Working with series of still images in Drastic software (DPX/TGA/DNG)

Sequence of Images Options (DPX, TGA, etc)

Drastic software supports a wide range of still image formats including TIFF, TGA, DPX, CINEON, PSD, SGI, VPB, ARI, RAW and others. They are processed as a series of images to create a video stream. How they are processed can be controlled by a number of configuration settings.

Writing Images

When writing series of stills, there are a number of options available. They are configurable through the registry in version 3.x (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Drastic Technologies) and the DDRConfig/config.xml in version 4 and greater. The setup is in this key:

\MediaReactor\PlugIns\DTLiveStills

If there is no indication of frame rate in the stills' headers or the sidebar XML file, these elements set the default rate or frames per second. Common scale / rate combinations are:

1 / 24 = 24 fps
1001 / 20000 = 23.98 fps
1 / 25 = 25 fps
1001 / 30000 = 29.97 fps
1 / 30 = 30 fps

When set to one, the DPX produced will include a discreet specific extension for Flame, Flint, Inferno, Smoke, Combustion and other Discreet products.

Normally we write version 2.0 or greater DPX files. For compatibility with older software packages you can force us to write version 1.0 DPX files.

Normally time codes are written directly from the input into the file. This will write any time code received in any order. If this is set to 1, then the time code will be overridden from the first frame's time code. From the first frame the time code will continue without interruption.

This allows you to embed the time code into the name of the graphic image. This can be set up in a number of ways:

0 = Do not embed time code in file name
1 = Use the frame value of the time code as the numeric part
2 = Embed the starting time code (initial) as a string in each file name
3 = Embed the starting time code and user bit (initial)
99 = Embed the starting time code with a tc=

Change the character used to separate the base name and the numeric portion of the file name. Normally it is a '_' or '.'. It should be one character long. The format is:

[basename](separator){####}.ext
so, '_' would be
test_000000.dpx
or '.' would be
test.00000.dpx

Reading Images

Often when reading a series of still images there is no way to determine the frame rate they should be played at. DPX files do contain a frame rate in their headers, but it is most often set to invalid, or is sometimes wrong. To set a default frame rate for your system, there are a number of places you can change it. In each case, it is a Rate/Scale setting that you will be changing. The most common Rate/Scale combinations are:

Rate	Scale	Frame Rate
60	1	60p
60000	1001	59.94p
50	1	50p
30	1	30p
30000	1001	29.97p/59.94i
25	1	25p/50i
24	1	24p
24000	1001	23.98p

When loading a series of stills where the frame rate is unknown, the reader will look for a default rate and scale in the following places, in the following order. Once one is found, it stops looking:

A local metadata xml file in the same directory as the stills, with the same base name. A sample file is available at the end of this article
In the config.xml, the <MediaReactor> <MetaData> <Default> OriginalScale and OriginalRate keys
In the config.xml, the <MediaReactor> <PlugIns> <DTLiveStills> DefaultScale and DefaultRate keys
The default rate of any hardware Drastic software is using directly (e.g. videoQC, MediaNXS, DrasticDDR, etc)

The config.xml is a standard text xml, and it is available in these locations:

Windows

C:\ProgramData\Drastic\config.xml

OS-X

/Library/Application Support/Drastic/config.xml

Linux

~/.Drastic/config.xml

Sample XML Metadata File:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="/http://www.drastictech.com/metadata/drastic-metadata.xsl"
<!DOCTYPE dtm:dtm PUBLIC "-//DRASTIC MEDIA METADATA//DCMES DTD 2001 01 01//EN" "http://www.drastictech.com/metadata/dtmes-xml-dtd.dtd">
<dtm:dtm xmlns:dtm="http://www.drastictech.com/metadata"
xmlns:dt="http://www.drastictech.com/metadata/elements">
<dtm:Description dtm:about="default*.dpx">
<dt:OriginalRate>25</dt:OriginalRate>
<dt:OriginalScale>1</dt:OriginalScale>
</dtm:Description>
</dtm:dtm>