Can't load photo sequence

I have 4000+ JPG’s shot as a photo (v. video) time lapse shot. AFAIK, I drag photo #1 to the playlist, change the properties to check image sequence, I get a flash message about loading image sequence… there’s nothing there but image #1. What am I doing or not doing to get the 4000+ JPG’s treated as a video track?

Hi @RBEmerson, are your photos all named sequentially - ie xxzz001, xxzz002 etc? If not, it won’t work.

Version 19.07.15 includes a fix for image sequences without leading zeroes in the number part of their name. But yeah, not much info here to work with.

File names:
20181229050038_0007.JPG
20181229050041_0008.JPG
20181229050045_0009.JPG
.
.
.
20181229100954_4646.JPG
20181229100957_4647.JPG
20181229101002_4648.JPG

Yes, the files prior to 0007 are missing - by intent.

This should be drop and sequence. It’s not. Hence the question

Those filenames will not work. You need to rename the files. Remove everything before the _ and replace it with a constant prefix. The filenames need to look like the screenshot.

image

This utility will let you rename all the files.

Using bulk renaming, the sequence loaded as I’d expected. (I’m going to play with file name issue - I suspect the name should have been handled as being every bit as sequential as 0001, 0002, 0003 … 000n. I’ll post more if there’s something to discuss.)

There is a problem with playback. Each JPG was shot 3 seconds after the previous JPG. I expected the playback to be, well, frame after frame at 24 fps. Instead, a frame is up for three seconds, the next is up for three seconds, and so on.

The properties say the images should have come in, AFAIK, one JPG per frame, with frame numbers incrementing 24 to the second or whatever. In any case, a 3 second delay is a surprise.

If I use keyboard “right arrow” or "left arrow"to scroll through the timeline, the playback is about what I’d expect from scrolling through 24 fps video. Where is that 3 second pause coming from, and how do I import the series to not do that?

Just to confirm, did you select Repeat: 1 frame per picture in Properties before importing?

Image%20sequence%20shotcut

Duh… the problem doesn’t have anything to do with the images. For some reason Shotcut is working hard to play back the time line as video. I rendered the track and got exactly what I expected, 1 frame = 1 image. End of problem.

In summary, the filename form didn’t appear to be sequential to shotcut, although direct inspection looks sequential. With a filename form meeting the sequential name requirement there was no problem.

The project is to monitor a tomato plant’s response to watering, to see the sequence of going from drooping to looking well watered. High art this is not.

NTL there is one loose end. The original images are 4000 x 3000 with 4:3 aspect ratio. The track has 1080P and 16:9. What step(s) did I miss to retain the resolution or at least aspect ratio?

They do not have the same value before the underscore. “20181229050038” != “20181229050041”
20181229050038_0007.JPG
20181229050041_0008.JPG

You need to configure a video mode. When you first start Shotcut, read what it says about “Automatic” in the New Project view. Image sequences are not considered a “video clip.”

Problem solved. Thanks.

I have made several time lapse videos. I usually have around 800 jpeg photos to rename. The easiest way for me is to select all files, right click on the first file. Click rename. Type “1” without the quotes and all the files are in sequence.

2 Likes

Did not know that. Works very nicely. Thanks.

Works with Linux Fedora KDE plasma as well.

In the immortal words of Johnny Carson: “I did not know that”. Thanks for posting that.

As an experiment, I stripped the _nnnn portion from the files named like this:
20181229050038_0007

2018122905003 is a sequential timestamp. For whatever reason, that form isn’t recognized as part of a sequential file name series. I can, of course, use the final four digits, or now the hack Geers2u posted. That the time stamp doesn’t work is a minor puzzle.

Software does not know this is timestamp; it is simply part of a file name. Members of an image sequence should have the same file name stem. You could have multiple sequences in the same folder that must be differentiated by their stem.

In the example I gave, the time stamp runs yyyymmddhhmmss or (broken out into components)
2018 12 28 05 00 38 - hh is in 24 hour form - there is no punctuation present
The next image is
2018 12 29 05 00 41

The seconds increment by three because the camera adds a new image every (surprise!) three seconds. (the 2018 date is an error in camera TOD)

I expected 20181229050041 , etc. to qualify as a sequential name series, no different than 0001, 0002, …, nnnn but with more digits - guess not , huh.


Since there are a number of ways to get sequential 1,2,3…n numbers, the question of the time stamps is mostly of academic interest.

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