Hello,
Your approach sounds valid, and I think that relying on the ability for Orthanc to extract the frames is probably a better option that re-implementing this in your Python script with pydicom, unless you happen to find that doing that is more efficient than what Orthanc does for some reason (optimization,…)
I would make sure to not write a purely sequential single threaded script for this and instead rely either on threads or asynchronous functions, though.
(if you’re not used to async requests, a script has been posted there in another unrelated thread that you might want to get inspiration from : it performs concurrent async upload requests)
Other than that, the “extract frames” → “ffmpeg” → “movie export” workflow sounds good.
_ 1. Is there a preferred Orthanc workflow for efficiently exporting cine loops as MP4s, especially for large datasets?_
Maybe someone will be able to comment on this… I personally cannot see much more to it than what you described.
HTH