Taking Freeze Frames from Video and Exporting as Jpeg

[Steven P. Denny]

I'm trying to take GoPro footage from my FCPX and create frame grabs/stills to be exported as a Jpeg file.

 

When I create a still frame from the FCPX timeline and email it, it arrives as a still that has a play/pause menu...much like a quick time file but it is a still frame.

 

I'm trying to use my UAV to grab aerials of some real estate properties and send the realtor photos they can post on their site. But I can't send them the frames I'm getting with the with a Quick Time look. I think they need a Jpeg to pull to load into the site.

 

I attached an example of what I'm getting. I know there's an easy way to accomplish this, I just don't know what it takes.

freeze frame test - Small.mov

[Kenny N Suleimanagich]

Pull the video file into photoshop and then you can view the timeline in frames, just copy+paste from the video file.

[Keith Walters]

Assuming you're using a PC, the freeware video editor Avidemux allows you to save high quality frames as either JPEG or Bitmap

http://sourceforge.net/projects/avidemux/

 

Edited to add: It looks like you're using a Mac; they do make a version of Avidemux for the Mac but apparently it doesn't install as easily as the PC version. Still, it's free!

 

The older versions (Avidemux 2.5) also allowed you to mark a section of video and save it as a series of JPEG stills, but they discontimued that in the later versions. However I think you can still find version 2.5 on the Net. I have both versions installed.

 

Avidemux is dead easy to use.

 

You just open a video file with the standard "File-Open" menu or, just drag and drop the file across with the mouse.

Your keyboard left and right arrows step through the individual frames; the up and down keys jump forward and back to the nearest I-frame (0.5 to 1 second depending on the video format). The "[" and "]" keys mark the edit start and finish points respectively, so for example, if you choose "save video", whatever frames are between the [ and ] markers is what is saved.

 

To save a single frame: "File - Save as Image". Only one minor quirk; you have to actually add ".jpg" manually to the file name, it doesn't automatically add it, even though it says: "save as JPEG"!

 

Avidemux allows simple lossless editing if you always do your cuts at the I-Frame points. (Lossless in this case means the digital data stream is cut and spliced without decoding it. This is particularly useful for cutting the ads out of digital TV recordings, since there is no quality loss and rendering is extremely fast).

 

I've used it with 4K MPEG4 (so-called "Quad HD") from my Samsung Phone with no trouble. Avidemux is basically a windows front end for FFMPEG so it is a very versatile program.)

 

Here's a screen shot; that's me on the right holding the plate :-) (From the Masterfoods 2006 "Squeezy Sauces" ad campaign).

 

 

[Tyler Purcell]

On mac's, simply enter full screen mode in quicktime. Then hit command + shift + 3 and it will screen capture (take a still image) of the quicktime frame. It puts the stills on the desktop and you can title them anything you want. Yes, they're pict files, but they're easy to batch convert to jpeg's using photoshop, graphic converter or any other automated batch converting product.

[Stuart Brereton]

If you're able to view the files in Quicktime, you can export a JPEG of the current frame just by hitting CTRL-C (copy) and then CTRL-V (paste). I do this all the time with Pro-Res files into Photoshop.