set.

So maybe I figure out a number of images you can use with any setup and build a small app which distributes image sequences to folders on can deal with ;-).

Andreas

Quote
Micheal Horton
Each picture is a frame? You trying to do some stop motion effect?

No - it's a "standard" movie though the resolution is a "bit" higher (like the RED in best mode plus some pixels more) and the total picture finally is distributed to several projectors each 1440x1080 which finally result in an odd pixel aspect for each of the 5/6 projectors.
I've done quite often before (and do) but not with a sequence of this length - last time I did was a 360 degree video for an exhibition in Melbourne "downunder" and that time we did run G4s and G3s (including iMacs!) and OS 9. And yes - we not really had fun while waiting for the machines to display something or to render something but it worked.

Andreas

Another update.
FCP told me that: "Codec not found" after adding the 21000 frames which came in and were send to the timeline - and than crashed. So obviously no way with 8 Core Intel and Leopard to handle such an image sequence (or multiple of them).
QT Player with Tiger on G5 still is is "working" though I don't see an result right now.

There is this old song "where are the days my friend we thought they never end" - I got one today

Andreas

Import the image sequence with Quicktime Player Pro and than export a .mov with the FCP sequence settings.

Quicktime:
Menu File-Import Image Sequence

When opened:

Menu File-Export

Rui Barros
Editor Colorist Trainer
Lisbon, Portugal
RTP Post-Production
Apple Certified Trainer FCP 7
Apple Certified Pro FCP 7

Hey Rui, you may have missed part of Andreas' original post:

> Use QT Player: hangs!

It's Andreas; not likely he'll miss this option!


www.derekmok.com

Quote
Rui Barros
Import the image sequence with Quicktime Player Pro and than export a .mov with the FCP sequence settings.

Thanks for the idea. But as said I tried already.

One thing I figured out that the 8 Core 3 GHz machine is at least 15 times faster than the old dual 2GHz G5:
QT Player crashed after 5 minutes when trying to import one of the big image sequences on the new machine and it took 80 or 90 minutes for the G5 to crash with the same result.
I haven't tried FCP on the G5 but as it took about 40 minutes to crash on the Intel machine I would assume it would have taken 6 hours or more to crash on the G5 with same result.

Here the update: last night I was dreaming the magic number for image sequences could be 32000.
I was able to remove 2000 frames from the beginning of each sequence as they were somehow redundant (the movies do have about 1 1/2 minutes overlap to create an endless loop). So I finally ended up with a bit less than 32k frames.
And it worked AE CS3 is no longer crashing while importing the image sequence and AE 6.5 on G5 shows the correct timing (with the original 33898 frames I did tell me that the sequence does have 32676 frames, dropping it onto a new comp it told me that there are 32013 frames that's why I tried the 32000)

So for the records: 32000 is max for image sequences.

Regards
Andreas

Where can this be seen? It sounds like something Andy Warhol would've liked.

Unfortunately I can't be seen. At least not for the public.
Finally the result is very technical even if the process to get the final movie is very like a Hollywood production. A lot of color matching, roto paint and spline and much rendering as we first have to get color matched cam streams into one big (which is a lot handwork) from there we do speed adjusts (quite often with the stream manually divided into several layers for better fine tuning).
This image sequence is rendered to 6 streams again for cubic projection (each stream for a face of a cube).
Now each of the resulting streams has to be corrected again to match light distribution within the Cave projection and make the "edges" of the cube less visible.
Those matching streams will loaded to the drives of a big cluster with even more projectors to get stereo images.
When the cluster starts work it takes a 3D modell of a (not yet existing) car and renders it real time into the video streams while the "driver" using polarized glasses does get the feeling he is really sitting in this car. The driver also has a motion sensor attached to the glasses so if he moves all the projection will be recalculated in real time to match the position of his head. So running this virtual roller coaster and stop at a traffic light and don't see some signs as they are covered by the cars roof, just move your head forward like in real life and you will see them.

So in this case it's not something Andy Warhol would like it's more a hooooooorrible expensive video game all kids would love. But I also made some nice art projects using this technique.

Maybe I'm allowed to post some pictures of the setup.

Regards
Andreas

Here's setting up our "Dolly"
Dolly 1
Dolly 2

Thanks Derek,
Sorry Andrea,

My reply was made during a break here at the network.

Rui Barros
Editor Colorist Trainer
Lisbon, Portugal
RTP Post-Production
Apple Certified Trainer FCP 7
Apple Certified Pro FCP 7

I want that car Andreas


Michael Horton
-------------------

Me too, but no chance I suggested they don't pay me and give me the car - they replied: even if we would - you have to work for some years.
This one is a handmade masterpiece to test how much of a cars body can be made out of carbon. You'll find the signatures of all people involved in the middle behind the seats.

