Frame Grab Software

[MrSMW]

Anyone used anything like this with any success?

Ie, take say a 10-12 minute finished video of 300+ clips and have the software frame grab 'the best' from each cut?

I've had a go with BestFrame from FX Factory but it's crashed 4 times in a row now 🤪

[MrSMW]

Just to be clear, I can already do this manually and incredibly tediously in my current editing software *cough* Premiere, but I am looking for something AI so I can skip losing a day of my life with each job.

Cheers.

[newfoundmass]

I usually just use quicktime and use command c. Never looked into software that could do it automatically!

[MrSMW]

I’ll take a look at QuickTime, - I didn’t know that.

 

[newfoundmass]

13 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I’ll take a look at QuickTime, - I didn’t know that.

 

Yeah, it's literally just cut and paste haha. 

[kye]

VLC has a feature (available via a hotkey) that saves a screen grab as a PNG.  It's not a very good player though unfortunately, on Mac anyway.  It can't play backwards, and the feature to advance a single frame works at first but seems to get bogged down, and after you've advanced even a few frames it seems incapable of going back to playing again.

I know you said you were editing in Premier, but (IIRC) the free version of Resolve does timelines up to UHD and can grab screen grabs relatively easily.  It would require a bit of setup where you pull the clips into a timeline, then the grabbing would be like butter, then the export of all the grabs takes a few steps, but the ease of finding the right frames might be worth the 30s to setup and export at the end?

Both are options though.

[maxJ4380]

2 hours ago, kye said:

 

I know you said you were editing in Premier, but (IIRC) the free version of Resolve does timelines up to UHD and can grab screen grabs relatively easily.  It would require a bit of setup where you pull the clips into a timeline, then the grabbing would be like butter, then the export of all the grabs takes a few steps, but the ease of finding the right frames might be worth the 30s to setup and export at the end?

Both are options though.

I last did some screen grabs in resolve 18, when i bothered to dl 20, i think they changed how you grab frames as nothing i did seemed to grab a frame. 20 was new at the time and there were no tutorials that i could find More by good luck than good management i figured it out. I do think its easier / faster in to do in 20. Just letting you know so you avoid some hiccups. 

[MrSMW]

3 hours ago, kye said:

It would require a bit of setup where you pull the clips into a timeline

I just start a new timeline with the finished production as a single entity.

Or rather that is what I have been doing to date with the few attempts I have made.

I think what I will do now, for the rest of this year at least, is introduce a new chapter as it were in my process which is after culling, importing, colour grading, while the clips are all still 6k 30p on a 6k 30p timeline, but prior to any speed changes, transitions, graphics, text etc, is export a 3:2 6k copy and then pull the stills from that.

These will then match my same baked in LUT stills also in 3:2.

I can then import the results from both into Lightroom as a single set for any final grading and reexport as JPEGs.

The only thing I hoped to do other than this was have AI find, select and export 350-500 frames from clips for me…amd maybe that software exists and if it doesn’t it should as that will be one of those things worthy of the title ‘game changer’.

Kills or at least severely limits the photographer in me, but hey, choices…

[kye]

1 hour ago, MrSMW said:

I just start a new timeline with the finished production as a single entity.

Or rather that is what I have been doing to date with the few attempts I have made.

I think what I will do now, for the rest of this year at least, is introduce a new chapter as it were in my process which is after culling, importing, colour grading, while the clips are all still 6k 30p on a 6k 30p timeline, but prior to any speed changes, transitions, graphics, text etc, is export a 3:2 6k copy and then pull the stills from that.

These will then match my same baked in LUT stills also in 3:2.

I can then import the results from both into Lightroom as a single set for any final grading and reexport as JPEGs.

The only thing I hoped to do other than this was have AI find, select and export 350-500 frames from clips for me…amd maybe that software exists and if it doesn’t it should as that will be one of those things worthy of the title ‘game changer’.

Kills or at least severely limits the photographer in me, but hey, choices…

Makes sense.

One other thing I just thought of is wondering if Lightroom can import stills directly from video files?  I have no idea, but I remember that Photoshop had integrated some rudimentary video functionality some time ago so maybe Lightroom has some?  It's not completely beyond comprehension that they might anticipate solo wedding shooters wanting to pull stills from video files.

