frame by frame editing questions?

astral_supreme wrote on 10/8/2002, 1:48 AM

After I select a short 15 second portion of my film in vegas video 3.0c set at 24 frames persecond is there a proper/easy way to upload each frame (one at a time) into an external photo editor like adobe photshop...alter the frames (one at a time) and then send them back into vegas at the exact spot they were taken from???

I am aware I will have to edit each frame for 360 frames...I have the time...but..

I am wondering what format are these frames are in?

Also I dont know for sure the best format to save the altered frame in.

And how do you tell what size pixels to work in?

Is this kind of editing possible without seriously degrading the film (destined for dvd with ac3 surround..16:9 ratio guide lines for widescreen. )?

Thanks...any help or suggestions is appreciated.

Comments

Tyler.Durden wrote on 10/8/2002, 6:45 AM

Hi Jeff,

There are a few handy apps out there that will take an AVI and convert it to a image sequence... Vdub is reported to, and DVFilmmaker does (but the contrast was a tad off).

Vegas doesn't have the export image sequence feature, but you might check out a keyboard macro to have Vegas do it. It takes some time, but it can work.

You can "rotoscope" with excellent results... but, I suggest testing by importing the image sequence back into Vegas before you start altering frames, to make sure the conversion is transparent to the viewer. (no image shifts in brightness, etc.)

Targa or PNG files will be fine. If you're original footage was DV and you have modified it for widescreen, you could use a sequence of files at 655x480 (from the original DV), and when you import it, modify the sequence the same way you modified the DV footage.

HTH, MPH

Chienworks wrote on 10/8/2002, 6:54 AM

Whew! Lotsa questions :)

SonicFoundry used to sell a program called Viscosity that would allow you to do exactly what you're asking. Sadly, it's been discontinued. Lots of us are hoping that it's features will end up included in some later version of Vegas. Using the tools that are included within Vegas, you can export each frame one at a time by clicking the little floppy disk icon just above the preview window. This allows you to save each frame as a still image file. If you're very concerned about preserving quality then save them as .PNG files which are nearly lossless. If you save each frame with a sequential number (frame000, frame001, frame002, frame003, etc.) then you will be able to import them back into Vegas as sequential images in one easy step. Before saving you should also right-mouse-button click on the preview window and check Display at project size.

The format will be either JPEG or PNG depending on your choice when saving them. JPEG will be smaller files, but it's a lossy format and artifacts can accumulate. The images will be 654x480 pixels (at least in NTSC land). After editing you should save the images in the same format, either JPEG or PNG. If you're VERY concerned about quality then save them as TIFF images. This is probably overkill though.

What size pixels? I'm not sure what you're asking here. Do you mean dpi or ppi? If so, don't even worry about it. Such concepts don't apply to video or on-screen images. The whole image will be 654x480 pixels and that's all that matters.

Degredation should be minimal as long as you don't use a very high compression setting with JPEG.

Sr_C wrote on 10/8/2002, 9:44 AM

Rotoscoping (frame by frame editing) is a common method of editing, especially when doing special effects. It seems odd that this was left out of such a versatile editing app. Was there a reason? The small amount of expierence I have with rotoscoping I had to aquire using Premiere, which I detest. Premiere saves video in a format they call "filmstrip" (.flm) which lays out each frame in sequence in one file. I don't know if that format is in someway owned by Adobe, but if Sonic Foundry could I would like to see the option to save to the .flm format for rotoscoping in Photoshop. My two pennies. -Shon

Erk wrote on 10/8/2002, 11:00 AM

For exporting individual frames from an .avi, check out the Irfran viewer (freeware, it will show up in a search). This is a nice little media player with some basic editing functions. You can export a series of frames which get automatically numbered. You can save them as .bmps.

G

astral_supreme wrote on 10/8/2002, 12:32 PM

Thanks alot guys...I will give all these options a try