Image Sequence to Cinelerra List converter

by Claudio “malefico” Andaur

Introduction

Importing images sequences into Cinelerra is done via list files. A list file is nothing but a text file with a specific format containing absolute paths to every frame in the sequence plus additional information like image resolution, fileformat and sequence framerate.

Weren’t we using this a list, we should import every frame as a separate clip and setting manually its duration in the timeline, which will not only be slow as dead but would hug lot of system resources.

In the other hand we can write this lists manually, which is not pleasent at all, specially when dealing with long paths and large amounts of frames.

Because of all these reasons, I wrote this app which not only it generates a list given a frame of an images sequence, but also autodetects all related parameters with it, including number of frames, file format and image resolution.

Download

IMG2LIST 0.1.5 can be downloaded from here.

Install

IMG2LIST works in LINUX and it requires full installation of Python 2.3.x

Besides that it needs PyGTK 2.0 or better and Glade 2. It was succesfully tested on Mandrake Linux 10, and LiveCDs like Ratatouille, Rollmops (http://garbure.org) and Dyne:bolic 1.4.

Even though it hasn’t been tested on Windows, it might work if all required libraries are present.

Usage

Call the program with “img2list” in a console or using a menu. A GUI will show up as shown in Figure 1.

FIGURA 1. Interfaz de IMG2LIST 0.1.5

We should locate in our hard disk a frame belonging to the desired sequence using the “…” button next to “Carpeta” (”Folder”).

This sequence should be a TGA or JPEG images sequence, which are the formats supported by Cinelerra. An images sequence is identified with the pattern “image_filename-#####” where “#####” is a number representing the frame of this image in the sequence. If our files dont fit this pattern, they will be disregarded as sequences.

Many sequences can be mixed up in the same folder: no problem. IMG2LIST should recognize which files belong to the selected sequence and discard the rest.

Once an image file was selected, press OK in the “Cargar Secuencia” dialog.

Number of frames and filename pattern of the sequence should show up in the main window.

If you click on “Autodetectar”, the software will grab width (W) and height (H) information of image. Otherwise we can enter these values manually.

Then we should select a filename for the list where we want to export the data for use in Cinelerra. When done we can press “Export Sequence” to write a list file with all the sequence information. In the status bar int he main window a message will show up reporting operation end.

We can also enter a value for FPS, the sequence framerate in frames per second.

We can go on generating other list files for all images sequences we need and then click on “Leave” to leave. If IMG2LIST is called from a console, we can have a grasp of the processed data.

License

This program is distributed under the GPL license terms.