Picasa Tutorials

Capture One Shot from a Video

Have you ever taken a video that captured a great moment that you wanted in a still photo?  Picasa makes it very easy to capture one shot from a video.

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.

Geeks on Tour ‘Show-Me How’ videos that you may want to watch:
Viewing and Sharing Video Files (Membership Required)
Folders and Collections (Membership Required)
Basic Edits (Membership Required)

Not a member?  Join Today!
Need to learn the basics?  Check out our ‘Beginner’s Guide to Picasa’ complete with 25 show-me videos – over 2 hours worth of training.

Related posts:

1. Picasa Tip: Folders and Subfolders
2. Taking Video with your Laptop’s Camera
3. Picasa 3 and Video Files
4. Framing a Picture
5. Backup and Tree View

Tags: move video frame by frame, still shot, video frame