Frame Grabs From An F900

On one of my HD features, the script supervisor grabbed NTSC frames from the downconverter as a method of checking continuity. He had some sort of Mini-DV deck with a frame buffer capability.

Is there any cost-effective way to grab full HD-resolution frames off of the F900 while shooting, perhaps using the HD-SDI output from the camera? What would be required?

David Mullen, ASC
Los Angeles

David Mullen writes :

>Is there any cost-effective way to grab full HD-resolution frames off of >the F900 while shooting, perhaps using the HD-SDI output from the >camera? What would be required?

Sure, the Leader 5700 scope handles that beautifully as well as being a superb and versatile scope in its own right. I never do a project without one.

Tom Tcimpidis

David:

I have a system that grabs full rez HD into photoshop on your laptop. You can take a look at it on my website. Let me know if you're interested

Derek M. Grover
Director of Photography
Digital Imaging Technician
Hollywood Digital Imaging, LLC
http://www.hollywooddigitalimaging.com

Tom,

I just bought the LV-5750 portable version of the waveform. The screen grab ability was an important feature in my decision. I donâ€™t have mine yet and was wondering how high the screen grab quality actually is? Does it match the resolution of the camera used or is it limited to the 1024 x 768 resolution of the LCD?

John Chater
DP- San Francisco

David Mullen wrote:

>On one of my HD features, the script supervisor grabbed NTSC frames >from the downconverter as a method of checking continuity.

If you had a fire wire bridge and a laptop ( Mac) you could use iStopmotion which is a nifty little animation/ frame grabber app that has "onion skinning" so you can over lay one still over another to compare. In this case the path would be F900>ntsc down convert>fire wire bridge>lap top. Bada bing

YMMV, no business relationship with iStop other than I use it\ and I am a paying customer.

Mark Smith
Oh Seven Films
143 Grand St
Jersey City, NJ 07302

John

BTW your unit is shipping today. It captures 1024x768 which is the resolution of the Leader display.

To grab full 1920 X 1080 either an AJA or Black Magic capture card in a mac or pc allows for full resolution grabs from HDSDI.

Michael Bravin
Chief Technology Officer
Band Pro Film & Digital
www.digizoom.com

It's limited to the XGA resolution of the scope's screen which is indeed 1024x768. I find that to usually be more than adequate for my purposes. If you need full 1920x1080 or 1440x720, you can use any one of the numerous capture card solutions in a PC or Mac.

Tom Tcimpidis

>If you need full 1920x1080 or 1440x720, you can use any one of the >numerous capture card solutions in a PC or Mac.

Are there any laptop-based HD capture solutions? Wouldn't it be best if one could save to a memory card in the camera, like (ahem) a consumer camcorder?

Tim Sassoon
Sassoon Film Design

If you have a 'scope in the budget, get a Leader 5700. You can grab frames to an internal SD card, or even better, grab them to a laptop via bluetooth. Dave Canning showed me some stills from various jobs when we met up at NAB, and the quality was just great.

Dave Satin
Video Engineer

David Mullen writes :

>He had some sort of Mini-DV deck with a frame buffer capability.

FYI, all Sony Mini-DV equipment can do frame grabs, either to tape or to memory stick. Or from tape to memory stick, or vice-versa.

Sony's Mini-DV camcorders (and possibly their palm-size decks -- I'm not sure) can also chromakey a raw camera image over a blue-matted stillframe "plate" stored in the stick. Conceivably this could be used as a poor-person's preview system for certain bluescreen shots.

Dan Drasin
Producer/DP
Marin County, CA

> I have a system that grabs full rez HD into photoshop on your laptop.

Hi Derek,

Where on your website is it? I'm interested, but I don't have very much time to surf....

Thanks,

Dave Stump ASC
VFX Supervisor/DP
LA, Calif.

David :

Here's a link http://www.hollywooddigitalimaging.com/OZ.html

Derek M. Grover
Director of Photography
Digital Imaging Technician
Hollywood Digital Imaging, LLC