When working with animation and visual effects from 3D, Pro works with image sequence instead of video files.

Because,

• no compression for each frame
• easy to edit each frame

• (win,mac,linux) Djv is one of best free cross-platform image sequence viewer with highly configurable setting and view control, and it do give simple converting tools.
  • [Djv is one of the few free sequence viewer that I found most similar to the in-house sequence viewer used in Real Production Studios] both command line & UI mode

a image sequence viewer should have features like

• iff, sgi, exr and etc file format support
• exr render layer display support
• rgbaz channel display
• a/b channel comparison
• exposure adjustment
• command line mode support
• simple clean configurable UI
• shortcut support

• all composting tool can convert “image sequence to video” and “video to image sequence”
• (win,mac)[free] StreamClip can handle most of file formats for convertion
• (win,mac,linux) djv_convert - it comes with Djv

# make sure you added the djv bin directory into PATH variable
# Convert an image:
djv_convert input.sgi output.tga

# Convert sequence:
# (Note that only the first frame of the output is specified)
# (the conversion will count up from there)
djv_convert input.0001-0500.sgi output.0001.tga

# Convert seq to mov (only 32bit djv can on window since qt is 32bit)
djv_convert input.0001-0100.iff output.mov

# Convert mov to seq
djv_convert input.mov output.0001.tga

# Convert pixel type
djv_convert input.sgi output.sgi -pixel rgb u16

# Scale an image by half:
djv_convert input.tga output.tga -scale 0.5 0.5

# Resize an image:
djv_convert input.tga output.tga -resize 2048 1556

# for more info, just type djv_convert

tom.bat

REM usage - tom seqFile.0001.iff; then this script named as tom will handle job
@echo off
REM pass in the first file name
set fullname=%~1
set foldername=%~dp1
set filename=%~nx1
REM get seq directory and first file name
cd /D "%foldername%"
for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=." %%A in ("%filename%") do (
  set seqname=%%A
  set seqstart=%%B
  set seqext=%%C
  )
set seqpattern=%seqname%.*.%seqext%
REM now we have the sequence naming pattern name.#.ext
for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=." %%A in ('dir /b "%seqpattern%"')  do set seqend=%%B
REM now we have the sequence end number
set input=%seqname%.%seqstart%-%seqend%.%seqext%
set output=..\%seqname%.mov
"c:\App\djv-0.8.2_winxp-x86\bin\djv_convert.exe" "%input%" "%output%"
REM i alias the djv_convert.exe to tom32 and tom64
REM as this batch will be alias as tom (to movie)
cd ..
pause

reference used:

• http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2006/11/20/top-10-dos-batch-tips-yes-dos-batch.aspx
• http://www.computerhope.com/forhlp.htm
• http://www.sprint.net.au/~terbut/usefulbox/msdoscmds.htm
• http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/robv/articles/4102.aspx

tom.sh

# to be added

Linux default has “convert” cmd installed, but only support common file format.

Available to Win/Mac/Linux in commandline binary format.

• download: http://www.xnview.com/en/download_nc.html

Another crossplatform image processing tool.

• download: http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php

General, (win) dos command or dos batch function, (mac,linux) bash shell script, will perfectly do the job if you know them well.

There are also some GUI apps that helps renaming sequence images.

• Sequence 911 (win)