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Just came across a one-page site by Jan E. Schotsman which offers a couple of video tools for the Mac, and at zero cost.
Fix your video
The JES Deinterlacer does a fine de-interlacing job, but despite its name, it does more. It lets you slow down the frame rate, interpolating the in-between frames. Click here for a comparison between iMovie and the JES Deinterlacer. Feature list:
- Deinterlace movies (half height/normal height/double frame rate/blend,adaptive/simple).
- Change field dominance (for PAL films with fake interlace).
- Reinterlace from one or two movies.
- Standards conversion (PAL<->NTSC or custom).
- Inverse telecine.
- Trim, shift, simple color correction, noise reduction.
- Change encoding (RGB gamma, video range/full range).
- Fix jagged edges.
- Pitch preserving sound track for half speed.
- Change movie speed, reverse movie.
- Interlaced in/out, progressive in/out.
- Includes utility to view and edit image description extensions and movie and track geometry
Clean up your video
If you have noisy video, the JES Video Cleaner may be the quick tool for you. It also allows for removal of logos. I imagine this must be great for cleaning up consumer camcorder footage with a burned in date.
- General noise reduction (adaptive)
- Remove logo
- Average two movies
- Remove cross-luma
- Remove periodic brightness variation
Vintage computing
If you still run OS9, he has a helper program that allows for transfers > 2GB.
And if you have an old Power Mac, he offers a program for uncompressed capture of SD video.
Finally, Jan has a little app to fix the blue cast on a monitor under Mac OS 10.4.
Sometimes you have to produce photographs from films, so-called frame grabs. In Final Cut Pro this entails several clicks for each frame, something that becomes tiresome after a while. Also, if your material is anamorphic, you have to resize it in a separate programme, adding yet more clicks.Enter Movie Frame Grabber, a simple programme for the Mac.You drag a QT into the blue window, then you chose the frame you want, hit “Save Frame” and you are done.Much easier than using QT or FCP.One thing I noticed - and I am torn between calling it a feature or a bug - is that each frame gets exported in the same size as your windows is sized. I.E. When you have a 600×400 QT file, but your window is, say 605×605, you get a square picture. The good thing is that Movie Frame Grabber does a decent job of uprezzing. So if you need some quick framegrabs, this is a big time saver.
Wishes
What I would love are the following future features:
- De-interlacing
- Automatic naming and numbering of exported frames.
- Option to export in native QT size (with option of having 16:9). Option of having 25%, 50%, 200%, 400% sizes. Throw in some advanced resizing calculations, and this could become a powerful tool that people would spend money on. This reviewer included.
- Display of current window size.
- A Text saying “Drop QT file here” instead of the blue screen — this threw me off at first; blue screen to me suggested that I would have to plug in a DV source.
- Support for keyboard control. Space = start/stop. Arrow left/right = one frame advance/back.
That said, great little – and free – program.(Review at Macupdate.)
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- My Photo Booth Photo Blog » Why does the art die? - I decided to gather my thoughts in one and come up with the problem. And the problem is: the crucial moment in history of photography we are living these days: its end.
- It?s good to be back - I thought that Yvonne had stopped blogging for good, but out of the blue, a great writer is back again.
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- The Fastest way to find High-Quality Freebies on the Web - Finding High Quality free files on the internet is every designers daily dilemma. Sometimes you don?t have the time to make your own swooshes, or seamless paisley background image. This is why we search, and from my experience, the search can be brutal.
- Film Exclusiv Agregator - RSS feed for film related content
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- Apple TV hacked for RSS and emulation, plus bounty for USB drive support - Engadget - The Apple TV has received two new abilities in its second week of availability thanks to a couple of new hacks: one, a fully functional and integrated RSS reader, and two, video game emulation for NES, SNES, N64, and Sega Genesis game consoles.
