Import incomplete Image Sequence

Vincent-Mesman wrote on 7/24/2022, 5:07 AM

When I setup my 3D animations I render images that must be put on the Vegas timeline on exactly the frame number as written in the filename. Random intermediate frames will be added as the project progresses, but the timing should not change. Where other NLE's can deal with missing frames in the Image Sequence, VP17 is not. Is that different in VP19? If not, is there anything that can be done about it? I still want to keep using Vegas during pre-production of my projects for previews but this is a huge problem for me. Rendering the entire 3D scene for every iteration is not an option - too expensive. I'd buy any upgrade on the spot if this Import Media limitation is solved.

Comments

fr0sty wrote on 7/24/2022, 12:27 PM

I haven't yet seen another NLE that can deal with missing frames (I do CG as well), can you name an example of how this works?

Systems:

Desktop

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x 8 core 16 thread at stock speed

64GB 3000mhz DDR4

Geforce RTX 3090

Windows 10

Laptop:

ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo 32GB (9980HK CPU, RTX 2060 GPU, dual 4K touch screens, main one OLED HDR)

john_dennis wrote on 7/24/2022, 12:33 PM

@Vincent-Mesman

Here's how Vegas Pro 19-643 actually works. Watch this armchair test.

My Observations

Vegas will allow the operator to specify a range of stills greater than the detected sequential range. Missing frames within that range will be entered on the Vegas Pro timeline as black frames

Vincent-Mesman wrote on 7/24/2022, 1:28 PM

That's very kind of you to make a demo video.

You demonstrated a situation where a single frame was missing. So the trick is to have at least the first two frames in order to enable "Open sequence" in the file dialog, and adjust the "Last Image". That solves one problem. I can confirm that it works in VP17.

The second problem is that (in a regular situation) at this stage of the production I only provide 1 to 15 % of the frames for evaluation of timing and content. During playback the provided frames will flash before my eyes. It seems there is no option available to set "Missing Frames" to "Fail" (as in Fusion) or "Hold Last Frame" (as in LightWave).

That kind of software will add an additional step for each iteration of the scene. A very undesirable situation, for both production speed and storage space utilization.

Image Sequence player software DJV will playback the available images only without considering their frame number - so that's clearly unusable too.

I don't have access to older NLE's at the moment so I can't confirm their behaviour with 100% certainty.

So the bottom line is that Vegas should have a setting on how it should handle missing frames. Do you agree?

jetdv wrote on 7/24/2022, 2:08 PM

What if you write a script to import the sequence the way you want it imported? It will be a BUNCH of images on the timeline instead of a single event but you could then control how everything is imported.

joelsonforte.br wrote on 7/24/2022, 4:17 PM

The second problem is that (in a regular situation) at this stage of the production I only provide 1 to 15 % of the frames for evaluation of timing and content. During playback the provided frames will flash before my eyes. It seems there is no option available to set "Missing Frames" to "Fail" (as in Fusion) or "Hold Last Frame" (as in LightWave).

Just duplicate the video track and move the event in duplicated track as many frames as necessary so that the black frames in original video event do not appear.