Can't export Image Sequence from Movie File Out. Only exports a single image

Hello everybody!

I have a question that I can’t solve by myself. I am trying to export a video with alpha channel (I want it not have a background) and the first thing that came to my mind was exporting it as a PNG image sequence and put them all together in After Effects after that.

The problem is that when I try to export the sequence, it only exports one image, and starts lagging the whole animation, I guess because it’s overwriting the same file constantly.

I’ve tried using “Unique suffix”, writing me.time.frame in N parameter, exporting in TIFF, and nothing is working. I keep only getting a single image. Any idea on this?

Thank you all!

Are you keeping me.fileSuffix as part of the filename expression? This is what gives the images unique names.

Hi Malcolm, I’m having trouble figuring this out, too.
I’m trying to render an image sequence to a given folder location with a unique suffix per frame of my animation.

Here’s what I have so far in the file parameter of the Movie File Out TOP:
D:/MyFolder/ 'ImgName' + me.time.frame + me.fileSuffix

Unfortunately, that’s only overwriting the same image in my folder and resulting in the following error:

Thanks!

Can you share your .toe file? Is the parameter in expression mode? What you have there isn’t a legal python expression. Try putting down a new Movie File Out TOP and notice how it’s expression is setup by default.

Sure. See attached.
I followed your advice and had a closer look at the default image sequence export TOP expression.
I think I managed to get it to work but I’d appreciate if you could help me clean up the expression in case it could be cleaned up.

Here’s the expression I used.
'D:/Downloads/img sequence/Test.png' + 'TDMovieOut' + me.fileSuffix
I think I was tripped up by the fact that you have to toggle the expression button such that the expression is evaluated instead of treated as string constants.

Test Image Sequence Export.1.toe (5.0 KB)

You’ll want to remove the .png and the TDMovieOut part, unless you want that to be in your output name. The .png part (or whatever file type you’ve chosen) should automatically be append by the me.fileSuffix part of the expression.

Sorry for the late response, Malcolm.
Thanks to your help I managed to get the expression working smoothly!

A semi-related question, though— is if there is an easy way to stop the recording automatically once it reaches the timeline end. The default behavior loops back around which overwrites frames at the beginning. Thanks!

Hi @texturerama,

you can switch the Range Limit from Loop to Once and TouchDesigner will stop running at the end of the timeline.

image

Cheers
Markus

1 Like

Ah so simple! Thank you!

Hello,

I need to format the name of my png files that way name_1.png
But using filesuffix it gives me this format name.0.1.png
Is it possible to modify this ?

Thank you

1 Like

Hey @maotik,

curSeqIndex will help with that:

'name_{0}.{1}'.format(me.curSeqIndex, me.par.imagefiletype)

cheers
Markus

1 Like

Thanks a lot Markus!