Apple Motion 4 - Manual (Page 238)

Image Sequences
Numbered image sequences store video clips as individual still image files. Each image
file has a number in the filename that indicates where it fits into the sequence. In a film
clip that’s been digitally scanned, each file represents a single frame. In a video clip that’s
been converted to an image sequence, each file contains both fields of a single video
frame, with the upper and lower lines of the image saved together. Image sequences use
the same variety of file formats as still image files. Some of the most popular formats for
saving image sequences include SGI, BMP, JPEG, TIFF, and TGA. Like still image formats,
many of these support alpha channels, which are automatically used by Motion.
Because image sequences have been around for so long (before QuickTime, they were
the only way to store video on a computer), they remain the lowest-common-denominator
file format for exchanging video across many different editing and compositing
applications. While QuickTime is increasingly used to exchange video clips between
platforms, image sequences are still in common use, especially in film compositing.
As with QuickTime video clips, you can mix image sequences of different formats, using
different frame sizes, pixel aspect ratios, frame rates, and interlacing. For more information,
see
Supported File Formats .
Important: Any imported image sequence must contain three or more digits of “padding,”
for example, imagename.0001.tif.
Collapsing Image Sequences
The “Show image sequences as collapsed” button at the bottom of the File Browser allows
you to display image sequences as a single object, rather than as the collection of
individual files that exist on your disk. Image sequences that you import into your project
in this way are treated as single objects everywhere they appear in your project.
Click to collapse or
expand image
sequences.
Note: You can turn this feature off in case you have numbered image files that aren’t
supposed to be used as an image sequence. For example, pictures taken with digital
cameras often have numbered filenames that can be mistaken for an image sequence.
Layered Photoshop Files
You can also import layered Photoshop files. Many motion graphics professionals create
layouts in Photoshop, where they paint and manipulate all the graphical elements they’ll
use to create a static composition. Once that’s done, the resulting layered file can be
imported into Motion to be animated, along with other imported and Motion-generated
objects, to create the final project.
238 Chapter 6 Creating and Managing Projects