Mac video conversion/printing

August 14, 2011 7:23 PM

Using a Mac, what would be one of the higher quality ways of taking a 1 minute digital video clip, converting that file so that the video is broken down into several hundred sequential still frames (high quality) and then finally printing those still frames (say each one being 3" x 3") so that I can make a flicker picture book from them? Free programs would be nice but willing to buy something if it means getting a superior result.
posted by lorebella to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

Depends on the source video. 3x3 inches at a decent print resolution is no less than 600x600 pixels. 900x900 would be better. So it needs to be at least 720p video, more or less. 1080p would be better.

You can use QuickTime X or FFMPEG. Both are free and scriptable. I don't have QuickTime in front of me, but it might even have this functionality built in.
posted by supercres at 7:34 PM on August 14, 2011

You could probably use Applescript to capture the process in Quicktime. Just activate the "record" feature, then open the file, select the first frame, export it as an individual static file, delete the fame and save. The stop the recording, run the script and it just might work.
posted by Jamesonian at 7:37 PM on August 14, 2011

More with FFMPEG. As long as you don't mind a few Terminal commands, it's almost trivial.

If you do, there are GUIs. Probably not as flexible.
posted by supercres at 7:41 PM on August 14, 2011

ImageJ( free) can import movies as stills, and you can export as images and then print them I guess.
posted by dhruva at 8:34 PM on August 14, 2011

Best answer: Quicktime 7 (not Quicktime X, I think, but you should have both) can export a movie as an "image sequence", which should get you the source images. I think you can play with the frame rate to cut down from 1800 frames to 200 or whatever you're doing.

Once you have the files, you'll need to crop (and maybe scale up, color correct, etc) each image. If I was doing that I would script it in Photoshop, so I'm not sure what the free alternative is ...
posted by jhc at 7:57 AM on August 15, 2011