Capturing Still Images From Dv Tapes

[Bobby Singh]

hey

is there any software around that lets you capture a selection of random images from DV quicktime files automatically

im sure it's been asked before

im looking at offering a storybook album to some of my 'videography' clients

the footage will be shot in HDV. if i can produce a random set of images.. that would really do wonders for me

cheers for any advice

[Robert Lane]

I never seen nor heard of anything setup to parse out stills from video automatically - and certainly not randomly; seems you'd want to have control over what frame actually turns into a still image. For example you wouldn't want a frame that was blurry either because of bad focus or subject movement, right?

There are several methods you could use to grab your stills:

You could either import the QT clip into a FCP timeline and use the "Make Freeze Frame" command, then export those frames as stills or;

You could simply play the clip in the QT viewer, pause the playback at any point you want then use the APPLE-SHIFT-4 command to manually take a screenshot of the paused frame or;

You could use the EXPORT command directly in QT and send out a freeze frame...

There are several manual options but no automated method - that I've seen.

[Chris Korrow]

I do a lot of still capture from video, if you want the best quality, I'd suggest bringing it into FCP & export individual freeze frames. Or you could do an edit of the frames you want, (I use 3 frame clips) into a sequence, then de-interlace it all & export an image sequence.

De-interlacing takes away a lot of those black jagged lines from the edges, doing 3 frame clips lets you choose the best image. This saves a lot of time because you can de-interlace them all at once & export all at once if your doing a lot of images.

[Bobby Singh]

thanks guys

but need something more faster and automated

imagine the potential !