Using Still Images

RichMitt wrote on 3/8/2005, 11:15 AM

I would like to extract single frames from video events and use them as still images in the same way that jpg's can be used in the video track. I would like to expand each from a single frame to about six seconds.

Back in August-September of last year there was a discussion on this subject, but it was not entirely clear to me.

One suggestion was simply to copy the frame multiple times. That I understand, but it is pretty time-consuming.

A second suggestion (by IanG) was to "put it on the timeline, grab one edge, and drag it to whatever lengh you want." That sounded good, so I tried it but it brought along the subsequent frames from the original clip. Next, I tried holding down the Ctrl key while I stretched it, which worked but it only expanded a few frames and then wouldn't extend any further. What am I missing?

The third suggestion (by artone) was to "save that frame as a still image, drag it to the length you want." That sounds promising also , but I don't understand how to save the frame as a still image. Does that mean somehow putting it into the Media Poo so it can be used like a jpg imagel? Or is this basically the same suggestion as IanG's?

Even better yet would to be able to save a frame as a jpg file. Is this possible?

Comments

ADinelt wrote on 3/8/2005, 1:58 PM

Hi RichMitt:

The following procedure is based on Sony Vegas Movie Studio 4, and I think the same applies to Movie Studio 3.

1) Down in the lower right corner of the window, you have a Preview pane.
2) There are some little icons just above the Preview pane. There are two of them that will be of interest to you.
3) The first icon looks like a large square above a small rectangle. On my screen, both the rectangle and square are blue. If you hover the mouse over the icon, it will say Project Size Preview. Click on this icon to expand the Preview Pane to the size of your project (e.g. 720 x 480 or something similar).
4) Find the frame on the time line that you want to save. It will show up in the Preview Pane.
5) Once you have found the frame you want to save, then the second icon will come into play. Look for the icon that looks like a floppy disk. If you let your mouse hover over the icon, it will say Save Timeline Snapshot To File.
6) Click on the icon and a dialog box will appear allowing you to specify where to save the file and what name you want to give it. You will be able to save it to either a .jpg or .png file format.
7) Your newly save image should automatically appear in the Media Pool.
8) You can now drop this image directly onto the timeline and manipulate it like any other picture file.

Hope this helps you...
Al

IanG wrote on 3/8/2005, 2:51 PM

>A second suggestion (by IanG) was to "put it on the timeline, grab one edge, and drag it to whatever lengh you want." That sounded good, so I tried it but it brought along the subsequent frames from the original clip

I don't understand that - if you've captured a single frame there are no subsequent frames, it's just a still image??

Ian G.

RichMitt wrote on 3/8/2005, 9:55 PM

What happened is this, Ian. I selected a single frame, copied it, and pasted it in the blank space following my video events. When I tried to stretch it, I got subsequent frames. The next time I tried to copy a single frame, I split the event on either side of the selected frame. When I copied that one, the same thing happened. It seems that because the frame is linked to the original video clip, it pulls the adjacent frames into the Movie Studio video track when I try to stretch that single frame. Does that make sense? I guess that for some reason I'm not really "capturing" that single frame.

ADinelt's suggestion sounded perfect, but I don't seem to find the "floppy disc" icon just above the preview pane. Maybe that only comes with Movie Studio 4, not with Movie Studio 3. That may be reason enough to upgrade.

IanG wrote on 3/9/2005, 12:47 AM

Rich, you need to use a combination of Al's and my techniques - Al's will give you a jpg image of 1 frame, mine will allow you to set the length. I don't understand why there's a problem with the floppy icon, though, it's been there since version 2! I'll have a look when I get home from work.

Ian G.

RichMitt wrote on 3/9/2005, 7:04 AM

I found it! The reason I couldn't see those icons is that they are activated/deactivated by a Show Toolbar switch on the pop-up menu that appears when you rith-click with your cursor in the Preview Window. In my case, the Show Toolbar switch was not activated, so the icons weren't there. Now I'll give the procedure a try.

allyn wrote on 3/9/2005, 7:57 AM

you can also right-click if you don't have the tool bar showing.

RichMitt wrote on 3/9/2005, 1:11 PM

It works - sort of. I can save a frame as a jpg file, but the program then becomes very unstable - shutting down right after making the first save or when I try to make a second save. A typical error message is the following:

"sbvfact30.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."

I spent all morning trying to figure out how to avoid this but to no avail. I've even re-booted several times and cleaned out my C-drive to make more room. I'm ready to give up on this feature. Or should I be reinstalling Movie Studio?

By the way, I am saving my original video clips on a peripheral hard drive to free up my C-drive (and as per Sony's suggestion). Would this be a problem, I wonder.

RichMitt wrote on 3/9/2005, 1:27 PM

I should have mentioned that another common error message is:

"An error has occurred during the current operation. An Exception has occurred."

One feature of this particular project is that I have brought about 30 jpg fles from still digital camera shots. Before putting then into the Media Pool, I resized them so that the maximum vertical pixels for each image was 768 pixels, reducing the file sizes to the 50-150 kb range. Each file was then put in the video stream, mostly at 3 seconds, but one at 10 seconds and one at 21 seconds. Would this be too much for Movie Studio to digest?

IanG wrote on 3/10/2005, 12:50 AM

>Would this be too much for Movie Studio to digest?

No, it's not even a light snack. I tried duplicating your problem with saving stills but it worked fine - maybe it's time to reinstall MS?

Ian G.

ccliffy wrote on 2/2/2006, 6:26 PM

thanks for this tip - I wa sgoing nuts trying to figure out how to do this within program!