I’ve been using an old macbook pro and an intensity shuttle for the past couple years to capture the amazing sweet nectare that comes out of the lzx system. Over the past year I’ve stopped recording video altogether and started to love the still image button that instantly saves an image onto the hard drive.
My old laptop recently died and I’m trying to stay away from computers as much as possible and looking into stand-alone devices. Would anyone know if that function is present for the atomos ninja, BMD video assists or other similar devices?
Hey! that would be the solution indeed. maybe I should finally start setting up my studio correctly for film and photography with the correct light etc… it’s just so much more fun to simply have a capture card that can be used in all situations.
hi friends, i use an atomos connect convert analog to hdmi converter and a ninja inferno for capture. in all honestly, the ninja is a bit of a limited recorder that is probably overspecced for 4k recording and it doesn’t have as much variety in capture formats as i would like. that being said, it is good at handling the high fidelity footage once it is upscaled, it just doesn’t retain a spectrum of capture format options below it’s high fidelity options.
i have been looking for another broadcast recorder with a similar size and form factor that has more variety of capture formats. if anyone knows anyteeng let ya boi know now.
I have one of the first gen 5" BM Video Assists. It does not have any dedicated still function.
I doubt you will find any modern standalone video recorder that does, given how trivial it is to pull a still from a video file (yes, using a computer).
The nice thing with working with pre-recorded video rather than live is that you can pick out the exact perfect still rather than having to rely on some amount of serendipity — though I realize that serendipity also has its merits.
I usually just pick stills from my captured video. I usually do this using VLC and its “snapshot” screencap feature. VLC doesn’t have a “jog” control, as that would make this task a bit easier, but it works well enough.
The 7" Video Assist 4K doesn’t have a still function either, unfortunately.
I generally record 10 second to 10 minute sessions, and if I want stills from a particular moment, I use ffmpeg to spit out individual frames for a whole second or two of video around the point of interest, so I can pick out my favorite(s). Even on a relatively stable image on a clean-power system, the edges/noise often vary a lot from frame to frame.
For example, this uses the -ss option to seek to a specific time, -frames:v to output individual frames, and a format code in the output file name so the files are numbered consecutively.
That’s an excellent technique! I use ffmpeg in all my post-production work. I keep discovering new tricks I can do with it, so thanks for this one. BTW, I’ve even used ffmpeg for capturing video directly on a computer. This discussion got me thinking about how I use ffmpeg to extract a single frame from a video stream, and how this could be used to capture stills. However, I like your technique more. Thanks!
i’ve used vlc many times to capture stills from pre-recorded video but it is very tedious (a lot of frames to choose from ) and not as much fun! having looked everywhere, i guess that i’ll either go with photographing my screen or buying a computer.
i spent the last two weeks looking for a standalone device and all the extra converters etc… friday night i did put my Fuji Xt- 20 in front of my Samsung LCD and that worked (as far as i can say) out pretty well! more money for modular gear
) and not as much fun! having looked everywhere, i guess that i’ll either go with photographing my screen or buying a computer.