ULTRASEQUENCE

• Author: Cody Cuellar
• URL: https://github.com/codycuellar/ultrasequence

An ultra-fast Python file sequencing tool with useful custom features. This package is exponentially faster than many of the similar packages.

In most cases, with standard naming conventions where the frame number is the last set of digits in the filename, this tool will be able to build the sequences with roughly O(n) speeds. Other similar tools are generally O(n²) or slower.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.

Features

• Compatible with the latest versions of Python 2 and 3.
• Ultra-fast O(n) sequencing. Can handle hundreds of thousands of input files in a matter of seconds.
• Custom include and exclude extensions so only the file extensions you want will be sequenced, otherwise they will immediately move into a skipped list.
• Get file stats on the fly, or supply them in an ordered tuple, dictionary, or pass an os.stat_result object directly for each file.
• Force file naming with different digit padding levels to be treated as different sequences, or allow inconsistent padding.
• Custom string formatting of the sequenced file names.
• Highly customizable - you can even supply your own regex pattern to the sequencer to change how and where it finds the frame number.

Platforms

The following Platforms are tested: * OSX 10.10, 10.11, 10.12, 10.13

It should run on all recent versions of OSX, and Linux platforms, but further testing is needed.

Usage

To use UltraSequence in python is very easy. Simply import the ultrasequence module and then use the Parser object to set up the options. Then you simply call one of the parser methods of the Parser class depending on the type of item you are parsing (directoy, file, or python list).

>>> import ultrasequence as us
>>> parser = us.Parser()
>>> parser.parse_directory('~/Documents', recurse=True)
>>> print(parser)
'Parser(sequences=15, single_frames=75, non_sequences=810, excluded=0, collisions=0)'

These lists can be accessed as normal lists such as:

>>> for frame in parser.sequences[0]:
...     print(frame)

>>> for sequence in parser.sequences:
...     print('Sequence %s is missing %s frames' % (
...           sequence.format('%h%P%T'), sequence.missing_frames))

Command-Line Utility

To use the command-line utility, run the findseq command after installing ultrasequence:

$ findseq /path/to/directory -R --include dpx exr png

All command line options can be overridden by installing the local config file to ~/ultrasequence.conf and updating it with your settings of choice:

$ findseq -M

This file will always be used as default for both python and command-line usage, which can make some command line options impossible to enable or disable. If using a local config file, you can temporarily disable it by using the -I flag. All command line flags are then reset to default and can be overridden by using the flags to change the default behavior.

When using the python code directly, you can pass args into the Parser() init and the parse_* methods to override this file on the fly.

Configuration

By default, all the options are pre-defined in the ultrasequence.config.UsConfig class. A CONFIG variable in the ultrasequence.config is pre-instantiated with the defaults. If CONFIG.make_local_config is called, a local configuration file will be generated with the defaults at ~/.ultrasequence.conf. You can then modify this file as you wish and every time the program is run either in Python or from the command-line utility, the values from this config file will be used instead. All option can still be overridden with arguments on the command-line, or by passing new values into the Parser, Sequence, and File method parameters.

The configuration attributes are:

[global]

format = %H%r%T

A string formatter to use for representing the built sequences. For more information on how to use the formatter, refer to the docs on ~ultrasequence.models.Sequence.format

recurse = True

Whether or not to recurse into child directories when scanning folders on the local system.

ignore_padding = True

Enable or disable strict padding rules. If enabled, each file's sequence key is generated with the padding, so file.0001.dpx key would be file.%04d.dpx. If disabled, the key would be file.#.dpx, but this can cause collisions in some rare cases.

include_exts = exr dpx jpg

A list of inclusion file extensions. Any files with extensions not in this list will be skipped and not sequenced.

exclude_exts = mov pdf xls

A list of exclusion file extensions. Any files with extensions in this list will be skipped and not sequenced.

get_stats = True

Do a os.stat() on every file found.

[regex]

frame_extract = ((.*)(\D))?(\d+)(.*)

The regex pattern to extract the frame numbers. This can be modified for special cases such as when the frame number isn't the last digit before the extension.

head_group = 0

The regex capture group for all characters preceding the frame digits.

frame_group = 3

The regex capture group for the frame digits.

tail_group = 4

The regex capture group for all characters after the digits.