Using Streamclip for video frame grabs

I’ve talked about MPEG Streamclip before, Exporting 7D video for Web, Final Cut Express with Streamclip, but this time I wanted to let everyone know that I also love using this tool for capturing still frames from video for print.

Streamclip is an easy to use video encoder, but it also has a quick way to grab frames for still use.  Of course it doesn’t do more than it says it does.  It creates a jpg from a frame of video with a few options depending on your use.  This isn’t David Leeson’s Voodoo super tool.  All I want from Streamclip is a lossless frame from my video that I can work on for print use.

Here’s the quick how-to.  Or at least what I do when I need to grab and go.

Streamclip menu for frame grabs

After clicking on this I get a dialogue button asking for the quality of the image.  I want the original size, (because I trust photoshop more for upscaling any images,) and bump the quality to the highest quality.  If this is video from a tape MDV camera that is interlaced, I select the deinterlace option.

After that, I open it in photo mechanic and place it with my other photos from that assignment, fill out the iptc data then push it to photoshop for normal print processing.

There are times when I may use the filter Noise Ninja to help clean up the quality, but for most frame grabs, you will know what images from video can be improved and which cannot.

I hope this helps out.
-TJ