Comments

discdude wrote on 5/22/2003, 4:53 PM
Yes, VF will let you do this although this functionality is somewhat hidden.

First, look at the "Video" window at the lower right hand of your screen. You will notice a disk icon on the top right part of this window. Clicking on this disk icon will create a still of whatever frame is currently displayed in this window. However, before you start creating stills make sure you right click video preview area and select "Display at project size" or else the still will be the exact size of the video window (in other words, too small).

To step through your video frame by frame use ALT and the arrow keys (I wish SF would make this the default action for the regular arrow keys but what can you do other than spam the product suggestion page).
fiona wrote on 5/23/2003, 5:26 AM
Discdude,

Thanks for your quick reply - but I'm looking at the 'video' part of the screen in the demo version & can't see the disc icon anywhere (just :- 'Video output FX..., Copy timeline Snapshot and Save timeline Snapshot to File'). Any idea where I'm going wrong? In the meantime, I discovered instructions in the 'Show Me' tutorials to first go to File & Capture Video then use the Transport Toolbar to play the film from my camcorder, pause film then step forward frame by frame. The Capture Image box then creates a JPEG of any frames I want. So far, so good - it's easy and I think this is EXACTLY what I need. However, the quality of the JPEG (196 x 144) created is much lower than those I can get by manually editing the video in camera (at 640 x 480 these are a high enough quality for slideshows - the VF jpeg quality is not). Do you know how I can capture the higher quailty setting of stills within VF OR do you know of other software that can???

Thanks very much,

Fiona
Chienworks wrote on 5/23/2003, 6:02 AM
Fiona, by default, the later versions of VideoFactory have a lot of the menus and controls turned off. Right-mouse-button click on the preview window and make sure that Show Toolbar is selected. You should then get a row of controls above the preview. Selecting Display at Project Size will make sure the captured stills are full size.

In VidCap, to get stills at full size, right-mouse-button click on the preview, choose zoom, 100%. This will enlarge the preview window to full size.

Just a word of caution ... full size DV stills will be 654x480, not 640x480. Don't panic; this is normal and correct.
discdude wrote on 5/23/2003, 6:09 AM
The "Save Timeline Snapshot to File" button is the one with the disk icon (at least I think it looks like a floppy disk).

It is also correct that you can capture stills using the Sonic Foundry Video Capture program (Vidcap for short). It is hard for me to give exact instructions on how to change frame size since it varies depending on your capture hardware. But basically, check under the video menu. There should be an option to adjust capture properties.

<Edit>Chienworks beat me to it - his advice it good too. </Edit>
fiona wrote on 5/23/2003, 5:35 PM
Disddude & Chienworks,

Thanks for your advice. I found the disc icon but the demo version won't let me extract stills so I can't test this out. One thought, it says this action lets you 'extract still images from existing video clips', OK, but will that be of lower resolution than taking directly from my camcorder's cassette?

I've tested out the Vidcap route too and have got further in the right direction. I set zoom to 100% but my still images were 393 x 288 (x 16) & 19.8kb as opposed to 640 x 480 (x 16 million & 181.7kb) that I achieved taking the same frame from the camcorder to memory stick. It's obviously a lot better than before but not the 654 x 480 you expected Chienworks, and noticably less sharp in a slideshow. Any ideas why I'm not getting the 654 I'd hoped for? Incidentally, under Video capture/options/Preferences/Capture there are the following tick boxes:

'Deinterlace image when capturing stills'

'Apply pixel aspect ratio to captured stills'

and

'save captured stills as JPEGS'

I'm not sure what the first two mean or what saving as BITMAPS would do. Also, what should they be set to?

Any help gratefully recieved once more!

Regards,

Fiona
discdude wrote on 5/23/2003, 8:45 PM
It is hard for me to give specific advice without know the specifics about your system. I am going under the assumption that you are using some kind of Sony MiniDV cam. OK, here goes:

You said "One thought, it says this action lets you 'extract still images from existing video clips', OK, but will that be of lower resolution than taking directly from my camcorder's cassette?"

The snapshot function sets the resolution to whatever your project settings are. If you are using the "DV" preset, there should be no quality difference.

"Any ideas why I'm not getting the 654 I'd hoped for?"

I would try unchecking the "Base DV decoding resolution on Preview Window size" option located under the "Preview" tab in the Vidcap preferences.

"save captured stills as JPEGS"

JPEG is a lossy compression scheme. Some data is thrown away in order to reduce filesize. You will get better quality stills with this unchecked option at the expense of larger file sizes. Also, bitmap file = .bmp file.

"Deinterlace image when capturing stills & Apply pixel aspect ratio to captured stills"

These are some advanced video topics. For now, just leave them at the default settings.

Hope this helps.