Capture One Shot from a Video

Have you ever taken a video that captured a great moment that you wanted in a still photo?  Picasa makes it very easy to capture one shot from a video.

Here is a small video clip I took at Palm Creek RV Resort when Jane Seymour made an appearance.  She had just finished ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and one of the residents of the resort, Rex,  actually danced with her.  I was taking video the whole time.  What if we wanted a still shot?  This is a good example for using Picasa’s ‘Take Snapshot’ feature.

 

With the original video clip opened in Picasa, you should see a button at the left that says, ‘Take Snapshot.’



Play the video until it gets near the spot with the still photo you want.  You can also drag the playhead to get in position.  Then, to move frame by frame, you can use the < (comma) key to move one frame earlier and the > (period) key to move one frame later.  When you have the image you want, just click the ‘Take Snapshot’ button.



What this does is creates an individual .jpg picture of that particular frame from the video.  Where is it?  It’s in the Projects collection.  Any time that Picasa creates something, like a collage, or a movie, or a capture from a video, it puts it into this collection.  If you don’t see a ‘Projects’ collection, it may be because you are in Tree View.  You need to be in Flat folder view to see this collection.  In Tree View, you would look for a Picasa folder underneath your My Pictures folder.  The Captured Videos will be there.



Now, your captured frame from the video is a .jpg picture just like any other.  You can crop it, use I’m Feeling Lucky, add text, and whatever other editing you desire.  One caveat: don’t expect high quality.  A frame from a video will not be high resolution.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Movie Files from your Camera


• Record a Movie from your Webcam


• Folders and Folder Collection


• Basic Edits

Need to learn the basics?  Check out our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’ complete with show-me videos

Taking Video with your Laptop’s Camera

This week's tip is way cool!  And, it’s so easy. We have so much capability in our laptop computers these days - like that little video camera built right in to the lid. You should see it staring at you when you're using your computer.

 

But ... how do you use it? Picasa makes it OH-SO-EASY, just click one button and you can start talking into the camera. Click another button to stop it, then a third to upload it to youtube. Watch the free 2 minute video below to see exactly how its done.

 

Other videos you may want to watch in regards to videos:

Viewing and Sharing Video Files (Membership required)
Make a Movie from Photos (Membership required)
Not a member?  Join Today!
Need to learn the basics?  Check out our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’ complete with 25 show-me videos.

Taking Video with your Laptop’s Camera

This week's tip is way cool!  And, it’s so easy. We have so much capability in our laptop computers these days - like that little video camera built right in to the lid. You should see it staring at you when you're using your computer.



But ... how do you use it? Picasa makes it OH-SO-EASY, just click one button and you can start talking into the camera. Click another button to stop it, then a third to upload it to youtube. Watch the free 2 minute video below to see exactly how its done.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Record a Movie from your Webcam


• Movie Files from your Camera

 

Need to learn the basics?  Check out our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’ complete with  show-me videos.

Picasa Tip: Finding Duplicate Pictures

As a follow up to last week’s ‘Five Deadly Sins’, I thought I’d revisit a topic originally covered in our Geeks on Tour newsletter.  I've received more than one email from readers telling me that Picasa is responsible for creating several sets of duplicate photos on their computers. If you experience duplicate photos, and you use Picasa, there are a couple things you should know.

Don't import duplicates

If you use Picasa to import your photos from the camera to the computer, make sure you have the 'Exclude Duplicates' option checked. Picasa will mark with a red X the pictures it has already imported previously, and it won't import them again. I prefer to delete all photos from my camera after I import them so there are no duplicates possible.

 

 

 

 

Pictures in 'Albums' are not duplicates

Notice, in the image at the right, that there are two sections in Picasa's 'Library.' The top section is referred to as 'Albums', and the bottom section is 'Folders.' You could have thousands of photos on your computer without one Album. Albums are just pointers to photos. You create albums for the convenience of viewing groups of photos together such as all your beach photos. The actual photo files 'live' in the folders.

Think of it like a juke box full of records and imagine that this juke box has the ability for you to make a list of your favorite music. You can push a button on the juke box to play 'Chris' songs.' But that list of songs is not a copy of the records, it is just a list that points to the records to play. Same thing with albums. The picture is not copied into the album. The album is just a list of pointers to the actual photos. The actual photos live in the folders. If you delete the photo from the folder, it will be gone from the album. If someone removed a record from the juke box, it will no longer play as part of Chris' songs.

Picasa can help you find real duplicates

If you have exported photos to another folder, or if you have imported without checking the exclude duplicates option, you may have real duplicates on your computer. Picasa cannot automatically erase duplicates - and I wouldn't trust any program that says it does - but it can help you find them.

Click on Tools, Experimental, Show Duplicate Files. This is a special search in Picasa.  Although labeled as experimental, I find it works pretty good.  With all your duplicates displayed, you can study them and delete the duplicates manually. Just click on the photo to remove, or Ctrl-Click on multiple photos, and then press the delete key on your keyboard.

BE CAREFUL! I'd rather have a few duplicates than accidentally delete too much. But then, you DO have a backup right?! Make sure to note what folder each of the duplicate files is in – you may find that you have a duplicate folder and you can get rid of a lot of duplicates by deleting the entire folder.  Also make sure to note the file size and resolution.  Many times duplicates exist because you exported a picture to a smaller size.  Make sure that you delete the smaller size picture not the original, higher resolution picture.

1. To find what folder a picture is in: you should be able to see the folder name above the picture, or click on the picture and see what folder is highlighted at the left.  But the sure fire way to know what folder a picture is stored in is to right-click on the picture and click “Locate on Disk.’  You can also open the Properties panel by clicking the i in the lower right corner.


