Ghosts of I frames on Holloween Nite 2 an HDV Native

I was trying to export some stills from my FCP 5.04 HDV timeline.

1) I set my still frame in User Preferences to 2 frames.
2) I "froze" the frames I wanted from my HDV timeline.
3) I "modified" the frozen frames to "Sub-clips".
4) I exported targas (.tga) as stills via "export as conversion".
5) Most of my images were blank - white!

Could it be that I ended up using B and P frames instead of I frames? Is this the problem with the 15 frame GOP thing?

How should I re-do this job. I spent hours selecting the frames; now I have to do the whole thing over again.

Why'd you create subclips from the freeze frames?



www.strypesinpost.com

so I wouldn't export a half an hour clip with the freeze frame.
the subclip reduces the size of the export -- no?

> the subclip reduces the size of the export -- no?

Huh?
Where'd you get that?


www.derekmok.com

ok, Derek, so what you're saying is that the freeze frame file exported is simply the few frames saved? Then there is no need to do a subclip.

But my question is really how to export an HDV freeze frame still? How many frames should it be, on account of the 15 frame GOP structure of HDV?

A freeze frame is one frame, it's a still. It will default in the Browser or Viewer to whatever you have Still Image duration set to in User Prefs. But when you export a frame, when you chose Still Image, it's just a single frame. What the Still Image duration is set to has nothing to do when you export and specify a Still Image when exporting. Two totally separate operations.

thanks for responding, Ben. So if I set a still frame as 4 seconds in the User Preferences, and I do a "freeze frame" in the Viewer and drag that freeze frame to the Browser and then "export" via Conversion and select "Still Image" (PNG, Targa or Photoshop, etc), all I will be doing is exporting one image -- is this right?

Ok, if I have understood this correctly then I don't need the added step of making the freeze frame into a "sub-clip" (that will save time).

Ok, now the unanswered question: since the clip is HDV, does FCP automatically export a full image (as in I image of the GOP)?

The images that I usually export (even using the old way of doing it with sub-clip and all) require a "de-interlace" filter from the Photoshop Video filters. This removes the jagged lines of the interlaced images I export.

I just wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing, and now I'm fairly certain that I know how to export freeze frames and use them for stills of my movies (as I don't have a stills camera yet).

Your help is very appreciated as my movie THE RED QUEEN has been invited to the Ava Gardner Indie Film Festival and I'm getting a few stills ready for promoting the movie.

I have created a poster from one of the images in the movie already. Because the poster is being printed as a 40 inch by 27 inch enlargement from the 1920x1080 frame, I used the texturizer in Photoshop and the poster looks just great IMO. To see it scroll down to the bottom of my index page: [www.felliniesque.com]

You don't need to make a freeze frame, don't need to put it into the browser, don't need to make it a subclip, none of that. Simply put the playhead over the frame you want to export and go to Export>QuickTime Conversion and select Still Image. That's it. Done.

Wow Tom! That is so empowering thanks for cutting through all that for me. I can get all my still completed in a fourth of the time.

You could have cut this whole thread by twenty fourths simply by typing "Exporting Still" into the search bar of the FCP manual and doing exactly what it said there.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

But I enjoy the human interaction, Andrew. Thanks for the tip about "exporting still". I ought to remember that, because I could also type "best HD workflow for feature films" and maybe it would tell me how to deat with HDV ... but that's another thread. Only I will wait until the new feature I'm developing gets funded in a month or two.

There are so many ways to export a still from FCP that I needed to know if I was overlooking something, and as it turned out, even though I was wondering about the GOP structure and how that impacted the exporting of good quality stills from HDV, the real issue was all I had to do was "position my playhead on the image" I wanted to export and, voila, I could export that image as a still by following the same path as before.

It is so simple when you know how, but the problem with looking something up in a manual is knowing the terms used in the manual and these terms aren't often logical because they were not developed by professional editors but by essentially computer engineers.

I'm sure none of the NLE systems were developed by top editors. Otherwise they wouldn't have come up with the inaccurate terminology so prevalent in all computerized art applications. But that's another thread ...LOL

I thank God for LAFCPUG and the generous and brilliant FCP experts to help us schleppers.

Question asked and answered. I'm closing this to keep it from devolving into another crapstorm.