Can I save a single frame

dixie

I am completely new to video editing. I would like to select a single frame of a video clip and save it as an image file suitable for Email. Is this possible?

(Don't know what a topic tag is)

[deleted]

Saving a single frame from your video is certainly possible.

Open VP and add your video to the media list.

Drag and drop your video onto the video track. (Or click it on the list and add it to the sequence as prompted)

Move the red cursor line along the sequence using the blue handle at the top of the line, or play the sequence in the right hand preview window.

Stop when you arrive at the image you want to save. You can step along and back a frame at a time using the < > buttons at the bottom of the preview pane.

When the frame you want to save is previewed, just click the button under the window that has the camera icon on it. If this is not visible you may have to widen the preview pane by grabbing the 5 dots on the left of the pane and dragging them to the left. (Also depending on the actual version of VP you are using you may have to click the >>> tab under the window and select "Take snapshot" from the list)

A copy of the frame will appear in the media list (for you to add to the sequence if required) and a further copy (a .png file) will be saved in the default NCH image folder.

Note: If you click the "Options" tab on the tool bar and then the "Media files" tab you can set up the folder where you would like your snapshots to be saved to.)

Version 3.04 of VP will save your image in .png format (previous versions like 2.41 saved the image as a .jpg)

The file for the png image will be be quite large (possibly several megabytes) and probably unsuitable to attach to an e-mail, so before you try to send it by em you will need to make it smaller by converting. it to a .jpg. You could load it into a suitable graphics program and resave it as a jpg or convert it with a dedicated file converter like Irfanview.

If you don't want to download that (it's free) then right click the .png file in the folder where you saved it to and select to open it with windows Paint which you should have on you PC. (Should open it)

Simply re-save it as a .jpg file. It will now be about 80 - 100 Kb and so suitable to send.

Nat

borate

dixie wrote:

I am completely new to video editing. I would like to select a single frame of a video clip and save it as an image file suitable for Email.

Click on the frame you want, in the timeline. Then click on the "camera" icon that's near the right hand edge of the timeline preview window.

The image will be saved to your user|PICTURES folder as a large 1920X1080 .png file. For emailing you may want to open it in an image editor

to resize it smaller. Perhaps 640 X 480 or 800 X 600.

Videopad will open an external image editor that you specify, under OPTIONS|OTHER|IMAGE FILES. If you go that route, first add the saved snapshot

to the image clips list, then right-click on it and choose EDIT OUTSIDE OF VIDEOPAD. Edit as desired, then save it and attach it to a mail message.

NCH makes the free Photopad. And then there's the world's most popular free editor, Irfanview. http://irfanview.com.

During install, watch for "extras" such as toolbars. You may want to UNcheck those options.

[deleted]

Well...There's your answer!

borate

borate wrote:

Click on the frame you want, in the timeline. Then click on the "camera" icon that's near the right hand edge of the timeline preview window.

The image will be saved to your user|PICTURES folder as a large 1920X1080 .png file. For emailing you may want to open it in an image editor

to resize it smaller. Perhaps 640 X 480 or 800 X 600.

Videopad will open an external image editor that you specify, under OPTIONS|OTHER|IMAGE FILES. If you go that route, first add the saved snapshot

to the image clips list, then right-click on it and choose EDIT OUTSIDE OF VIDEOPAD. Edit as desired, then save it and attach it to a mail message.

NCH makes the free Photopad. And then there's the world's most popular free editor - <a href="" rel="">http://irfanview.com...ew.com</a> During install UNcheck extra options,

such as toolbars.

Llama

dixie wrote:

I would like to select a single frame of a video clip and save it as an image file suitable for Email. Is this possible?

Then do a screenshot with your media player (like vlc, mpc, and the lot).

dixie

Thanks everyone for your help. I never noticed the camera icon. I have now taken a snapshot but it is very poor quality, doesn't look useable. Have converted it to jpeg.

The short video (10 frames) is 2.32 Mb The PNG is 2.59 MB and the JPEG is 307.2KB 96 dpi Yet the actual video is very clear

[deleted]

Hi Dixie

As I mentioned .png files can be quite large

As an example, using VP 3.04, taking a snapshot from an mpeg4 clip of 1280 x 720 pixels, the .png image was 1280 x 720 and 1.7 Mb

Using VP 2.41 a corresponding snapshot from the same clip generated a .jpg image of 598 Kb.

Visually the two images appeared pretty much the same and of good quality. The section of video clip from which the images were derived was fairly static though which can make a lot of difference to the "clarity". This may be the reason why your image was not clear.

It would be interesting to know what the frame size of your video is...1920 x 1080 1280 x 720 etc.

I am surprised that you say your video clip had only 10 frames! :blink: Was this, in fact the case, or were you refering to the number of thumbnails visible on the sequence track? A 10 frame clip would run for 1/2 a second or less as VP plays at 30fps.

Although you say your clip plays very clearly, a still taken from it may actually be quite blurred if there is rapid action in the clip. At the normal playing speed of 30fps it may look OK as the eye and brain are fooled into not seeing the blurred images.It will appear to be clear. So you may be disappointed with your snapshot image if this is the case.

Try stepping through the clip one frame at a time (you say there are only 10) and select the best. Even in the VP preview screen you will see the difference between the frames when movement is involved. The preview screen IS small though and what you see here is also a compressed image for preview purposes.

Your .png snapshot however, will be a pretty faithful copy of the frame you chose , so if THAT looks blurred then the frame you chose would also have been blurred although you may not have noticed this in the small VP preview screen.(Catch 22)

Converting your .png to a .jpg will not improve the quality as you will be compressing the image data to make the file size smaller. This inevitably means losing information from the image.

Compressing a physically BIG jpg image down to a capacity suitable to em will in itself tend to blur it and is usually offset by reducing the image size which has the effect of making it appear clearer.

Try checking the other frames and see what comes up.

Nat