Media Pool mangling still image filenames containing numbers

In 16.1b1, I'm having issues dragging in graphic files containing numbers in their filenames. Dragging such a file into the Media Pool from the macOS Finder (either in the Media page, or in the Edit page) causes it to be interpreted as a single-frame image sequence, rather than a standalone file.

For example, a file named "Logo-01-VERSION-05.png" will appear in the Media Pool as "Logo-01-VERSION-[05-05].png".

The "Show Individual Frames" option only appears to be valid for media visible in the "Media Storage" window, and it seems that dragging in files from the Finder causes image-sequence interpretation by default, and I can't seem to figure out how to override this, besides loading the files in via the Media Storage window with "Show Individual Frames" enabled.

I also noticed that it seems to "detect" the last number in a filename as an image sequence number, regardless of whether or not the number is actually the last part of the filename. For example, a file named "Logo-01-VERSION-05-REVISED.png" shows up as "Logo-01-VERSION-[05-05]-REVISED.png" in the Media Pool.

I can't seem to figure out how to override this, besides loading the files in via the Media Storage window with "Show Individual Frames" enabled.

You may have to do it that way.

You may have to do it that way.

If this is the case, then I would submit that this is behavior is absolutely incorrect. No video editor on the planet would find it expected and acceptable behavior for files dragged in from the native OS file manager to be imported this way by default.

After Effects has an option that allows you to control the import behavior of image sequence files dragged into the project, using a modifier key that is held down during the drag-and-drop event...because there are of course times when the current default behavior is legitimately useful. But in the majority of “normal” use cases, you expect a file to be imported as-is—regardless of the filename—and not interpreted as an image sequence.

As an addendum to this "bug", I've determined that this issue also affects XML imports (In fact, the reason why I initially discovered this issue was because I couldn't figure out why PNG supers in an imported Premiere Pro XML were not being imported and linked).

If you have PNG files in a Premiere timeline that have numbers in them--even if they are not sequential numbers in a range of multiple image files--Resolve will not be able to import and link them when you do an XML import with the "Automatically import source clips into media pool" option enabled.

If, however, the same files are named without numbers in them, and exported to XML from Premiere, and imported into Resolve, the files import without any issues.

This behavior leads me to believe that I should not feel bad about removing the quote-marks around the term "bug" when I refer to this issue. If there is no good way to override this import behavior, then it definitely classifies as a bug, and not in intended "feature".

Here's an example of the test files I used to determine this:



Resolve XML import, sequentially numbered files (Resolve import error):



Resolve XML import, non-sequentially numbered files (Resolve import error):



Resolve XML import, Non-numbered files:

More screenshots displaying import results when dragging and dropping files into the Media Pool from Finder:


NON-SEQUENTIALLY NUMBERED FILES:





SEQUENTIALLY NUMBERED FILES:




NON-NUMBERED FILES:

you expect a file to be imported as-is—regardless of the filename

You have a way to do that.

You have a way to do that.

You are deliberately being pedantic. Yes, of course there is a way to do it. But I'm not discussing if there is "a way to do it". The discussion I'm raising is if the current behavior is the proper behavior, from a user-experience standpoint.

Please try to understand the context of what I'm discussing, and refrain from replying to the topic unless you have something constructive to add to the discussion.

is the current behavior is the proper behavior

I think it is.

But you can always ask for changes in the Feature Request section.

viewforum.php?f=33

is the current behavior is the proper behavior

I think it is.

But you can always ask for changes in the Feature Request section.

https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewforum.php?f=33

Again, whether or not you "think it is" is completely irrelevant, if you are not going to explain why you think the behavior is proper. The point of a discussion forum is to, you know--have a discussion about subjects like this, so that useful solutions can be developed. So far, you only seem interested in effectively saying "you're wrong" without ever offering any useful information as to why my viewpoint is wrong.

I would also point out that because this behavior also causes the expected behavior of the XML import feature to break, that it genuinely classifies as a “bug”, and not something to submit as a “feature request”

Just to let you know, you are not alone.. as a new user to Resolve, this is driving me absolutely mental that I cannot have my images treated as .. single images, but that they are treated as a sequence, just because they are numbered..