One thing to keep in mind is the creative impacts of inserting a stills step into your video workflow.  On my last couple of trips I worked out a dailies workflow where I backed up the footage, pulled it into a timeline, applied some basic colour grading, and then reviewed it (it's a dailies workflow after all!) but also pulled stills as I went.  
The creative impact is that while looking for good stills I was focusing on clips that had a single good frame, which is often not creatively relevant for doing a video edit, and could definitely impact your mental inventory of your footage.  If you're doing this before you've done the edit, or if the edit is predictable or formulaic enough, then it might not matter, but otherwise it might negatively impact the editing process.

Resolve has an ever-increasing catalogue of AI features, but I doubt they'll be sophisticated enough to choose the nicest compositions and facial expressions etc, as making the happiest movie possible isn't really the focus of many film-makers.

[BTM_Pix]

Not AI but this will significantly speed up the manual process and is a good all round productivity booster in general.

For this task (and you can have multiple presets for other tasks) I’d have the left and right inner buttons assigned to the Première Pro keyboard shortcuts for previous and next clip respectively, the centre button to play/pause, one of the outer ones for the export shortcut and the jog shuttle for the jog shuttle.

Workflow would be hit the button to move to next clip, play/pause button and jog/shuttle to locate and then export key to capture.

Rinse and repeat moving to the head of the next clip each time.

Nothing you couldn’t do with mangling your fingers to do the shortcuts but far, far more ergonomic for such a repetitive task.

As I say, they are just generally useful devices for everything editing related.

And not a bank balance drainer at £65 either.

Also, as it’s based on driving keyboard shortcuts it can move with you to different applications.

https://contour-design.co.uk/products/multimedia-controller-xpress

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, kye said:

One other thing I just thought of is wondering if Lightroom can import stills directly from video files?

If I understand correctly what you mean, I think so...

I have used stills previously, but not 'matching' stills.

What I am proposing going forward is ensuring my video and stills match perfectly in the grade and if frame grabs intended to be used as stills, identical to that exact frame in the video.

The primary intention and purpose is to cut back drastically on stills photo capture in the first place and therefore also editing time and move towards a more cohesive and less time intensive approach.

So currently I'll do a full capture, cull and edit etc on both photo and video.

Going forward, I'd like to capture even more video and reduce the stills capture back to just certain elements, mainly details and family groups.

Pics will be captured in raw + Jpeg 3:2 ratio with my LUT baked into the Jpegs (which is the same LUT I bake into my video footage in camera). I normally bin the Jpegs and use the raws, but I am proposing using the Jpegs and simply keeping the raws as backup just in case.

Edit the video timeline to the point where it's still in 3:2 open gate format and then pull the frame grabs for use specifically as stills, rather than to insert back into the video.

I can then go back into the timeline and put my more 'cinematic' 17:9, or 2:1 or whatever crop on it, and add all the twiddly bits that are video specific such as any text, transitions etc.

Et voila, a finished wedding film plus a set of stills that look like frames from a movie. As intended, ie, when someone says, "your photos look like frames from a movie", it will be because most of them are.

Anyway, I am going to give it a go as all last year, this year so far and the next 2 jobs, I've been shooting stills on the A7RV and Nikon Zf with 90% of the footage for my wedding films coming from the S9.

After these next 2 jobs are in the bag, the A7RV and Zf get replaced with a single S1Rii shooting 7.2k 30p clips and the S9 which was shooting video exclusively at 6k 30p, will be shooting a mix of some stills and some secondary video.

Pretty sure it will be a good set up based on the kit I have and some of the trials I have attempted, but as with all these things, it's only when you climb out of the trench and charge the enemy, with bullets flying, you truly know. Or you step on a landmine and it all goes tits up.

 

[maxJ4380]

1 hour ago, BTM_Pix said:

 

And not a bank balance drainer at £65 either.

https://contour-design.co.uk/products/multimedia-controller-xpress

I have one on the watch list for amazon prime day. Hopefully they come on sale. Even if they don't I'll grab one as they are cheaper new on prime, than buying second hand off ebay.