Working with an Image Sequence


Motion is an incredibly versatile program that was designed to work equally well with QuickTime video, still images, and image sequences. You can view an image sequence as a single collapsed file or as individual frames. A collapsed image sequence looks and acts like a QuickTime video. Let's take a look at your Fish Frames folder in the File Browser.

1.

Press Cmd-Tab to unhide Motion; then click the Desktop icon in the upper pane of the File Browser to display the Desktop contents in the lower pane.

2.

Click the disclosure triangle for the Fish Frames folder to view the contents.

The Fish Scene image sequence appears as a single collapsed file named Fish Scene[###].tga:0:179. Why such a complicated filename? When you view a collapsed image sequence, the contents of the sequence are part of the filename. The series of number signs (#) between brackets indicates the number of digits that will be included in the numerals in the sequence. The .tga suffix indicates the type of file, and the numbers 0:179 indicate the frames within the sequence.

Now let's turn off the image sequence feature to view the individual files in the File Browser. How? Simply click the "Show collapsed image sequences" button at the lower right of the File Browser.

3.

Click the "Show collapsed image sequences" button to turn off the image sequence feature (uncollapse the sequence) in the File Browser.

The contents of the Fish Frames folder changes to show the individual, sequentially numbered still frames. You might want to uncollapse a sequence if you need to modify only a couple of frames. Otherwise, you can collapse the sequence to work with it as one media file in the project.

4.

Click the "Show collapsed image sequences" button again to collapse the sequence into a single image sequence file.

5.

In the File Browser, select the collapsed sequence; then press the Play button in the Preview area to load the collapsed sequence.

The image sequence loads into memory so it can be played in the Preview area. You can import the sequence into the project as you would any other clip.

6.

Close the current project.

Now you can add image sequences to the types of media files that you know how to work with in Motion.

NOTE

You may need to turn off the image sequence feature if you import sequentially numbered image files from a digital camera, because these files can be mistaken for an image sequence. By default, any sequentially numbered still-image files will appear in the File Browser as an image sequence. To turn off the feature, just click the "Show collapsed image sequences" button.




    Apple Pro Training Series Getting Started with Motion
    Apple Pro Training Series: Getting Started With Motion
    ISBN: 0321305337
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 283
    Authors: Mary Plummer

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