The first challenge in decoding data from piqlFilm is getting high-quality scanned / photographed images from the physical medium. Assuming you have some kind of rig to be able to turn and photograph film frames, you will be able to digitize photos of the film.
This unboxing tool at its current state will be able to decode film assuming the frames are correctly numbered. Future versions of this tool may be able to scan all images in the folder and use the metadata in each frame to determine the frame order.
In order to correctly number a frame, one must correctly identify the so-called "zero-reference mark frame" and name it "0" (or "000000"). You should also include an appropriate file extension. The image file extensions supported by this tool are: JPEG, PNG, TGA, BMP, PSD, GIF, HDR, PIC, PNM. Future versions of this tool may support loading .raw film reel files (piql-internal format) and / or other image formats.
The zero-reference mark frame looks like this (inverted, so on a physical film you would expect a black square in the top right corner):
After finding the zero-reference mark, you can turn the film and number each following frame by incrementing your image name.
The following frame after the zero-reference mark should be the control frame (so the control frame should be numbered "1" or "000001" or similar). The control frame looks like this:
There is also some helpful text in the frame margin (in this case "4k-controlframe-v7").
If you encounter issues while decoding, you may also try reversing the order of frames, as the zero-reference mark and control frame are repeated at the end of the film. This means if you are missing some frames you can also attempt to copy them to the other end of the film. More information about reconstructing damaged film will be added in the future.
Assuming you have all the images stored in a directory and correctly numbered, you are ready to start decoding.
The first step to decoding the film is to decode the control frame. The unboxing library contains configuration for every version of the control frame format, and you should always attempt to decode with the newest version first, then attempt successively lower versions until it decodes successfully.
See the detailed documentation for more information about exactly how the decoding process works, including code samples.