Image Sequences (Vegas Pro 9 suggestions)

marc_hermann wrote on 5/16/2009, 12:55 PM
Hello, everyone,


for someone like me, who does mostly animation, the possibility to export image sequences from Vegas 9 is a major workflow improvement, connecting editing and compositing (which I do in Eyeon's Fusion) a lot better. It's the one reason I'll be upgrading to 9 (currently using the demo).


I have noticed several things, though, that could be done better (and post them here because I don't know where to put feature requests):

* Image sequence playback (720p PNGs) was smoother in good old Vegas 8. I'm sure it doesn't have to be this way.

* I would like to influence the amount of compression when exporting to JPEG sequences. Just give me the usual codec options like with video export.

* An option to influence the numbering of the exported sequences (leading zeroes, underscore or dot to seperate from file name etc.) would be helpful to stick to pipeline conventions.

* A great time-saver for my layered animations would be an option to export every track to it's own image sequence using the track name as file name.

* Auto detection of image sequences so they can be imported via drag'n'drop instead of "import media..." would make my workflow a lot faster.

Some of these shouldn't be too difficult to implement.

Marc

Comments

farss wrote on 5/16/2009, 2:18 PM
After my brief efforts at trying to get DPX to work in V9 last night I agree with all that you're saying.
The sequence export numbering system fails to follow industry convention. I think I got AE to load it properly as it has an option to handle this. Even so, Vegas should be following industry convention and this is dead simple to code correctly.

As for image compression, see my other post regarding DPX, I am lost trying to fathom what Vegas is doing here.

If you wish to make formal Product Suggestions, look at the very top of this page under Support>Product Suggestions. Last option in the drop down.

Bob.
bStro wrote on 5/16/2009, 5:56 PM
the possibility to export image sequences from Vegas 9 is a major workflow improvement ... It's the one reason I'll be upgrading to 9 (currently using the demo).

Are you currently using Vegas or Vegas Movie Studio? Are you aware that Vegas 8 and earlier have a script for exporting image sequences? (The Vegas 9 tool may have features that the script doesn't -- I don't know.)

Rob
marc_hermann wrote on 5/17/2009, 9:12 AM
No, actually, I wasn't aware of that functionality in Vegas Pro 8 (I never really looked into the scripting menu). I have now tried it but find that the scripted export takes A LOT longer with the script than with Vegas Pro 9.

As I use the software professionally, this gain in speed is still worth the investment depite the shortcomings mentioned above.

Marc

PS: I have now submitted my suggestions through the official form, too.
rmack350 wrote on 5/17/2009, 5:13 PM
There were two other ways to get image sequences. The script would save frames from the preview window with whatever pixel aspect ratio your project required baked into each image (so 720x480 NTSC footage would come out at 655x480).

The second way is to use the Debugmode frameserver. This has a couple more image format options and can output a 720x480 NTSC project at 720x480. It also has a little flexibility in naming but i don't know if covers your needs. It looks to me like it doesn't really support an 8-bit Alpha channel in PNG files, which seems to me like a crippling drawback.

VP9.0's sequence renderer supports an 8-bit alpha channel in PNG files. That's a good sign. Unfortunately, it always renders images with the project's PAR built into the image. There's no way to choose this for yourself. There's also no naming flexibility, as you found out, and the render fails if the image it wants to write already exists. It can't determine the next available filename and start from there.

So, the image sequence exporter needs some work, and I guess that now that VP9 is released they can start listening to user suggestions about the features they added. Sure, it'd be more efficient to ask people who make the feature suggestions before they release the product...
Paul Fierlinger wrote on 5/17/2009, 6:53 PM
I am an animator as well and a few months ago I used a Render Image Sequence which someone posted on one of these forums and it is quite fast and makes excellent PNG images. It was a feature film and it took little time all together to render 1080p images. But this script did not come with Vegas 8; I had to get it as freeware from the Internet but have forgotten where. I am surprised to hear that you found one already installed because as far as I know there was nothing at all in that list. I could e-mail you the one I have if you write me off list. The script I have gives only two options, JPEG and PNG. I had them both tested by a filmout facility where they were astonished by the high quality.