About renumseq

renumseq is a Unix/Linux command-line-utility for renumbering image-sequences which are most typically used in VFX post-production or CG animation production.

renumseq allows you to renumber sequences with an offset or give them a new start frame. It also allows you adjust the padding of the frame numbers.

renumseq uses the syntax of the native output of lsseq to specify the sequence to be renumbered. Therefore it is recommended to use lsseq as it makes using renumseq easier.

For example, use lsseq to list a sequence, then cut and paste its output as the arguments to renumseq with the appropriate arguments for setting the offset or new start-frame.

renumseq was written to be safe in that it won't unintentionally overwrite any existing files during renumbering.

If renumseq finds that by renumbering a sequence it will write over another frame outside the range specified then it will skip renumbering that sequence (printing a warning) and go onto the next sequence in the list. Naturally there is an option to force renumseq to overwrite those files if desired.

renumseq doesn't need to make temporary copies of files during the renumbering (it does a move of the file), so it's fast.

renumseq also has a useful option, called --replace-underscore that changes any underscore-separators (separating the filename from the frame-number) with dot-separators, like this:

filename_[n-m].extension -> filename.[n-m].extension

Protip: If all you want to do is switch the separator from an underscore to a dot, then use a zero offset, plus the --replace-underscore argument.

Installing renumseq

python3 -m pip install renumSeq --upgrade

Testing renumseq

After installing try the following:

$ cd ~
$ mkdir tmp
$ cd tmp
$ touch aaa.001.tif aaa.002.tif aaa.003.tif aaa.004.tif aaa.005.tif
$ lsseq -Z
aaa.[001-005].tif
$ renumseq --verbose --offset 10 'aaa.[001-005].tif'
aaa.005.tif -> aaa.015.tif
aaa.004.tif -> aaa.014.tif
aaa.003.tif -> aaa.013.tif
aaa.002.tif -> aaa.012.tif
aaa.001.tif -> aaa.011.tif
$ lsseq -Z
aaa.[011-015].tif

Note that you may get an error from your shell when you try to run the renumseq command above, without the quotes around the sequence, that might look something like this:

% renumseq -o 10 aaa.[001-005].tif
renumseq: No match.

In which case you need to "escape" the square brackets as they are special characters as far as the shell is concerned. Escape them like this:

% renumseq -v -o 10 aaa.\[001-005\].tif
aaa.005.tif -> aaa.015.tif
aaa.004.tif -> aaa.014.tif
aaa.003.tif -> aaa.013.tif
aaa.002.tif -> aaa.012.tif
aaa.001.tif -> aaa.011.tif

Alternatively you can just enclose the argument in quotes ('aaa.[001-005].tif') like we did in the example above.

Type this:

$ renumseq --help

...for much more useful info.

Important: latest MAJOR point release of renumSeq.

renumseq and all the utilities provided by jrowellfx github repos use "Semantic Versioning 2.0.0" in numbering releases. The latest release of renumseq upped the MAJOR release number from v1.x.x to v2.x.x.

While the functionality and output of renumseq has not changed, all the so called "long options" have been renamed to adhere to POSIX standard naming conventions.

That is, prior to v2.0.0 of renumseq all the long-option names used a "camel case" naming convention but as of v2.0.0 all long-option names have been changed to so-called "kebab case".

For example:

--replaceUnderscore

has been changed to

--replace-underscore

In the event that you have written any scripts that make use of renumseq or any other of jrowellfx's utils provided here you will need to edit your scripts to be able to update to the lastest versions of the utilities.

In this case, in order to assist in switching to the current MAJOR point release some sed scripts have been provided that should make the transition quite painless. Especially if you make use of runsed which if you haven't used it before, now is the time, it's extremely helpful.

There are two files provided at the root-level of the repo, namely: sed.script.jrowellfx.doubleDashToKebab and sed.script.renumseq.v1tov2.

The first one can be used to fix the long-option names for ALL the MAJOR point release updates to the long-options in any of jrowellfx's utilities. The second one contains only changes needed for the updates to renumseq.

Example sed.script usage.

Download one or both of the sed scripts named above. Make sure you have runsed installed on your system. (Example applied to usage of lsseq but it's the same idea for renumseq.)

$ cd ~/bin
$ ls
myScriptThatUsesLsseq
$ cat myScriptThatUsesLsseq
#!/bin/bash

lsseq --globalSortByTime --recursive --prependPathAbs /Volumes/myProjectFiles

$ mv ~/Downloads/sed.script.jrowellfx.doubleDashToKebab sed.script
$ runsed myScriptThatUsesLsseq
$ ./.runsed.diff.runsed
+ /usr/bin/diff ./.myScriptThatUsesLsseq.runsed myScriptThatUsesLsseq
3c3
< lsseq --globalSortByTime --recursive --prependPathAbs /Volumes/myProjectFiles
---
> lsseq --global-sort-by-time --recursive --prepend-path-abs /Volumes/myProjectFiles
$ cat myScriptThatUsesLsseq
#!/bin/bash

lsseq --global-sort-by-time --recursive --prepend-path-abs /Volumes/myProjectFiles

Note that if you are unhappy with the changes you can undo them easily with

$ ./.runsed.undo.runsed
$ cat myScriptThatUsesLsseq
#!/bin/bash

lsseq --globalSortByTime --recursive --prependPathAbs /Volumes/myProjectFiles

Contact

Please contact j a m e s <at> a l p h a - e l e v e n . c o m with any bug reports, suggestions or praise as the case may be.