no, sadly. But for that a digital camera would give MUCH higher res.

EDIT: oopes... chien is right, forgot about the image grab in vidcap. :) I was thinking along the times of 1 fames every X frames of video, which vegas can't do.

Agreed, even a very cheap digital still camera would be a much better way to work. Why wear out your camera's heads when you only need a few frames. Also mostly video cameras are recording interlaced video which is not really that ideal for animation, you can de-interlace in post but a $100 still camera avoids all the issues.


Also effective stop frame animation means you need to lock the camera down, again much easier to achieve with a DSC and a remote shutter release.

Then again many video cameras have a built in still camera. If your camera has that feature use that. Also I don't know about Sony's video cameras running in still camera mode but the DSC 828 will let you do a remote shutter release via LANC, Sony used to have a very cheap LANC controller for just this purpose, very handy for avoiding camera movement.

Bob.

Using a video camera as i described could be done without a tape installed, in fact it would be preferred to have no tape. There would be no mechanical wear on the camera at all. If the end product is going back out to DVD or DV then the resolution of the video camera is an exact match. Interlacing shouldn't matter because the image in front of the camera won't change at all between the two fields.

Kelly? "The stills will be named with sequential numbers such as frame 001.jpg, frame 002.jpg, frame 003.jpg, etc. "

I've tried and re-tried this approach - I HAVE to be dong something wrong?

What I get is a Still Capture session, where I capture the first JPEG. Immediately a Menu/window comes up after this first, and presently ONLY image grab, and I'm invited to save. This happens but I don't the option to carry on! I have to "Capture" still do another, save this ONE still, and this goes away and I need to start again. I don't presently get a sequential session happening?

Grazie, whatever name you type for saving the first still will be remembered for subsequent stills. Suppose you type in "jeremiah" (just for example). The first still will be saved as "jeremiah 001.jpg". After that if you simply press enter without specifying a name the same name will be used and the second will be saved as "jeremiah 002.jpg" and so forth.

Nero does that on the fly but you have to have one really fast clicking finger.

JJK

So, VidCap does this, but ONE frame at a time PER session - this should be made clearer. For my understanding, VidCap is for getting streams from a tape. Why shouldn't I also expect this to happen for stills too? I'm not interested that it is difficult OR that VidCap ain't meant to do this - I'm talking about THIS end user's expectations when he sees "Capture Image" as part of streaming video capture function-set. Apologies for the hijack here.

Scenalyzer does this (easily), and lots more:

Scenalyzer Features

I guess it comes down to, do you want to capture image or capture imageS? I think most would consider an image to be a single thing, and a group of images to be video. VidCap does both of these things. If you want to grab certain sequetial images then that would imply some sort of user control. This is done by repeatedly capturing single frames when you want to by simply repeating the capture single image function as necessary.

Now, if you want to set up some sort of timed thing to have VidCap automatically grab single frames at set intervals, then this i agree is something that VidCap does not do and probably should. This function would also be somewhat hampered by the fact that doing an image capture pauses playback of a tape. That's slightly off topic though as the premise of this thread is capturing live images through the camera lens.

Kelly,

Yes, I think there are two things being discussed here: stop motion, and time lapse. Stop motion is where you take a picture each time you press the button. Each capture can either be save as an individual still photo and then later assembled into a video by "importing a still image sequence" or, with better software, the individual snapshots can automatically be assembled directly into a video AVI file, thus eliminating that intermediate step.

The other, separate, capability is timelapse, where the computer captures one frame every "n" seconds. I'm watching the morning fog recede in the valley below me, and have taken timelapse of this many times, using Scenalyzer. With Scenanalyzer and a laptop, you can take photos of buildings going up, flowers blooming, and all that other good stuff. I used it once to photograph a crew setting up temporary bleachers for a high school class photo shoot. It provided a very effective introduction.

Thanks for the replies.
I think I'll try to use vegas for now because I tried it and it worked. Later I might get a program meant for stop motion animation and a still camera.