ls-like command for image frame sequences
Project description
About lsseq
lsseq
is a unix/linux command-line utility that
lists directory contents (akin to /bin/ls
) while condensing image
sequences (or cache sequences) to one entry each and listing the sequence in
a helpful way. Filenames that are part of sequences are assumed to be of
the form:
<descriptiveName>.<frameNum>.<imgExtension>
where <imgExtension>
is drawn from a default list of image extensions or an
environment variable that can be set to override the default list. (see
lsseq --help
and in particular --imgExt
).
Note that lsseq
can also handle the case that the dot-separator
between the <descriptiveName>
and the <frameNum>
is an underscore
(see lsseq --help
for --looseNumSeparator, -l
).
lsseq
can print the image sequence in a variety of formats useful for nuke
,
houdini
or rv
and can also print a glob
pattern for use in the shell. It also
has it's own native output which is nice to read.
For example:
$ ls
aaa.097.tif aaa.098.tif aaa.100.tif aaa.101.tif aaa.102.tif aaa.103.tif
$ lsseq
aaa.[097-103].tif m:[99]
What lsseq
tells us here is that there is a sequence of tif files named
aaa
with frames 97 through 103 (three padded) and frame 99 is missing.
lsseq
was written and designed in a way that hopefully makes it unnecessary
for anyone to feel they have to write such a utility ever again.
To that end lsseq
is designed to have the flavor of the unix/linux/osx ls
command as much as possible. The idea is to make it easier on the user when
switching back and forth between using lsseq
and regular ls
so that the
look of the output as well as several command-line-arguments are the same
(where possible and it makes sense).
Furthermore it was written to be as robust as possible. For example, it handles negative frames properly and has been extensively tested and used at several production studios. There is a regression test program included with the source here on github to help test any changes, additions, bug fixes etc.
Lastly some useful options have been added beyond what /bin/ls
does that
extend lsseq's
capability.
For example:
1$ ls -F
aaa/ bbb/ ccc.0101.exr nonImage.file
2$ ls *
ccc.0101.exr nonImage.file
aaa:
aaa.097.tif aaa.098.tif aaa.100.tif aaa.101.tif aaa.102.tif aaa.103.tif nonImage_A.file
bbb:
bbx.0097.tif bbx.0100.tif bbx.0103.tif bby.0199.tif bby.0202.tif nonImage_B2.file
bbx.0098.tif bbx.0101.tif bby.0197.tif bby.0200.tif bby.0203.tif
bbx.0099.tif bbx.0102.tif bby.0198.tif bby.0201.tif nonImage_B1.file
3$ lsseq *
nonImage.file
ccc.[0101].exr
aaa:
nonImage_A.file
aaa.[097-103].tif m:[99]
bbb:
nonImage_B1.file nonImage_B2.file
bbx.[0097-0103].tif
bby.[0197-0203].tif
4$ lsseq --prependPathRel *
ccc.[0101].exr
aaa/aaa.[097-103].tif m:[99]
bbb/bbx.[0097-0103].tif
bbb/bby.[0197-0203].tif
5$ lsseq --prependPathAbs --skipMissing --format rv *
/user/jrowellfx/test/ccc.0101.exr
/user/jrowellfx/test/aaa/aaa.97-103@@@.tif
/user/jrowellfx/test/bbb/bbx.97-103#.tif
/user/jrowellfx/test/bbb/bby.197-203#.tif
The first thing to note above is how close lsseq
is to mimicking /bin/ls
in
labelling directories and listing directory contents etc. (compare the
output of command 2 to 3). One difference being that lsseq
first lists all
non-sequence images in a directory exactly as ls
would list them (minus the
sequences) then lists all the sequences in their condensed form.
Secondly note the two useful options in commands 4 and 5 above,
--prependPathRel
and --prependPathAbs
which can be very useful when creating
lists of sequences to pipe into other scripts.
It's recommended to review the capabilities of lsseq in how it can sort
sequences, especially with respect to how it handles sorting by time. See
lsseq --help
for --time, -t and --onlyShow
options.
This package also includes two helpful command-line utilities (expandseq
and condenseseq
) that
expand and condense lists of frame numbers into a fairly standard format
used by many computer-graphics programs and CG-production studios.
How to install lsseq, expandseq and condenseseq on your computer
To install these commands on your system follow these steps (you need root privileges).
-
First make sure you have python version 3.x (x >= 6) installed on your machine, you can do this simply by typing
python3
at the command prompt. If you are told"command not found"
, then you need to download and install it, there are many helpful websites to get this going, not the least of which is Python.org. -
Download
lsseq-2.3.2.tar.gz
assuming that the latest version is2.3.2
(if not just grab the latest one), you can find all versions in thedist
directory of this repo: jrowellfx/lsseq/dist -
Uncompress the file:
$ tar -xvzf lsseq-2.3.2.tar.gz
-
install the commands and supporting python module:
$ cd lsseq-2.3.2 $ sudo python3 setup.py install
-
...that's it! You should be able to run the commands
lsseq
,expandseq
andcondenseseq
now.
To test lsseq
properly cd
into a directory containing frames from an image
sequence then lsseq
the contents of the directory.
If you don't have one handy you can try this to test it.
$ cd ~
$ mkdir tmp
$ cd tmp
$ touch aaa.001.tif aaa.002.tif aaa.003.tif aaa.004.tif aaa.005.tif
$ lsseq
aaa.[001-005].tif z:[1-5]
Note the z:[1-5]
which is telling you that the frames aaa.[001-005].tif
have zero length, and if you had generated those with a renderer I'm
guessing you'd need to rerender them.
Type:
$ lsseq --help
$ expandseq --help
$ condenseseq --help
for much more useful info.
Please contact j a m e s <at> a l p h a - e l e v e n . c o m
with any bug
reports, suggestions or oodles of praise as the case may be.
If you want everthing in the lsseq
repo:
$ git clone git@github.com:jrowellfx/lsseq.git
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