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.
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This is a great feature! I experimented with a couple of video shots and cropped them into portrait. When I attached the portrait pictures to an e-mail they again became landscape. What did I do wrong?
ReplyDeleteChris/Jim, will you be presenting seminars at FMCA in Albuquerque in March?
Regards, Rod Keech
Rod, You mention 'attaching' your picture to an email which makes me believe you are using a program outside of Picasa. If so, you need to save your changes in PIcasa with File / Save before using the photo outside of Picasa.
ReplyDeleteYes - we will be at Albuquerque ... see our schedule at www.geeksontour.com/schedule.cfm
i took snapshots with this feature but although im in flat folder view, they're not on picasa and a popup said they were saved in captured videos. i searched on picasa and on my computer but cant seem to find them! Where would they be?
ReplyDeletethanks a million, Hilary Dunne
They should be in the Projects collection (below albums and people) in a folder called captured videos.
ReplyDeleteHave you tried searching for 'captured'
there doesnt seem to be any folder with captured videos or any projects collection. I have searched for captured and for the file name of the snapshots. Unfortunatley it came up with nothing. Thank you for helping.
ReplyDeleteI have the same problem. In flat view, the only main folders in the thumbnail are: albums, people, folders, and other stuff.
ReplyDeleteI had the same problem. Try looking under, user > my pictures. There was a picasa folder for me.
ReplyDelete