But it's real fun using this car for "shooting"

Andreas

I thought Michael wanted a pony?

Just a quick note to the original thread, we discovered that QuickTime Pro isn't particularly fond of doing very long projects. It tries, but it's just not very robust. Crash, Seize up, Hangs.

We quickly found we needed a shell program like MPEG Streamclip to manage things. I have no idea if Streamclip will make a movie out of a million stills.

Since you're either already out of time or soon will be, have you tried iMovie? iMovie has a good deal more relaxed standards and will frequenly pull a show out of the fire when nothing else will.

Koz

Figured QT pro wasn't as trusty on huge projects. If only compressor could do it- then you can use a render farm with other macs to lighten the load. Anyway to break up the stills into batches, then assembling that in FCP?

Drop them in any Avid.

Koz

Thanks Koz but also MPEG Streamclip hangs even with less frames.
I got confirmed from Adobe that everything above 30k frames in "a row" probably won't work with AE.

The problem for me was that the image sequence has to be modified and then rendered to an image sequence again.
It was luck that I was able to cut it down to just below the magic number.
Sure I could have cut the sequence into three folders by a shell script, importing as smaller sequences, lay them into a sequence and nest it and go from there.
But that was something I tried to avoid as the project structure itself is complicated enough.

Finally render times in this case are not the real problem - the four Macs are quite fast.

I think I'll have to dive into ImageMagick again. Avid would be too expensive.

Andreas

hi,

we just imported multiple image sequence of tiffs (7.9 MB each), about 28000 in total, with 8-core, 2.8GHz, no problem... then exported to QT in HD 1920x1080... again no problem. Took about 2 hours.

What kind of files do you have in your sequence? QT might crash due to the alpha channel in some TIFF's, if this is what you have..

OS 10.5.2, QT 7.1

Many thanks Thomas for diving into the problem.

The single pictures are just some stupid small .tga files with nothing special like alpha and in this case they are very small preview files - size for each file around 400 to 500 kb.

The problem really is the amount of files - not the size. I talked to one the german guys here and he told the same you said and he had "only" 27000 in total and everything worked fine.

It's this "magic number" of 32000 - and don't ask me why. I already asked at a list I know Apple is watching, but got no answer yet

Thanks
Andreas

Andreas,

well then it's simple.
just divide up the folder in two different ones and import successively.
In your FCP timeline you can edit the mov's together and export as TIFFs or TGA's again..

Thomas

I have never tried FCP for image sequences...always had such great experiences with After Effects and it's quick. AE is much more powerful with larger images & sequences. An image sequence once imported into AE is treated like a footage file and can be rendered out very quickly (as long as no FX have been applied).

After Effects supports a maximum image resolution of 30,000 x 30,000 pixels for importing and rendering files, except for PICT (4,000 x 4,000 pixels), BMP (16,000 x 30,000 pixels), and PXR (30,000 x 16,000 pixels). When you work with higher resolutions, you can use a wider variety of formats, such as IMAX frames (4096 x 3002 pixels), full-aperture/silent frames (4096 x 3112 pixels), and other large-format media).

I personally use TIFF & TARGA sequences as a rule because AE loves them and both include Alpha Channels and the color space can be bumped up to smooth gradient banding)

The trick to a successful sequence is to make sure that the sequence is in numerical order - not missing one number anywhere.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Quote

...always had such great experiences with After Effects and it's quick. AE is much more powerful with larger images & sequences. An image sequence once imported into AE is treated like a footage file and can be rendered out very quickly (as long as no FX have been applied)

I know and that's why I do this kind of work always with AE. But AE CS3 even won't import these amount of images - and as I wrote earlier Adobe confirmed that anything above 30000 will get quirky, but they will have look at it.
The solution to split the sequences above some folders does work - and as I said I tried that and it worked - but this would make the projects file management an even worse nightmare as I would have to move files around like crazy depending on the level where a change is needed.
And it's not just 1 of this kind of image sequence there are really many of them.
Also splitting files will need some kind of nesting in the "FX" app - at least with the work I've to do.

I also tried just to use "Alias Files" in the "distributed folders" which kept at least the original image sequences in one location, but though this looks as the best option it slows down dramatically at some point of time. I've no idea why.

Anyway many thanks to all for taking the time to read and posting suggestions.

Kind regards
Andreas

Some workflow tools for FCP [www.spherico.com]
TitleExchange -- juggle titles within FCS, FCPX and many other apps.
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