Capturing Stills from Video
Computers in Communication
Boston University College of Communication
Copyright © 1996 by Professor Jim Lengel
If you have a Macintosh av computer, then a video camera can be used to
capture pictures. Connect the video camera's "video out" jack
to the "video in" jack on the computer. Turn on the video camera,
and point it at the item you want to capture. You may want to use the camera's
controls to focus and zoom the image at this point.
If your image was earlier captured on videotape, set the camera to VTR,
and be ready to press the play button after you've set up the software.
Now set up the image-capture software.
With the Macintosh av computers, use the Video Monitor program that's
in the Apple Extras folder. Best results happen with the default size, 320x240
pixels, but you can set the capture window to any size you want, by dragging
its lower right corner with the mouse, or from the menubar. Set the Video
Monitor Preferences to save the image onto the disk with compression.
To snap a picture, choose Copy from the Edit menu (or press command-c on
the keyboard.) You'll hear it take the picture, and about two seconds later
your picture will appear as a file on the desktop with the name PICT 0.
The next snapshot you take will be saved as PICT1 and so forth. When you've
got all the pictures you need, drag the files to your project folder.
You can use this same method to capture images from a VCR or from a videodisc
player. Just connect the video out jack of the device to the video in jack
of your computer, press play, and go to work.