Motion projects require a sequence of frames from one or more cameras. As with a regular PhotoModeler project these cameras should be positioned to provide good angles (as close to 90 degrees as possible) and must not change their internal parameters (e.g. focal length due to zoom). Each camera can have its own calibration so they do not have to be the same camera type or have the same settings. It is recommended that you calibrate each camera before using them in a motion project.
The loaded image sequences can be in one of three forms.
The first form is the AVI file. There will be one AVI file per camera. The AVI files contain the image frames for each epoch. Each AVI used in one motion project must have the same number of frames. Both compressed and uncompressed AVIs are handled but which types of compressed types are handled depends on which codecs are installed on your computer. Also beware that highly compressed videos may have insufficient quality to get accurate results from. AVIs can be used only in type 1 (static cameras) projects.
The second form of image sequence is one image file per epoch per camera. These images must have file names in the form AAAATTTT.jpg where:
• AAAA is an arbitrary length string of characters that identifies the project and which camera the image was taken by (the last character must be non-numeric)
• TTTT is an arbitrary length string of numeric characters (0 to 9) that defines the time epoch of the frame (smallest valid value is 0). The time epoch values can be enclosed in parentheses (e.g., AAAA(12).jpg), which can be useful when renaming the images in later versions of Windows (e.g., Windows 7).
• .jpg is an example file extension but the file does not need to be in JPE.G. format, it can be any format handled by PhotoModeler.
Example valid file names would be:
Project1_cam1_012.jpg and Project1_cam2_012.jpg would be two images from different cameras taken at the same time frame.
T533Right0000.jpg is also a valid example of a file name.
Files do not need to start numbered at zero, they can start and end at any number as long as each sequence is the same length, and no numbers are skipped. Note that AVI files are always assumed to start at epoch zero. This second form can be used in both type 1 and type 2 projects.
The third form of image sequence is where all the images for one epoch come from one sub-folder. So for example, the main project folder may be called “Project 1 Images” and it would have sub-folders called “Epoch 1”, “Epoch 2”, “Epoch 3” etc. the images would be located in the “Epoch N” sub-folders. This sub-folders form can only be used in type 2 (moving camera, some static points) projects.