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PNG to PNG Sequences

When I’m putting videos together, one thing I often find handy is being able to turn a single PNG image into a PNG sequence. That means I can import the resulting sequence straight into Avidemux or VirtualDub and to add filters to it.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Convert png file into a png sequence for video use

for i in {1..150}; do
    j=$(printf "%04d" $i)
    cp "input.png" "pngs"$j".png"
done

The Bash script above does that – it takes a file called input.png, and creates copies of it to make a PNG sequence of 150 frames numbered from png0001.png to png0150.png.

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Let’s Go Nationwide

Recently I’ve been playing about recreating various SMPTE and custom made film leaders in Flash 8 and Inkscape. One of the most interesting for me, and one that reminds me of Blue Peter for some reason, is the BBC’s own film leader. Here it is:

While working on film leaders, I’ve settled upon a hybrid Flash/Inkscape workflow in which I create the individual frames in Inkscape as Inkscape SVG files.

SMPTE Society Leader frames created as SVG files

I then export them all as EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) files so they can be imported into Macromedia Flash 8. You could export all the files from Inkscape by hand, but to save time I use a little Bash shell script instead: 

#!/bin/bash
#
# Export all SVG files in a directory as EPS files

for i in *.svg; do
    inkscape $i --export-eps `basename $i .svg`".eps"

done

Then I import the EPS files into Flash and I’m ready to start putting the animation together.