Manual manipulation of time, Time notation for a filein – Apple Shake 4 User Manual

Page 125

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Chapter 3

Adding Media, Retiming, and Remastering

125

Manual Manipulation of Time

This section explains the notation Shake uses for a FileIn node, and the available FileIn
options. It also discusses the notation for the timeRange parameter in the Globals tab,
or the -t option on the command line. For a discussion of the interactive controls of
time, see Chapter 8, “

Using the Time View

,” on page 261, and “

Using the FileIn (SFileIn)

Node

” on page 110.

Time Notation for a FileIn

This section focuses on manual manipulation of time. For most interactive time
manipulation, Shake relies on the Time View and its associated timing subtree in the FileIn
parameters. You can manipulate time in other ways, specifically on the command line.

When Shake reads in a clip, it inserts the start and end frame of the clip in the clip
name, and gives an indication of the padding style, denoted here with the number
sign #:

image.1-50#.iff

In the above example, this notation indicates that only frames 1 through 50 are loaded,
even though there may be more files. The other frames are black when read in with the
default settings.

Shake puts the start of the range at frame 1. If you have:

image.20-50#.iff

at frame 1, image.0020.iff is read.

You can also shift the clip to frame 20 in the Time View of the interface.

Shake can recognize a series of frames when reading in a file without using the clip
range. When looking at a sequential series of files, use a placeholder in the file name to
represent the frame number. This placeholder is typically either a # sign (padded
images, image.0001.iff, image.0002.iff, and so on.) or an @ sign (unpadded images,
image.1.iff, image.2.iff, and so on). If your numbers are padded to a number other than 4,
you can substitute multiple @ signs.

You can also use the %d placeholder, which specifies the number of decimal spaces
applied to padded images. For example, image.%03d.iff produces padding of three
decimal places—image.001.iff, image.002.iff, and so on).

The following are some examples of frame number placeholders:

Shake Format

Reads/Writes

image.#.iff

image.0001.iff, image.0002.iff

image.%04d.iff

image.0001.iff, image.0002.iff

[email protected]

image.1.iff, image.2.iff

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