Is there any id which links a saved image file to a video?

[xj25vm]

I've written a glue script in Python to add secondary object detection using Yolov8 to Motion. The script continuously loops over saved jpegs and processes them. I am struggling to find a way to link these jpegs against the saved movie file they would correspond to. I used to include the event_id (%v) in the jpeg name and use this, not realising that event_id's don't correspond to a single movie file, and can span several of them. One option which crossed my mind might be a separate movie_id, which could be exposed to on_picture_save and on_movie_end - but I don't know how doable this might be? Or any other way to make the logical link between a saved picture/jpeg and which saved movie this corresponds to?

[arbeaman]

I do something similar. To solve this I create meta files for each picture and movie storing additional information about them. I make the meta files the same name as the movie or picture file with a different extension so they are easy to associate. This could also be done with a database.

I set text_event to %Y%m%d-%H%M%S-%v so it has both the event ID (%v) and the date/time stamp of the event. My on_picture_save and on_movie_end call a script and pass a number of parameters, including the text_event (%C) that are stored in the meta data file.

To find the right movie file, search for a movie file with the same text_event and covers the time of the event. I use text_event on the match instead of just event ID because the ID resets on restarts.

As an example, if the pictures event_text is 20250914-101324-1423 (timestamp 2025-09-14 10:13:24 with and event ID of 1423) and there are three movie files with the same event_text and have start times of:

2025-09-14 10:11:01
2025-09-14 10:13:17
2025-09-14 10:15:30

The matching movie is the one dated 2025-09-14 10:13:17.