This page provides information on Chaos Player's command line support.
Overview
The extensive command line support allows you to have full control over Chaos Player through any external application that can pass commands to it. The set of commands and their function is explained the chaosplayer.cmdline.txt file that can be found in the installation directory of Chaos Player. The general form of a Chaos Player command line is:
"C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\chaosplayer_qt5.exe" [--attach] <options> layer1 <layer-options> layer2 <layer-options> ... [--exit]
where <options> are the global (composition) options and <layer-options> are the layer-specific options that are applied to the layer that was last added.
A full reference of the options is available in Command Reference page.
System Option
The optional --attach should be the first option. If it's absent, a new instance of Chaos Player is started with the specified options. If --attach is present, the command line is sent to an existing instance of Chaos Player, which then executes it. If no Chaos Player instances are active, a new one is started. If several Chaos Player instances are active, a random one among them is chosen.
The optional --exit should be the last option. It makes Chaos Player exit after processing the command line and before creating the main window. This is useful for batch conversions.
The --cmdfile=file.ext option instructs Chaos Player to read the text file file.ext and to execute the commands in it as if they were given directly on the command line.
Layers
layerN represents the file name (or names) of the source of the new layer. For still images and movies, it is the name of the file. For sequences, it can have the following forms:
path/file014.ext – Names one frame of the sequence. Chaos Player will automatically detect that the file is part of a sequence by examining the trailing digits in the name. Both \ and / are valid as path separators.
path/file####.ext or path/file????.ext – The ? or # characters are automatically replaced with digits as appropriate.
path/file%04d.ext – The %04d is equivalent to ####, where the number of the # characters corresponds to the number before the d. Supported for NUKE compatibility.
The file name can be followed by the --range option, which has the following general format:
--range=B1-E1/S1,B2-E2/S2...
where Bi is the start frame, Ei is the end frame, and Si is the frame step. -Ei and /Si are optional. As an example,
test.####.exr --range=1-4,100-200/20,204,207
represents the sequence
test.0001.exr
test.0002.exr
test.0003.exr
test.0004.exr
test.0100.exr
test.0120.exr
test.0140.exr
test.0160.exr
test.0180.exr
test.0200.exr
test.0204.exr
test.0207.exr
Examples
start chaosplayer --fps=25 --global_aspect=1.067 --back_color=black --mask=720,576 d:\footage\back0001.exr --alpha=ignore --brightness=0.1 d:\footage\front0001.exr -blend=add --opacity=20
start chaosplayer d:\footage\seq0001.exr --exposure=-0.5 --soft_clip=3.5 --save_layer_as=d:\footage\seq2.png -exit
start chaosplayer d:\footage\seq2.0001.exr --save_layer_as=d:\footage\seq2.mp4 --exit