Feature request/idea: Wire: Select a frame from a VideoPlayer

[webel]

Probably difficult. Select a frame from a video.

What I actually want to do is use a video with no frame disposal to get lots (hundreds) of images in and then select images at random by selecting a frame at random from a video generated from all of the image stills.

[Zoltán]

Rename your files, so Alley can load them as image sequence, convert to DXV.

Then you can try something like this:

--begin-wire-patch--
942.3oc6WE0ihaCD9uBxOSNrShic3MXCn9PuJ06NcpRKqV4PLf0ErSSb1szU7e+FGVXCBxBq16Z6CMO.wS9FaOy2mGa+DZtQqkysJitBM71mPKJMqgWH8Q4R8R6Jzc8QVCXwuORoKpsXzca6e.GsOxTa2Y9YfAmEne2.IGAL3TfQ8QUpkZQ9Q.iNEH6rCM6TfP3UIke6RgBLD1R0xkxxiPxOEoeqXAroMYRHe9Dh39QXgdIs1tyTQtXyGgu6d2to.9GMekQMWh5idPjW6L7qFSAZKzVkIMs.VJqL0kGAUhSCWvhiVLORxCnQD9BJKZtfkFmRCiknsP+jZp0YMi9JoZ4JKZX.C2G8nJCX3gjXH1+KzPemsMPaJ3x7bQUiGpLXTXrnXleD0a5zaXdgQrod7D+IdiHSGQilDFENh6lTxxJPJgFha5Ay7uA9tKHf1lbSIzdA7DIv3FS5JqPa2MPZuBiRaaEuKxMB6KAqqWgL+Eg8A+nlGNlxBCILBAbrPTW0NoumYO3ltNO2gC3mq.FPEVQo8pP9nRmcE.ajjuZvWUHkYW.hEjNWwXYKE6TBGflZL4ufyVVKcRmUprLIvn25j0h0NfjB8x6S9iu162LkqE4898ZQtxtAZ1aTdwJgS45epvGlrOd7b+wV53mWguc+RXuL0ZotZWgoCN0x3AWu8t8NQdiNUo961JBc85z1oJe.h6S314S2euLq2Q.OiibQbmcoH2+jUhzHdyJw.bP2KEwITpWHmNwiSBR7X3njDZxzIbdx6eoXS0sNEZjCY7twv6P8jnbyBWNK3+0HuCMR.wuQiP4rt0HivIbuP+3QdinTtWT73an7DbRnO8msFAeEZDRGZjOVmaUE4abYM5aUkHePpssDI6P0UVG1IQ5JP1f2EcykUuBeSNO+P4mta5kYG7HBwKbRL0KlxCg2tYBlg4i4AgsYGxOB1Yeb1heNet+yvtP8rldKJcsALQmR.WWlZ+w1t.C7F08jPZSlMj42clMKhh8BEYodoRpuWJFufuHMDxTx2qt+4hPupte+ttWZe3NX.snnZkoQCy94p9OTa5Gq1+.GQvcyQgimLA1+JXpW7TetGY7H5TeBINHY7+D0lrp0xWCQG6dIcGOD9F+cu40+p0khXA+GstTWma3KFKbVylpRUMUK1eYnl98vMkt38gbWAS3RHnYC9pIuF5tYC97u7oYCt+SPO5Lz6Kvg66MUkKqte1.0ZwRYuJ4eVKcjvrAW57ueXs4AXFtc62AQpDdk
--end-wire-patch--

[webel]

Thanks Zoltán, awesome! I've wanted to be able to do this cleanly for some time.

If anyone else wants to try this, note that the 'Speed' on the VideoPlayer has to be set to 0 (it is in the provided solution patch, but if you drag your "stills" video into Wire the VideoPlayer will initially have speed 1 by default).

I added a Metronome driving a Random with Max the same as the total number of frames, to select image frames at random. I'm using 181 for my test at 4K on an iMac and it is nice and performant. This opens up a whole new high quality image processing world for me.
---

BTW On a separate but related matter (I don't have time to report the details now), I had a heck of a time creating the stills video from JPG files from a Sony A7R3 camera. Alley did not like my image sequence (and I had the name ordering/naming/numbering right). I tried resizing them all nicely first using ImageMagick mogrify. Did not help. I tried converting them to ProRes using ffmpeg; Alley loaded the ProRes file, but showed a strange purple background. I eventually got it working by sending that ffmpeg-generated ProRes422 file to Compressor, "converting" that to ProRes (again), and Alley could read that (which I then converted to DXV, for loading in the Wire patch). I'll make a separate issue report on that by email another time.

[Zoltán]

With longer videos, the float positioning might not work to search for all of the frames.

[webel]

> With longer videos, the float positioning might not work to search for all of the frames.

For random selection that might not be so critical. Seemed to manage 181 frames ok (30fps). That's quite a lot of images to select from.

Next step is to figure out how to select and "hold" more than one image in a practical way so can combine at least a few selected images in the final result. Case: A grid of say 3 x 2 images, so 6 random selections, with random change of selections for one or more grid cells. Can still use the patch you provided, but would have to tolerate a slight delay at startup to bootstrap the first 6 image slots.

[Zoltán]

You could have 6 copies of the player.

[webel]

> You could have 6 copies of the player.

For that specific case (3x2 grid), yes. That way gives more options in terms of selecting random images for each step.

But in general I'd like to avoid that (using a specific number of players for each situation). I'll do some trials with various cases and get back.