My usecase: I am editing several sports related videoes, that contains 18-20 overlays during the videoes showing the scores.. these scores are contained in PNG-files that are named [xx]_scores.png by the app that creates them. It was no issue in Premere Elements that I came from and although I like the idea that Resolve can make it easy for people making stop-motion video to treat _large_ number of sequential files as a sequence, I'd really like to have control over this myself instead of jumping through hoops when it comes to naming my source files.. is this what Resolve is about?

Someone keeps mentioning enabling 'show individual frames' in the media tab, which I've done, both before and after importing my images, but there is no difference..

Is this a bug? I don't know enough about Resolve yet to know.. is it a hair-pulling behaviour that other programs handle much more elegantly? Defintely..

Someone keeps mentioning enabling 'show individual frames' in the media tab, which I've done, both before and after importing my images, but there is no difference.. ..

"Show Individual Frames" only applies to the Media Storage panel (i.e. media you havent imported yet), not to media you've already imported into the Media Pool.

this default behavior is for grading dpx and image sequences.
However, I would never drag and drop in this way for folders containing hundreds of files.
If anything, I think the assumption is opposite. I'd drag a file or two from the finder. Dragging that many files around is error prone.

default should be individual. Or like others have said, a modifier to choose toggle one or the other.

What sucks is when you have to navigate deep levels of folders for individual files. Icluding adding to medial pool with create bins. My workaround is to add it first, so Resolve creates the folder directory. Then go back and delete the sequences and add. Kinda of a bummer, really.
Perhaps there is another option to "Add folders as sequences" Add folders as Sequences and Create Bins.

This has to be a bug, surely? As a professional photographer, all the filenames for my images contain numbers and this has been driving me mad.

I am a new Resolve user (fleeing from Adobe after 20 years of using Premiere). I note that people have a workround setting "Show Individual Frames" can anyone tell me where to find that setting, please?

Also, I noticed that with sometimes archiving of projects is sometimes failing because of these strange names - the archiving process can't, in my case, find file "[20190806-20190806]A-Graphic.jpg"

I am thinking of going back to 6.0 and forgetting the beta version - does anyone know if this is also a problem in 6.0?

I am a new Resolve user (fleeing from Adobe after 20 years of using Premiere). I note that people have a workround setting "Show Individual Frames" can anyone tell me where to find that setting, please?

You have to be in the Media tab. Click on the 3 dots menu on the upper right of the Media panel, then choose "Show Individual Frames".

You have to be in the Media tab. Click on the 3 dots menu on the upper right of the Media panel, then choose "Show Individual Frames".

Thank you. That helps.

Is this bug/feature/intentional behaviour in v6.0? - is it worth downgrading to the stable version?

You have to be in the Media tab. Click on the 3 dots menu on the upper right of the Media panel, then choose "Show Individual Frames".

Thank you. That helps.

Is this bug/feature/intentional behaviour in v6.0? - is it worth downgrading to the stable version?

All Resolve versions work this way.

In my view, if you have “Show Individual Frames” selected, that should be a global setting affecting any method you import graphic files, even on the Edit page.

The flip side is the benefit of being able to drag a directory of sequence in and get the sequence.
I have had the annoyance of dragging stills in one at a time so they don’t get seen as a sequence. For people using image sequences as part of their workflow, the ability to have them seen as a sequence is great. I think Gary Hango’s “Show Individual Frames” as a global policy is a great proposal if it isn’t already.

I just uncovered another area where this bug is adversely affecting imports.

In trying to work around the problem with Resolve downloading and converting files from Frame.io into the Resolve cache, instead of the original native files, I figured out that I can just unlink the FIO downloads, then use "Replace Selected Clip" to force link the file to the native files, which I used the Premiere Pro Frame.io extension to batch download.

But look what happens when you try to relink a still image file that has a number in its filename (this is with "Show Individual Frames" enabled in the Media Storage window, although that setting really should not have any impact on operations like this!):

What a mess!

This "issue" is a very well worn path that has been mentioned for years. It is something we just work around for now.

All I can say is that if it was easy to fix, the dev's likely would have already done so. It must be deeply embedded in some esoteric code. Also impacts XML imports and rendering out graded TIFF files for use elsewhere.

