Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with stills

How can I make a movie from 4000 still images?

jozzas — Sat, 23 May 2009 10:10:11 -0800

I want to assemble 4000 still images from a recent trip into a movie. I don't want to do it manually. Please tell me what software will do this for me! I have been travelling for the last eight months, and have taken 4000+ photos. Since there's no way anyone would ever want to look at all of them, I want to assemble them all into a video, where each image is displayed for a tenth of a second or so (and the whole thing set to music). I assume this can be done fairly easily as it's how all stop motion animation is done, right?

I would like to be able to script this and leave it to render. I have resized copies of the images to 720p, and even added black borders to vertical shots so that they're the correct size.

I've tried ImageMagick, but it doesn't come with either H264 or mp3 (for decoding the music) codecs, which are what I think I want. I tried compiling these in from source but got stuck in dependency hell and have now given up on ImageMagick completely. I'm only going to be uploading this to the web, so any suggestions on better codecs will also be listened to.

Please reccommend me some software, preferably free, that will allow me to assemble my little movie. XP / Linux doesn't bother me either way, as long as it works. Thanks!

Using DVD stills in TV commentary blog?

cortex — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 09:54:53 -0800

Incorporating still frame captures in a TV commentary blog: is it possible/affordable/practical to get general permission from the studio to do this? We're talking probably a handful of low-res stills from any given episode, captured from DVDs we've purchased. The project itself is an essentially non-commercial hobbyist venture, likely to have a positive (if any) effect on sales of the studio's own product if the nostalgia-equals-sales cycle functions like it usually does.

The stills aren't vital to the project (we could always just explain what was worth looking at), but they'd add a lot of pop and so it'd be nice to know that either

(a) it'd be possible to get an official okay from the IP folks without a huge attached pricetag, or
(b) that this sort of situation, left to coast under the radar, isn't particularly ire-raising.

Any information or experiences regarding (trying to) accomplish (a) would be great; any recent precedents or practical examples for or against (b) would be nice as well.

Are there currently any visible non-studio blog type projects using cleared or uncleared stills?

Capturing stills from internet video?

Thin Lizzy — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 08:14:53 -0800

How do I extract a still from a New York Times video segment? I'd like to get a still from a video that was posted on the NYT website. I can't seem to pause it and take a screen shot because it doesn't really "roll back" in steps. It jumps back and plays automatically- making it really hard to hit the pause button at the right moment. I saw some freeware that seemed to take stills from internet video, but I can't get them to find the video on the page (I tried FXFrameCap and ByteScout). It seems like there must be a way to do this. I don't mind paying for software if a Mefite says it'll work.

Need Morricone Stills

signal — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 19:45:19 -0800

Where could I find online scanned stills from movies scored by Morricone? Especially The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and The Mission. Free is good. This if for a limited run but high-quality book, so high res is a must.

This is not a movie review.

bingo — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 18:28:32 -0800

I've seen many movie review sites that host, or link to, images from the movies. Assuming the site didn't get permission, is this legal? What if you're selling ads on the review site, or charging users a premium to view it? Or is there some way of definitively identifying a photo as a publicity still, meant to be used by anyone who isn't diluting the brand? Obviously, this extends beyond movies, to books and other products.

Help my cap my vid!

antifuse — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 01:40:06 -0800

What is the easiest (cheapest) way to get a series of stills from a video file? Ok, here's what I want to do: I have a bunch of video files (AVI, divx encoded mostly, but I'd appreciate a method that could do WMV or MOV too) that I'd like to get a series of jpeg still captures from. Preferably, something like capturing 1 frame every second for the length of the video. Are there any nice freeware tools out there that will do this? Preferably something that has a nice simple command-line (like app.exe sourcefile(s) destination -jpeg-quality) or an easy to use drag and drop windows interface. Oh, yes, and looking for windows apps only as well.

Freeware isn't an absolute requirement, I'm sure I could get my hands on something that's not freeware, but I'd like to do this on the cheap if I can, as it's really just for messing around.

I swear I saw a similar question to this somewhere on the net before, and I could've sworn it was AskMe, but my search-fu has yielded no results, so sorry if I'm duping someone else's question. :)

Where can I find movie stills to publish in a newspaper?

stokast — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 13:04:36 -0800

Where can I find movie stills to publish in a newspaper? ...And what images are fair game/fair use if I'm writing an article about a movie?

Film still publication rights?

jonathanbell — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 04:19:19 -0800

A question of rights. Does anyone know the best place to start looking for film stills and the right to reproduce them in a publication? More specifically, if the precise frame isn't available, is it possible to take and use your own screenshot if the right credits/fees are paid?

Movie stills

Frank Grimes — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 19:10:31 -0800

Does anyone have a good source to find movie stills on the Internet? Specifically, I'd like one of John Candy playing racquetball in 'Splash' and one of Takashi riding the tricycle in 'Revenge of the Nerds.'