2. To know the file size and/or resolution of a picture: When you click on a picture, the status bar (blue bar at the bottom) displays details about the picture, including resolution and file size.  To have the resolution showing for every picture you can: View | Thumbnail Caption | Resolution.


3. To see duplicates side by side: When you use the ‘Show Duplicate Files’ command, it filters all your pictures to show you only the ones that have duplicates, but it keeps the view organized by folders.  Usually the duplicates are in different folders, so you won’t see them side by side.  In the upper left of the screen, at the top of the Album list, you will see “Search Results.”  If you click on that, you will be viewing all the search results (duplicates) in one group regardless of folders.

When you're ready to view all your photos again, just click on the button at top that reads, "Back to View All."

Here's Google's official info on managing Duplicate Photos.  And, here's a Google forum post I wrote to someone trying to manage duplicate photos.

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

• Import from Camera


• Delete or Rename Photos


• Searching for Pictures

 

Not a member?  Join now.  You can also  buy the ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa 3.5’ complete with a DVD of all the basic videos.

Five Deadly Sins of Picasa

Have you heard the one about the lumberjack who decides to turn in his trusty old axe for a new chainsaw?  After struggling for several days with the chainsaw and not felling even one tree, he decides to return it to the store.  He tells the salesman that the chainsaw doesn’t work and he wants his axe back.  The salesman decides to see what is wrong with the chainsaw so he starts it up.  The lumberjack jumps back with surprise saying, ‘What’s that Noise?’

Picasa is easy, but it’s not foolproof.  It’s important to take some time up front to learn how it works.  There are 5 things I keep seeing people do with Picasa that are wrong.  Because they don’t have a good foundation of understanding the program, they use tools the way they *think* they work, rather than learning how they really work.  The results is a mess.

1. Using the Import tool instead of the Folder Manager.
   As you collect more and more photos, I see people putting photos on an external hard drive.  This is a wonderful idea, BUT – when they open Picasa they use the Import tool to be able to see them.  The Import tool is meant to copy pictures from an external device (usually your camera) to your computer.  Now they have the pictures twice!  Once on the External Hard Drive, and again on their computer’s built-in Hard Drive.  What they should have used is the Folder Manager.  The Folder Manager tells Picasa to watch the pictures in their original location – not copy them.


2. Create an Album – then delete the original picture
   Picasa is designed to be an efficient manager of all your pictures.  You store your pictures in Windows (or Mac) Folders with some simple, logical storage system either by event or by month.  Without changing your folders, Picasa gives you tools to view your pictures in different ways.  The Album feature is a way to create different categories of pictures regardless of the folder in which they’re stored.  (Note: This is *not* Picasa Web Albums I’m talking about here … it’s just ‘Albums’ in the Picasa software on your computer.)
   So often, I hear people say, “I copied my picture into an album, then I deleted it from the folder.”  NO!!  The picture only exists once – and that is in the folder – albums are like playlists, they just point to the picture in whatever folder it is stored.  If you delete it from the folder … IT’S GONE.


3. Moving pictures with computer tools outside of Picasa
   If you want to move pictures from your computer to an external hard drive, *don’t* do it with Windows Explorer (or Mac Finder.)  If you do, your Albums in Picasa will be destroyed.  Remember, an album is a list of pointers to pictures in their folders.  If you move a folder’s location the album pointer needs to know about the change.  PIcasa makes it very easy to move folders and, when you do it with Picasa, it will update all the album information to follow the new locations.


4. Using Export instead of Save
   When you edit a picture, Picasa doesn’t change the actual picture.  Picasa remembers all your edits and displays the picture to you accordingly, but if you look at the picture outside of Picasa you won’t see any of the edits.  To make a picture outside of Picasa that looks like the edited version, many people use the Export command.  This creates an entirely new picture … now they have two!  If they had used the Save command instead, it would have applied the edits to the one existing photo.


5. “I don’t Need Backups because I use Picasa”
   This one truly surprises me, but I hear it over and over.  People have heard that Picasa includes Picasa Web Albums and, for some reason they think that it automatically puts all your pictures on the Web Albums.  No, No, No.  Picasa is software on your computer, PIcasa Web Albums is a free online photo-sharing website that is a companion to Picasa.  First of all, even if you do upload your pictures to Picasa Web Albums, I don’t consider that a backup.  Picasa Web Albums is a method to share your pictures with friends and family.  You still want your original safe on your computer and backed up to CD/DVD or external Hard Drive. Secondly, Picasa doesn’t do anything automatically … it’s good, but it’s not magic!  Picasa includes a command to ‘Backup Pictures’ … it’s very easy … USE IT!

Standard links for Geeks

This tip brought to you by Geeks on Tour

Geeks on Tour is a membership website with hundreds of Tutorial Videos on topics of interest to travelers, such as managing digital photos with Picasa, Route-Planning with Streets and Trips, and sharing your travels with a website using Blogger or with friends on Facebook. You can subscribe to our free e-newsletters, or become a paid member and be able to view all of the videos in the Learning Library.

Members may want to view the following tutorial videos.  Not a member?  Join now.

 

• Folder Manager


• Import from Camera


• Folders and Folder Collection


• Move Folders of Pictures to an External Drive


• Using Albums for Organizing


• Backup to External Hard Drive


• Backup your Photos to CD


• Exporting Pictures for Use in Another Program

Although Picasa is easy to use, it is SO important to understand how it works.  A little up-front time spent learning will save you so much time in the long run.  We have lots of resources to help:

• Buy the Beginner’s Guide to Picasa


• Become a member of Geeks on Tour to watch all the videos and as questions in the forum