All I can say is that if it was easy to fix, the dev's likely would have already done so. It must be deeply embedded in some esoteric code.

Perhaps you are right. But BMD has been so far silent on it (although I plan to resubmit this post to BMD via the support email route, since they seem to be very responsive every time I submit bugs that way), and it’s worth continually bringing it up until it’s acknowledged or fixed. It’s a serious problem.


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I certainly support any effort to improve this issue.

Still image filename import/export oddities and associated drag/drop, folder import and XML import are quite a bit of a hassle.

(It's one of my "big three" pain points - the other two being accurate keyframe curve / easing in the edit page, and the inability to save inspector settings as a re-usable preset.)

Posting this for the benefit of BMD engineering:

Resolve is making poor assumptions that if a file is a still image, AND the filename contains a number in it (regardless of in which position the number appears in the file name), that the user intends for it to be an image sequence, as if the "Show individual Frames" option is disabled in the Media Storage preferences.

This causes XML imports containing super'ed still graphics to break, "Reconform from Media Storage", "Replace Selected Clip" and drag-and-drop imports of still graphics to import incorrectly, because there is no way to force the "Show Individual Frames" option while doing those types of operations, as there is no available interface option to do so.

In the Resolve Media Storage panels, the image sequence detection algorithm should only recognize files as members of image sequences if the following conditions exist:

1) The numeric sequences appear at the end of the filename
2) The numeric sequences are sequential in numbering
3) The numeric sequences share the same numeric "padding" (e.g. "imgseq010.jpg" is different from "imgseq0010.jpg"
4) The base names of the files all match

The detection algorithm should also ignore any file that has a number in its file name, AND has a unique base name from all other files in the folder, so that it doesn't consider them single-frame "image sequences"

So as a test, given an example folder of image files like this (the red-colored files denote breaks in the numbering sequence)...



...Fusion and Nuke both do the right thing in their respective file import dialogs:

Fusion:


Nuke:


Both Nuke and Fusion even detects missing frames in the "imgseq_####" sequence, and lists which frames are detected as missing!

Resolve, on the other hand, considers the "NOTIMGSEQ-0045-A.png" and "NOTIMGSEQ-0045-B.png" files to be single-frame image sequences, which is utterly bananas. It also doesn't realize that the "imgseq_####.png" sequence has missing frames, and sees them as 3 separate image sequences:



After Effects has a different, but also sensible approach, where the user has to explicitly tell AE that the file they choose in the import dialogue is a member of an image sequence (it doesn't detect and display image sequences in the file requestor itself). This allows you to select files that may have shared base names, and even sequential numbers in them, but are NOT actually part of an image sequence:



AE also detects the breaks in the image sequence, and warns the user of that fact, while simply displaying the missing frames with color bars.

I almost prefer AE's method (even though I also prefer to have image sequences collapsed in the file dialog display), since it relies on the user to dictate how files are interpreted, and it is immediately apparent at the time of import if the user accidentally picked the wrong option. So, for example, if you clicked on "imgseq_00003.png", expecting to import the image sequence that file belongs to, but you see that only that single frame imported, you know immediately that you forgot to click the "PNG sequence" checkbox in the import dialog.

But seeing as that Fusion already does the right thing in its own file import dialogs, one would hope that Resolve could use the same image-sequence detection logic as well.

Just found yet another unexpected issue related to this...

If you drag in a folder containing stills with numbers in their filenames from the Media Storage panel, AND you have the "Show individual Frames" option enabled, the files within that folder will still get imported into the Media Pool with the same erroneous image-sequence interpretation issues.

However, if you drag in the individual files--instead of the actual folder itself--they import correctly

Screencapture documenting this issue:

+1.

Get this fixed BMD.

Importing a timeline using XML, that has a lot of stills in the edit, numbered sequentially, is and has always a massive pain in the butt, adding a lot of time to conform. Workaround is to tell resolve to treat stills as individual clips first, then adding all the relevant media to the media pool first and then import XML, after unchecking "import source clips into the media pool" - easy when you have a been given a nicely media managed project, prepped for online and you can just import the whole drive. Not so easy when working from the same server as the offline editors, and you're dealing with the entire project, which can be huge and all over the place.

+1