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Stephen.Pickering
Inspiring
July 9, 2019
Question

Large time-lapse project (250,000+ images) workflow help

  • July 9, 2019
  • 2 replies
  • 966 views

Hi there,
A few years ago I tackled a time-lapse project that was just filmed over two days, but this is a new beast...  We filmed a project over 13 days and accumulated about 250,000 still photos.  I have given up all hope for working with the raw gopro .gpr files (Premiere Pro can't open them and AE is exceptionally slow with them- plus I'd like to use Premiere Pro for the editing as it will be a complex edit (not just a straight timelapse start to finish)- I'm fine with the Jpeg files.  However, each day has two gopros and each gopro folder has individual folders broken into groups of 1,000 files...

I thought I could drag the parent folder of each day and create an image sequence from each subfolder, but I either get an error saying there is no file (because the parent folder has no file, just folders) or I get a bunch of folders with individual files rather than sequences.

I guess I'm wondering if there is a trick to getting all of the files into the project as image sequences.  Importing each folder one at a time (containing 1,000 files) will take about 250 "imports". I thought about searching my folders and moving all stills from each day (and each camera) into a parent folder, but then I'm not sure how Premiere will handle it if I'm importing folders that have, for example, 27,000 stills.

Any suggestions?

Thank you!

-Stephen

    2 replies

    B
    Bored Engineer
    Participant
    February 5, 2022

    Hi Stephen, late here but worst case scenario this helps the community.

     

    I've tackled similar projects (10 day timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmiDqeVokzg), am reviewing my methods now because I have another at hand.

     

    If you use a good file management SW (e.g. Total Commander), you will have an option where you can open a parent folder and display all the files inside all it's subfolders, all at once. This option enabled, effectively you will see simply all the pictures virtually "in the same folder". You then just select all those pictures, and copy them somewhere else without keeping the relative paths (original folder structure). In Total Commander that is a tick-box to be left unselected during the copy/move. Lucky for us, GoPro's typically have a 7 digit photo number incremented at every shot. Thus, numbers wont repeat until you do a 9.99* million photos timelapse :). If you have problems with repeating numbers or wrong order, you just need a good batch file renaming SW (included in Total Commander, and I'm sounding like one of their representatives.. haha).

     

    Then it's simple of course. In Premiere Pro's import interface, select only the first photo and import it as a sequence. 

    kevdrone
    kevdrone
    Participating Frequently
    April 17, 2025

    I've tried doing this and Premiere will hang trying to open everything, manage all th elinks. I've also tried keeping them in their 999-item folders, and Premiere still hangs trying to link them all while opening the project.

     

    It seems like the approach is to eat this elephant one folder at a time, one .prproj per folder, export a ProRes or CineForm file of each, then assmemble/edit the larger clips elsewhere. Super tedious, PrPro should be able to handle it, but just doesn't.

    M
    mcdowellphotog
    Participant
    September 24, 2019

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