Is there a way in iClone to detect duplicate frames? I want to be able to stitch a longer video together with a seamless transition (particle effects are involved).

Can you define what you mean by duplicate frames?

Are you referring to a specific prop or character's position? Any frame without movement will be the same as the previous, so there could lots of duplicates depending on your definition of duplicate and scene.

Next question is why would there be duplicates? Is it a prop that repeats something in a loop? 

I don't know of a built-in method, but a Python script could check an objects position against other frames, but it might take a bit to process 1800 or more frames against each other.

Another method would be to render all the images as an image sequence (instead of a video), and a program could check images for similar images, yet again this could be time consuming depending on number of frames rendered.

Tell me what you need to find and I can tell you more. (possibly)



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There is no way to detect duplicate frames inside iClone, and such a feature wouldn't work in quite a lot of situations even if present.

Take the example of a simple half second pause in a scene - 15 frames in a 30 FPS render. 14 of them would be considered duplicates and removed leaving the clip with a 1 frame pause. :w00t:

The only successful way to do what you want is to use an video editing software (NLE). Particle effects need time to get started, and therefore require more frames to get to "full power". It's always best to start any effects at least 1-2 seconds into a scene and then remove the unwanted frames later in the NLE.

Gerry

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System: Win 10 Pro (21H2), Asus X99-E WS, CPU i7-5930K -3,5 GHz, 32 GB DDR4 2666-16 RAM, NVidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU - 11 GB VRAM(Driver Studio-536.99), Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD, 6 TB HD storage.

The issue I have is with particle effects where there's rain, fog, and waves. I can stitch a drawn out scene together in another video editor, but I'd like to be able to continue from a particular frame (continue where the particle effect left off) so the scene doesn't have a choppy transition.

Particles are random, physics-controlled, there's no way to get "where the particle effect left off". And I'm almost sure this is valid for any 3D engine involving particles - otherwise, particles would be recordable/keyframable.

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Software developer. iClone hobbyist since January 11, 2020. Best work so far: Robots among us: The Lab and The sad end of a legend
In progress: Black Mamba
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