Very simple video editing?

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Kirby Krieger Author

Level 6

12,592 points

Very simple video editing?

What is the simplest way to create snippets and stills from a video in an Aperture Library?

At the most basic, I need to:

pick exact frames and create JPG files.
make several small "snippets" from the original video.
- bonus: make these play in slo-mo and loop front-to-back-to-front
- bonus: crop the video for these snippets so that only a portion of the original shows (I am using "snippet" to indicate slicing away time, and "crop" to indicate isolating an area and excluding the rest).

I have tried:

Aperture. Lack of scrolling and of micro-adjust scrolling makes editing difficult. Exact trimming is awkward. No cropping
MPEG Streamclip. Does not seem to play well with Mt. Lion.
QT 10. Cannot make stills from frames 😕 . Does offer scrolling and micro-adjust scrolling.
iMovie. Does not play well with Aperture (it's a database, not an editor).
PSCS6 Extended. I own this, but -- afaict -- it functions like iMovie. (I have a one-year subscription to Adobe's Creative Cloud, so there may be other Adobe programs suited to the task. Premier Elements is _not_ part of Creative Cloud (afaict).)
Voila. Not suited to the tasks.

I have not tried QT Pro 7. I own a copy, but haven't turned it up yet. Right now I think that is probably my best bet.

Suggestions welcome.

Thanks. Kirby.

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), OS X Mountain Lion, 16 GB RAM; 500 GB SSD; NEC; Munki

Posted on Jun 16, 2013 4:59 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Ernie Stamper

Level 8

37,591 points

Jun 16, 2013 7:11 AM in response to Kirby Krieger

Kirby,

Not sure I can address every question this morning as schedule presses. But in Aperture, when in Pause, clicking the fast forward/back button advances the video frame by frame, which is as fine as can be achieved in any video app. That can set you up for using the command to create JPEG.

For the trim, let check in a test again, as I normally am using FCPX, and have not done so recently. I have a few times in order to share to Facebook a simple video, however.

Upon checking again, dragging the Trim panel frame seems to be frame by frame, when I move it.

Not sure I have used QT 7 Pro in ML or if works -- never needed to, as always have done that on my Mac Pro in SL or Lion.

Ernie

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Answer 2

Kirby Krieger Author

Level 6

12,592 points

Jun 19, 2013 2:14 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

Ernie -- Thanks. Please see further ... I'm still stymied on one point.

Ernie Stamper wrote:

{I}n Aperture, when in Pause, clicking the fast forward/back button advances the video frame by frame, which is as fine as can be achieved in any video app. That can set you up for using the command to create JPEG.

Excellent. Works well. I'd _prefer_ being able to scroll with either the mouse or the mouse scroll-wheel or the trackpad, but the keys work.

Upon checking again, dragging the Trim panel frame seems to be frame by frame, when I move it.

I'm not getting enough control. The only way to set the trim ends (afaict) is with the mouse or the trackpad (the arrow keys do nothing). And setting the playhead (sorry -- don't know the proper term) before trying to trim does nothing.

How are you dragging the Trim frame?

I'm just now trying to get this to work better. Will try QT 7 Pro if I can get it to load. The two things I'm still looking for are the ability to advance/rewind manually and smoothly, and being able to easily trim to exact frames.

Thanks again for any help you can provide (or to anyone else 🙂 ).

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

194,761 points

Jun 19, 2013 2:42 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

Kirby,

to give you an idea, what Quicktime 7 can do: Things that I like about it:

You can vary playback direction and speed, see the AV controls panel.
You can opt to display only a selected part of a movie or the full movie. Displaying the selection only will give you finer controls.

The tiny triangles in the bottom scroll bar mark the selection boundaries.

I am a bit hesitant to recommend QuickTime 7 with MacOS X 10.8.4. I am using it a lot, and have occasionally freezes, even on my clean installed system. My main use it to trim clips further, to convert videos to a different format, to split a video into a sequence of frames, or to combine an animation sequence of single frames into a movie.

Regards

Léonie

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Answer 4

Kirby Krieger Author

Level 6

12,592 points

Jun 19, 2013 2:55 PM in response to léonie

I owned it at one point for just this kind of thing, but no longer have it installed, and have not yet come up with my regisration code. It was much better than the dumbed-down QT 10.

Any idea how to get my registration code, if I can turn up the drive clone that has it installed? I do not have it recorded in my licenses file (my bad 😊 ).

Joy ... not (Pro features grayed-out):

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Answer 5

léonie

Level 10

194,761 points

Jun 19, 2013 3:03 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

, if I can turn up the drive clone that has it installed? I do not have it recorded in my licenses file (my bad 😊 ).

If you find the clone:

You can see the registration key in the "Registration" panel :

Main Application menu: QuickTime 7 > Registration

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Answer 6

léonie

Level 10

194,761 points

Jun 19, 2013 3:31 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

I'm not getting enough control. The only way to set the trim ends (afaict) is with the mouse or the trackpad (the arrow keys do nothing). And setting the playhead (sorry -- don't know the proper term) before trying to trim does nothing.

How are you dragging the Trim frame?

I am dragging the Trim Frames also with the fingers on the trackpad, but that works rather smoothly. The flag is showing the seconds, while dragging. It will work better form short clips than for longer clips.

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