IMAGE SEQUENCES - Detecting & Scanning file order/patterns

[ciril]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post in here What a great forum.

 

I'v been looking online everywhere for any tips or help, basically I have a script which will scan given location (folder or drive).

And makes listing, just like regular "index of" type.

 

Is there any command or way to detect "image sequence/order" within files?! To detect if given files have any mathematical formation/order in filenames.

 

Say I have directory:

flower001.jpg

flower002.jpg

flower003.jpg

house1.jpg

house2.jpg

house5.jpg

house6.jpg

house7.jpg

footage__000100.jpg

footage__000101.jpg

footage__000102.jpg

footage__000103.jpg

footage2___000432.jpg

footage2___000433.jpg

footage2___000434.jpg

footage2___000435.jpg

footage2___000436.jpg

 

What function/command would you use to be listed/detected as following (sample format could be anything different):

Image Sequences

flower001-003 ----- 3 images

house1-2 ---- 2 images

house5-7 ---- 3 images

footage__000100-footage__000103 ---- 4 images

footage2___000432-footage2___000436 ----- 5 images

 

Is this has to do with NATURAL order and sorting?!

Thank you for any tips or help.

 

take care,

ciril

 

 

[ratcateme]

to my knowledge you would have to write tour own function.

have a look at glob() and readdir()

 

Scott.

[Fadion]

I gave this a try, but couldn't find a way of organizing the data. Surely one can get the files in an array with glob(), parse the data in a new array to remove numbers (to let only flower, flower, house, house, ...) and find the unique values with array_unique. But that's as far as I can reach. Basically, if the files are of the format "image_1, image_2, flower_1, flower_2", i have this:

 

<?php
$files = array();
$unique = array();
foreach(glob("*.jpg") as $file){
     $files[] = $file;
     $unique[] = substr($file, 0, strrpos($file, '_'));
}
$unique = array_unique($unique);
print_r($unique);
?>

 

The $unique array hold the unique values with their keys (ie. [ 0 ]=>"flower", [ 3 ]=>"house") but I can't find a way go through all $files values, from a $unique key to another.

[ratcateme]

you could go through $unique and run another glob() but i don't know how to get it to output the numbers of each file

 

Scott.

[ciril]

Thank you guys for such QUICK response and sharing your experience scott, ratcateme & GuiltyGear, I already love this forum.

 

I'm building software which is for visual effects (free for all package) and in most vfx applications (such as Fusion, Shake, Nuke), we have what they call "File Sequence".

PHP will be the main backbone engine for all SQLite (great advantage here - single file etc. no install) operations.

You gather image sequence, and it loads onto timeline.

If there is any "missing frame" say you have order: 143,144,145,146,152,153,154 - it will know that 152 is new sequence since next higher number is missing from 146 (as last frame).

 

Readir it's already in use and others like scanf, and fopen.

Binary EXE (PHP is the heart) --- gives extreme performance.

 

Thank you for writing sample code - GuiltyGear.

I will look more into it, when solution come I will post code here.

best,

c

 

 

 

[Fadion]

you could go through $unique and run another glob() but i don't know how to get it to output the numbers of each file

 

It can work and I though about that, but me neither don't know how to group the files.

 

@ciril. I understand what you want to achieve. Flash (and many similar apps) have the option of sequence importing by selecting one file of the sequence. If thats your case, you can use the code i provided in a reduced form. I'm not sure how are you going to let the user select the file sequence (by uploading all the files and selecting one, by giving them a predefined library?) so this may not work in your case, but let give this a try:

 

<?php
$initial = 'flower_001';
$initial = substr($initial, 0, strrpos($initial, '_'));
$files = array();
foreach(glob($initial , "*.jpg") as $file){
     $files[] = $file;
}
print_r($files); //should give you: flower_001, flower_002, flower_003
?>

 

Surely you can improve the code by adding a regex to get the common filename without numbers, but that shouldn't be difficult. This will work if you let the user specify an initial file foor the sequence ($initial) and sort them even if a sequence file is missing.

 

Hope this helps.

[ciril]

Hey GuiltyGear,

Thanks your involvement into this.

Users/Artists will do regular Windows base "Browse..." for TARGET either hard drive (as entire C:, D: Z: etc) or specified folder(s).

PHP code will search and list image sequences from entire source/TARGET for their shots/image sequences. Read curcial info, resoltuion, bit depth, format info, uncompressed data etc. (tiff, dpx, tga, JPG is not really used in effects). Will also make thumbs from from, say split sequence into 3 frame grabs etc.

 

Best,

c

 

[ciril]

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