List image files as sequences

Berkyjay · Post by **Berkyjay** » 23 Oct 2014 22:42

Hi, so I'm looking into XYplorer because I deal with a lot of image files which are always in a sequence (1-10 ie) and I'd like to find an easy way to view and clean things up. But within windows it only shows each image file individually. I was hoping the XYplorer would give me the ability to do this but I have yet found this functionality in the options. I've attached some screen grabs to illustrate what I am speaking of.

Thanks

Post by **highend** » 23 Oct 2014 23:02

What exactly should XY do now?

Berkyjay · Post by **Berkyjay** » 23 Oct 2014 23:17

highend wrote:What exactly should XY do now?

Not sure I understand your question. I'm asking if this application has the functionality I'm looking for. If it doesn't I'll continue looking for another solution.

Post by **highend** » 23 Oct 2014 23:23

easy way to view

Menu - view - views - choose something that suits you?

But within windows it only shows each image file individually

In "Windows"? You mean "Windows Explorer"? I'm not sure what you mean, Windows Explorer has a few options to display images as symbols.

and clean things up

Why don't you explain what exactly should happen by this cleanup? Deleting files? By which rules?

Berkyjay · Post by **Berkyjay** » 23 Oct 2014 23:36

highend wrote:
easy way to view
Menu - view - views - choose something that suits you?

But within windows it only shows each image file individually
In "Windows"? You mean "Windows Explorer"? I'm not sure what you mean, Windows Explorer has a few options to display images as symbols.

and clean things up
Why don't you explain what exactly should happen by this cleanup? Deleting files? By which rules?

What I plan on doing is not really important. What is important is; am I able to display a list a file images as one sequence item? I included a screen grab that shows exactly what I want. In the first screen grab I'm showing a list of sequenced image files. In the second screen grab I'm showing those file images as a pure list.

I'm curious, are you a representative of XYplorer?

PeterH · Post by **PeterH** » 23 Oct 2014 23:45

If I see it right he wants a kind of condensed list.

In the 1st pic the 1st entry represents entry 1+2 of the 2nd list, entry 3 represents 300 entries of the 2nd list, ...

At least this should be possible with scripting - but you should recognize the rules of condensing, i.e. constant texts and groups of numbers.

Hope I understood it as intended...

Berkyjay · Post by **Berkyjay** » 23 Oct 2014 23:49

Yes, that pretty much sums up what I'm looking for. I was hoping for some default functionality. Maybe if I find some time I could script something.

Thanks!

Post by **TheQwerty** » 24 Oct 2014 00:17

Welcome to the club Berkyjay!

Currently you can't achieve what you're after, and there isn't a way for you to be able to combine items in the list with scripting.

EDIT: Though scripting would make it much easier to move those sequences of files into folders.

That said there's a grid style that allows you to highlight / alternate colors based on some smart name grouping which might help. See here for details: http://www.xyplorer.com/release_11.50.h ... htedGroups

The other option available to you today would be to use scriptable columns which could display the same value for all items in a group and would make it easier to spot the edges of the groups. You can find out more here: http://www.xyplorer.com/release_13.90.h ... bleColumns

I think there is definitely interest in this idea but there's a lot of questions about how it impacts user interactions and the other existing features. For instance how does one go from working with the group to working with a single item?

I could see improvements for this coming with the next iteration of Paper Folders, but I'm not sure where that falls on Don's (XY's developer's) timetable currently - it's probably a ways off since Paper Folders are relatively young.

Berkyjay · Post by **Berkyjay** » 24 Oct 2014 00:34

I think there is definitely interest in this idea but there's a lot of questions about how it impacts user interactions and the other existing features. For instance how does one go from working with the group to working with a single item?

Well, my screen grabs come from the compositing application Nuke. There have a checkbox at the bottom of their file explorer that allows you to turn off the sequential view. Basically, sometimes I need to move a whole file sequence or even delete it. But when I view that directory in Windows explorer, it gets a bit unwieldy. When you're dealing with several versions of a 1000 frame sequence, that's a lot of scrolling.

Anyways, thanks for the responses.

Post by **TheQwerty** » 24 Oct 2014 01:59

Berkyjay wrote:Basically, sometimes I need to move a whole file sequence or even delete it. But when I view that directory in Windows explorer, it gets a bit unwieldy. When you're dealing with several versions of a 1000 frame sequence, that's a lot of scrolling.

Well if it's not so much about viewing a condensed listing, then there's quite a few ways XY can help out.

Visual filters make it easy to only show or hide specific items, and they can be combined with folder view settings so that they get activated whenever you browse to specific folders.

Like visual filters there are selection filters which allow you to quickly select items which match a specific pattern. (Or those that don't.)

Then there are color filters and instant color filters which allow you to change the text or background of items based on their extensions, names, paths, or even certain properties.

There's also custom file icons if you want to limit the highlighting to just the icon - and again these can be based on name patterns.

Further, with scripting it is possible to automate quite a bit, and it can work with many of the above so it wouldn't be difficult to create a script that selects, filters, or colors all items that have the same name before their sequence number.

Finally, the community around here can be extremely helpful, so if you have any other questions or are unsure how to achieve something with any of the above - feel free to ask!

Post by **bdeshi** » 24 Oct 2014 14:47

I see what Jay basically wants is a (pattern-based) foldable list. Interesting idea. +1.

Stef123 · Post by **Stef123** » 24 Oct 2014 15:15

I think Berkjay is talking about what's termed "stacks" in other managers. You can stack hand-picked images, or use auto-rules, based on capture data, for instance.

Say you shoot a photo with 10 different exposures (bracketing) for HDR compositions. Instead of having the same picture cluttering up your thumbnail view, you only see it once. You can mix different rules for different stacks in one folder, but they all reside in the same folder, looking just like a single image, except they're ... well ... stacked, lying on top of each other.

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 24 Oct 2014 15:47

Berkyjay wrote:I'm curious, are you a representative of XYplorer?

FYI: The only official representative of XY is Don/admin (author of XY) -- the rest of us are just users and/or power users who spend time here to aid other users.

There are a handful of us who have user id's in green because we're forum moderators but that's only to help keep forum clean from spam, etc. -- so you could say we're somewhat representing XY but strictly for forum only.

When someone posts a request that we may not understand, we often have to try and get more info on what you mean or need so by explaining it in different ways can help us help you, ok?

Post by **TheQwerty** » 24 Oct 2014 21:03

In the mentioned Nuke compositor they describe it as displaying a sequence as a single title:

• Check Sequences to display image sequences as single titles, as in fgelement.####.cin 1-50 rather than fgelement.0001.cin, fgelement.0002.cin, fgelement. 0003.cin, and so on.
NOTE: File sequences with no file extension (for example, fgelement.0001, fgelement.0002, fgelement.0003, and so on) are not displayed as single titles the first time you view the directory in the File Browser. However, they are displayed as single titles once you have navigated to another directory and back again.

RobWu · Post by **RobWu** » 30 Dec 2014 11:10

Here's another person voting for that functionality :-)

As a person who has to deal with tons of image sequences on a daily basis, the Windows Explorer way of showing me that loooooong list of files is just aggrevating.....
Most of the video/compositing/3d applications will show you sequences in a single row with the frame/image numbers behind the filename, as in the first image.
When you double click on that 'row', it will open up the full list, as shown in the second image.

I found a request for image sequences going all the way back to 2008. :-P

It would be-so- good to see this functionality in XYPlorer too. It's one of the things I miss most.

P.S. I lost my old account due to a email address change, so starting all a new. ;-)

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