Simple Tool for Animating Sequential Images

This program is a lightweight tool developed with VCSSL that allows you to play back sequential image files (in PNG or JPEG format) as an animation without converting them into a video file.

Here, "sequential image files" refers to image files with filenames that include consecutive numbers at the end, such as: image1.png, image2.png, image3.png, ..., image100.png.

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How to Use

Download and Extract

At first, click the "Download" button at the above of the title of this page by your PC (not smartphone). A ZIP file will be downloaded.

Then, please extract the ZIP file. On general environment (Windows®, major Linux distributions, etc.), you can extract the ZIP file by selecting "Extract All" and so on from right-clicking menu.

» If the extraction of the downloaded ZIP file is stopped with security warning messages...

Execute this Program

Next, open the extracted folder and execute this VCSSL program.

For Windows

Double-click the following batch file to execute:

For Linux, etc.

Execute "VCSSL.jar" on the command-line terminal as follows:

» If the error message about non-availability of "java" command is output...

If You Run Out of Memory While Running the Program...

Depending on how you use it, this program may consume a considerable amount of memory. As a result, the default memory allocation may not be sufficient in some cases. If you encounter such issues, please refer to the following:

» When You Run Out of Memory While Running the Program (for Microsoft® Windows® Users)
» When You Run Out of Memory While Running the Program (for Linux® and Other OS Users

Selecting the Input Folder

Next, you'll be asked whether you want to specify the input folder (i.e., the folder containing the sequential image files you want to animate). If you do want to specify a folder, click "Yes", then choose the location of the folder.

If you click "No" to skip this step, the tool will automatically use the folder named "sample" inside the folder where the program was extracted or downloaded. This folder contains sample sequential images, so if this is your first time trying out the tool, itfs recommended to click "No" here.

Entering the File Name

You will then be prompted to enter the file name.

In the file name input window, you only need to enter the part of the filename excluding the sequential number and extension. For example, if your image files are named like "image123.png", enter just the "image" part.

Selecting the File Extension

Next, you'll be asked to select the file extension. Choose either ".png" for PNG format or ".jpg" for JPEG format. As of now, these are the only two formats supported by this tool.

Choosing Whether to Buffer Image Data

Finally, you'll be asked whether you want to buffer the image data. Unless you encounter memory-related errors, it's generally recommended to select "Yes".

Buffering affects how and when image files are read.

When buffering is enabled, all image data is loaded into memory at the beginning, and the animation is played using that data.

When buffering is disabled, image files are loaded one by one as needed, and each image is discarded from memory after it is shown.

Buffering typically results in smoother animations (especially on the first loop). It also reduces stress on storage devices, which is useful if you're running the animation repeatedly on a machine with an older HDD.

However, buffering requires more memory, so if the images are large or numerous, it may cause the program to terminate due to insufficient memory. In such cases, disabling buffering can help conserve memory usage.

Using the Image Viewer Window

Once all inputs are completed, an image viewer window will appear, and the animation playback will begin automatically.

The controls are similar to those of a standard video player.

You can toggle playback using the "PLAY / STOP" button in the lower-left corner, and use the seek bar (the long slider at the bottom) to jump to any point in the animation.

In the "Image Interval (ms)" field, you can specify the delay (in milliseconds) between one image and the next. Larger values result in slower playback speed.

Code

This program is written in VCSSL.

If you want to modify or customize the tool, you can simply open the program file "ImageFileAnimator.vcssl" in a text editor and make changes directly.

Since VCSSL is a scripting language, no recompilation is required. Its syntax is simple and C-like, so if you have any experience with C or similar languages, you should be able to understand most of it intuitively.

Entire Code

This is more of a practical tool than just a sample script, so the code is a bit lengthy and includes some ad-hoc handling in various parts. Because of that, instead of explaining the code line by line from the top, we'll simply provide the full source code here.

If you'd like to understand how it works in detail, it's recommended to start reading from the main function and follow the logic step by step. Refer to the comments in the code as needed, and dive into the lower-level functions along the way.

Please note that this is a standalone, quick-and-dirty tool, so there are quite a few hardcoded values throughout the script-including parts of the GUI layout. We hope you'll forgive the lack of polish in those areas.

Here is the complete source code of the tool:

That concludes the source code.

License

The license of this VCSSL / Vnano code (the file with the extension ".vcssl" / ".vnano") is CC0 (Public Domain), so you can customize / divert / redistribute this VCSSL code freely.

Also, if example code written in C/C++/Java are displayed/distributed on Code section of this page, they also are distributed under CC0, unless otherwise noted.