Comments on: HD Frame Grab l How To…

By: Teaching Online Journalism » The return of MultimediaShooter

Teaching Online Journalism » The return of MultimediaShooter — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 01:33:12 +0000

[...] bonus: All my old links to Koci’s posts work again! Three cheers for persistent URLs! Sample: HD Frame Grab l How To. This entry was posted on Thursday, August 28, 2008, at 9:53 pm and is filed under journalism, [...]

By: John J. Watkins

John J. Watkins — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 02:40:43 +0000

We use a Canon XH A1. We can shoot stills on the fly as we shoot our video or during playback we can grab a frame. The images are saved to an SD card. –John

By: rhernandez

rhernandez — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 04:30:59 +0000

our staff uses sony Z1U and sony A1U.

By: BrettG

BrettG — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:34:02 +0000

What model of video cameras are you using for your daily work?

By: rhernandez

rhernandez — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:23:18 +0000

yes, you are right about the DOF in wide shots. there have been many a forum thread started by independent filmmakers wanting to use this camera for productions and unhappy with this feature.
it doesn’t bother me much, it actually makes me frame things cleaner, which always makes a better shot anyway.
in terms of compensating i know there are a few “lens-tricks,” but haven’t looked into them, if someone does, please share.
again, images don’t hold-up that well to cropping. but that has made me a better shooter…something like, ‘if your images aren’t good enough you aren’t close enough’…..
i know these are all things that will get better over time as sony and canon keep rolling out new models.
hpe this helps.

tnxs,
-r

By: G.J. McCarthy

G.J. McCarthy — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 14:32:19 +0000

Hi Richard:

Thanks for posting this and taking us through your workflow. I’m one of those somewhat “scared” newspaper shooters, but by the same token, am interested in how this stuff works. I had no idea it was so simple!

I have a quick question, one I hope isn’t too stupid. One thing I’m told with these frame grabs, especially with wider shots, is that the depth of field is incredibly high. Sure, sometimes that’s a great thing, but I wonder if it can also over-emphasize busy backgrounds.

Any truth to that? If so, have you found that it’s changing your framing in any way to compensate? And what about cropping into these frame grabs? Do the images hold up?

Thanks in advance for your answers. Hope the questions aren’t too much of a deviation from your original points.

Cheers,

- gerry -

By: Chuck Fadely

Chuck Fadely — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 13:06:42 +0000

I think Dallas’ screen capture approach avoids the de-interlacing, aspect ratio and color issues that you’d have with grabs from your edit program. I haven’t talked to Leeson II about it, so I don’t know the details but Leeson the Elder did tell me it was a hardware-dependent approach, so I think the monitor has to be big. I think the big advantage is that it’s really quick to do. I didn’t know they were moving away from that, but if they’ve put in more edit stations, they might not all have the same screens.

I do grabs from Final Cut by scrubbing to the frame I want, then directly doing the export/quicktime conversion/still frame. Then pull that file into photoshop, de-interlace, change the aspect ratio and correct color in that order.

You can choose whether to use upper or lower frame when you’re doing the grab and that can minutely change the moment in time you’re capturing. Your grab won’t necessarily match exactly what you saw on the monitor.

The quality is pretty good.

Chuck

By: rhernandez

rhernandez — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:39:47 +0000

THANK YOU Chuck, I forgot to mention that.

And I also understand Dallas has moved away from that process.

Do you know why that would get you a better still? Does it need to be an HD monitor?

-r

By: Chuck Fadely

Chuck Fadely — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:27:27 +0000

By the way, Dallas does its frame grabs by doing a screen grab off of a large monitor.

By: Chuck Fadely

Chuck Fadely — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 19:24:03 +0000

Just a heads-up: depending on your version of Photoshop, you may have to deal with “pixel aspect ratio.”

A frame from the camera comes out at 1440X1080 pixels — but it’s squeezed. You may have to resized the image to 1920×1080 to get the picture to be the right aspect ratio.