Actually, Alt-Arrow Key will advance/reverse frame-by-frame regardless of how far you zoomed into the timeline. This will save you a little time since you don't have to zoom into the timeline everytime you want to advance a frame. I've been bugging SF to make the arrow keys act the same as Alt-arrow key. IMHO, it makes no sense to advance an arbitray number of frames based on how far you zoomed in, it should always be 1 frame.

"Just click on the little floppy disk icon that appears upper right above the preview window then save under an appropriate name. It will get added to the Media Pool."

I tried this method with VF 2.0a (Build 90) and it didn't work. It just made a .vf file copy of the whole project and didn't put anything in the Media Pool. Can you please expand your explanation of the procedure

My guess is you clicked on the floppy icon on the Tool bar which saves the a project file. Not the right one. You want to click on the floppy icon just above the preview window that your video appears in.

1. drag the video to the timeline and click on the frame you wish to capture still from.

2. Once you see the frame in the preview window.
click on the floppy icon above the preview window. A Dialog box should appear. Under file name type in the name you wish to give the still image. Click Save.

3. In a few seconds or less a thumbnail of the still image should appear in the Media Pool Window.

That was it. Thank you very much.

While I'm a relative newbie and undoubtedly have logged less time at the helm I must disagree. I find the ability to zoom out and then use the arrow key as a virtual shuttle allowing me to blow through video at 2x (or more) speed to locate a certain event to be a great help. I can then use either alt+arrow or simply zoom in when need be. I find this extremely helpful in the early editing stages allowing me the ability to drop markers without having to stab at the proper time with the mouse.

Lately I've been working with videos in the 30-45 minute range and again when I want to search for something within a scene, I find the arrow keys at a max zoom out to be a great help. Perhaps I don't know the software well enough though - I just can't bring myself to read manuals. If you have another way of shuttling the video please let me know.

Oh no, I never said we should get rid of the zoom ;) By all means, keep the zoom.

To jump through footage quickly, I like to use the page up/down keys.

VF 1 has a little playback rate controller that goes up to 2x that works OK - it is disabled in VF 2 for some reason tho' (it can be reactivated throught the secret "internal" settings ).

after you click on the botton in the preview window to save, if you choose to save as a png file instead of the jpeg option the quality seems to be better... has this been others experience too ?

Actually there are many times when i want the left & right arrow keys
to move more or less than one frame. When i'm trying to find an exact
edit point in the audio track, it's very handy to zoom very far in and use
the arrow key to move a few thousandths of a second between stopping
and playing. Sometimes a frame at a time just isn't close enough.

The png version clearly is better. The jpg version has compression artifacts around the outlines of objects and the png version does not.

For some reason Photoshop v5.02 displays the png with much higher color saturation than the jpg. ADCSee shows them both with the same color saturation.

In video, there is nothing really smaller than a field (1/2 of a frame) in interlaced video. In progressive video, the frame is the atomic unit. You can't really have a 1/2 of a field without causing some weird artifacts on playback. I really doubt VF will let you cut with precision down to a "thousandths of a second." Most likely you cut is rounded to the nearest frame even if it appears like you cut somewhere else. I could be wrong tho'.

However, audio is a different matter. Audio can be cut with higher precision. I think some audio editors cut at the nearest zero crossing point.

Of course, I don't claim to know the inner workings of Video Factory and it would be interesting to have a response from SF about this.

Well, in the experiments i've done, i appear to be able to cut right down
to individual samples in the audio stream, or 1/48000th of a second.
Since VideoFactory (and presumably Vegas too) separate the audio
and video streams, i can only assume that the video is adjusted or
resampled independantly of the audio.

SoundForge also lets you specify edit points at the sample level.

thanks for your reply.

Has anyone had problems with this snapshot not being the same size as the source media? I was taking snapshots from a 720x480 source mpeg file, and VF insisted on saving them as 640x480 pngs (or jpegs, didn't matter). I'm using the snapshot for a freeze-frame effect in the middle of a scene, and the 640x480 scales with artifacts that are noticable in the final render.

Is there an option for "snapshot same as source" or something like that I'm just missing?

Yes, I've had the same problem. It seems to have something to do with the size of the preview window but I have been unable to get a 720 x 480 still yet.

Al

I did some toying around with various display settings and here's what
i've discovered so far. The image you get appears to be a print screen
of the preview window, with the width mulitplied by the pixel aspect
ratio. If you want to get a true 720x480 image, first make sure your
project properties are set to 720x480, and the pixel aspect ratio is set
to 1.0000 (Multimedia). You will have to check "Modify Template
Defaults" to do this. Then right-mouse-button click on the preview
window and check both "Display at project size" and "Display square
pixels". You will probably have to rearrange VideoFactory's window to
make room for the picture unless you run your screen at 1280x1024 or
higher. Now when you save the still image it will be a true 720x480.

Don't forget to set your project properties back to the default DV
template (if that's what you're using) with the pixel ratio you had before
changing it to 1.0000.

chienworks

I forgot to thank you for the info you posted on this issue at the time but I just got paid back because I had to search through goodness knows how many listings to find it when I needed to save a still tonight!

Regards

Al