Frame by Frame printouts.

May 5, 2006 8:53 PM

How do I break down a video file (or preferably, a segment of a video) into separate frames?

I'm starting an animation project that is going to use collaging and drawing on top of print-outs of various videos and films. This is going to require me break down segements of video files into their component frames so I can print them out one-by-one. There have been several posts about doing screen grabs from DVDs/video files, but is there a way to do it in bulk, or am I really going to have to do the tedious "pause, grab, next" maneuver?

posted by TheRoach to media & arts (8 comments total)

I believe Quicktime and VLC can export to a directory of sequential JPEG files. I think ImageMagick can do it for animated GIFs.
posted by odinsdream at 9:05 PM on May 5, 2006

Provided the video files are in AVI or MPEG format, VirtualDub can be used to export a video into a series of frames in Windows Bitmap (BMP), TARGET (TGA) or JPEG format.

The older version I have installed has this feature under:

File > Save image sequence...
posted by Danelope at 9:05 PM on May 5, 2006

Oh and Adobe Premiere could, I think.
posted by odinsdream at 9:05 PM on May 5, 2006

(And that's TARGA, not TARGET. HTML on the brain.)
posted by Danelope at 9:06 PM on May 5, 2006

I think I meant mplayer when I said VLC above.
posted by odinsdream at 9:10 PM on May 5, 2006

yeah, mplayer -vo jpeg will dump out every frame as a jpg. also -vo png, etc. do mplayer -vo help to see all the possible video output methods...
posted by joeblough at 10:06 PM on May 5, 2006

Cut the segment that you want and import it to Adobe Imageready. You'll have the whole series, frame-by-frame, in five seconds.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:12 AM on May 6, 2006

Premiere and After Effects both export video to Photoshop, either in a sequence of individual images or as a "filmstrip" file which lumps them all together in one file with a timecode. You can draw on/otherwise alter each frame and then import it back into either prog. as a video. Don't obscure the timecode in PS, though, or importing again won't work. Are you doing this at 29-ish fps? 'Cause that's a LOT of frames to print out, mess with, then scan back in and re-arrange into video. Good luck.
posted by ruby.aftermath at 3:18 PM on May 6, 2006