Handbrake: Allow image sequences as input format

[bobweb01]

Describe the change or feature you'd like to see added to HandBrake:

I work a lot with creating 3D animation and VFX, which is usually rendered in image sequences (e.g. image0001.jpg, image0002.jpg etc.). It would be great to encode them directly into a video instead of creating an uncompressed avi in an editing program like Premiere or After Effects first to then encode it with Handbrake. If image sequences can be used, Handbrake would need to check whether a file is missing in the sequence and give an error stating which ones are missing.

What version of HandBrake are you currently using? (e.g., 1.0.0)

1.2.2 (2019022300)

What operating system and version are you running? (e.g., Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, macOS 10.3 High Sierra, Windows 10 Creators Update)

Windows 10

HandBrake Activity Log (see https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/help/activity-log.html)

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[woodstockathbf]

In general, what you are looking for falls into the purview of video editors, which handbrake is not.

What you want to do can be done with the command line in ffmpeg, and there are several examples on the net. You can start with the ffmpeg documentation, http://www.ffmpeg.org/faq.html#How-do-I-encode-single-pictures-into-movies_003f .

[bobweb01]

Thanks for your comment! Yes, ffmpeg command line can do this, it is just too cumbersome to set up, Handbrake is much easier and more comfortable to use. I agree with you that Handbrake is not a video editor and it should not become one. Just in case that this was not clear, I do not wish for any editing functions.
I disagree though, that only editors should be able to read image sequences. For example the Adobe Media Encoder can also read sequences directly without an editor - it is just not that good at encoding... :-)
After all, as far as I know, Handbrake is based on ffmpeg and ffmpeg can do it, so why should not Handbrake do it as well? An uncompressed AVI or I-frame-only MPEG is basically an image sequence as well, just crammed into a single file with some header data - it just needs an (unnecessary) additional step to create.

[woodstockathbf]

handbrake is not a front-end for ffmpeg; it uses the libraries of ffmpeg, but not everything the command line ffmpeg does is implemented in handbrake. And some things handbrake does, ffmpeg doesn't do.

There are a lot of things implemented in the ffmpeg command line program that are not part of the libraries people use.

[bobweb01]

Thanks for clearing that up - still frankly I am not sure what you want to tell me with that. Ok, Handbrake is not an editor and not an ffmpeg front-end. Still it would be great (from my point of view) if it could also read image sequences. Just an idea for improvement that I would find very interesting, but maybe it is just me... Do you want to tell me that it is technically impossible? Or just a bad idea?

[woodstockathbf]

The point was that the handbrake team has limited people involved, and a rather narrow project scope.

Implementing "nice to have for my personal workflow" items that are not within that scope would take away from that.

[bradleysepos]

We've had some discussion about the UI for input frame rate. I'm for this but woodstock is right, it's about time and interest for our small team. Targeting unscheduled in case someone wants to take this up down the road.

[bradleysepos]

For the uninitiated, image sequences are commonly rendered when working in 3D because they give you the ability to re-render changes to scenes, even single frames if necessary, which is significantly less computationally expensive than re-rendering an entire video stream.

[woodstockathbf]

Maybe it would be faster to do a separate UI that uses the hb.dll, rather than grafting it onto the existing UI? That could replace the "decode the video stream" portion, injecting right into filter processing.

[bobweb01]

Thanks for bearing with me, I totally understand limited ressources! It was just an idea to see if others have a similar interest, of course I am not asking for improving just my personal workflow. :-)

[cehoyos]

FWIW, the image reading code in FFmpeg is not part of the front-end but of the libavformat library.

[Friksel]

I disagree though, that only editors should be able to read image sequences. For example the Adobe Media Encoder can also read sequences directly without an editor - it is just not that good at encoding... :-)

I am missing this feature too. I think the same about this as bobweb01. As I understand it Handbrake is meant to be a conversion tool, and converting image sequences to video is a very common use case expected from video converters. Lots of motion graphics professionals work with image sequences. Either from a vfx tool like After Effects or Fusion or 3D modelling software, like Maya, Max, Blender etc.

Yes, a lot of times they are meant to be used in video edits. But sometimes they are the end result of a render and you only want to convert them to mp4. To show them on YouTube for example. Or maybe a pre-stage as a check view or way to send the video to a college/client etc. To do this with full blown video edit software everytime is very cumbersome. That's probably also the reason why the Adobe converter tool has it build in.

So it's definitely not a 'private workflow of one', but I'm sure something a lot of professional users would be glad to see. At least I would use it a lot.

It's been over a year since the 'Enhancement' label was added. Any chance this could be concidered adding to this very handy tool?

Thanks in advance!

[sr55]

It's been over a year since the 'Enhancement' label was added. Any chance this could be concidered adding to this very handy tool?

This issue is not closed, which means it's not rejected. Bradley's comment still stands.

If there is a developer out there with the interest and skillset they can get in touch and we can talk though the problem. Failing that it's very low down on the priority list I'm afraid.

[Friksel]

If there is a developer out there with the interest and skillset they can get in touch and we can talk though the problem. Failing that it's very low down on the priority list I'm afraid.

Alright. Thanks for you quick response. I found VirtualDub2 to do it, so I'm gonna use that for now to convert image sequences to mp4. Would be nice if everything could be inside one (up to date) converter software package though. So keep my fingers crossed for a developer to show up!