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You could see if the following script works for you, it was not designed specifically for the task at hand, but it may just work if the frames are evenly spaced/divisible into the canvas width. You would enter say 3000 for the number of columns and 1 for the number of rows. That being said, I would crop down a copy to have only save 10 or 20 frames and then test on the copy first. If this does work for you, it is easy enough to add an extra line of code to automatically rotate the final crops if
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Hi Conrad, If I understand the OP, it's a single filmstrip of over 3000 image frames, I believe similar to:
Hi Stephen, yes that is correct, sorry if i wasn't very clear or specific about what i need to do, this is the first time i'm doing this with super 8 film, furthermore, english is not my first language.
I will upload a sample of the image that the scanner made and one example of a frame of the film that i need to extract from each image strip in order to make a video.
Did you try to dice a strip up using the information in the link I posted? The action using a script...?
It look like it would work to me I just cropped your strip and set the guides
If all your film strips have 16 frames you can set your rectangle marquee tool to a fixed size for the 16 frames. make that selection and position it around the frame then crop. when you dice the up withe the action all frames will be the same size.
So, you have multiple strips of 16 up frames?
The attached animation is the result of the script that I previously posted, using a column of 1 and rows of 16 as the input.
The image jumps around a lot as the total canvas size was not evenly divisible by 16.
Perhaps another method that used the sprocket hole to base the crop on would be better. Video is not my area, I keep thinking that there must be better, dedicated tools for this.
Did you ever figure out how to record an action to extract your supper 8mm film scans. The results are not the best but it hard to know for sure. The scan quality was poor and there was some camera movement so hard to tell if the selection I set was the correct height for 16 8mm frames. If the height is wrong the 16 cut frames would not have the correct frame height which is critical. The width being off would just be like cropping the frame sides. The wrong height would cause image drift. The Action cropped the film strip diced the stripe into frame layers and exported the layers as files. Create a frame animation and renders an MP4. I did have to make the Export layers to files step a script step. Export Layers to Files is a plug-in so it can be recorded in an action however, the file prefix would also be the same when played not reflect the current strip's file name. I did not want two interactive steps in the action so the script set the file prefix to the current strip's name. I also found a had to zoom to actual pixels to be able to position the transform selection well. You cab see the in the screen capture.
Note the transform selection is interactive I checked that step dialog on you need to manually position the active selection around the frames move the top left corner so it is aligned to the first frame top left.
Script that exports layers to files into desktop\cutframes.
var exportFolder = "~/Desktop/cutframes";
var makeFolder = new Folder(exportFolder);
makeFolder.create();
expportFrames(exportFolder, activeDocument.name);
function expportFrames(saveTo, preFix) {
// Export Layers to Files
var desc1 = new ActionDescriptor();
desc1.putString(app.charIDToTypeID('Msge'), "Export Layers To Files action settings");
desc1.putString(app.stringIDToTypeID("destination"), saveTo);
desc1.putString(app.stringIDToTypeID("fileNamePrefix"), preFix);
desc1.putBoolean(app.stringIDToTypeID("visibleOnly"), false);
desc1.putDouble(app.charIDToTypeID('FlTy'), 1);
desc1.putBoolean(app.stringIDToTypeID("icc"), true);
desc1.putString(app.stringIDToTypeID("jpegQuality"), "10");
desc1.putBoolean(app.stringIDToTypeID("psdMaxComp"), true);
desc1.putString(app.stringIDToTypeID("tiffCompression"), "TIFFEncoding.NONE");
desc1.putString(app.stringIDToTypeID("tiffJpegQuality"), "8");
desc1.putString(app.stringIDToTypeID("pdfEncoding"), "PDFEncoding.JPEG");
desc1.putString(app.stringIDToTypeID("pdfJpegQuality"), "8");
desc1.putString(app.stringIDToTypeID("targaDepth"), "TargaBitsPerPixels.TWENTYFOUR");
desc1.putString(app.stringIDToTypeID("bmpDepth"), "BMPDepthType.TWENTYFOUR");
desc1.putBoolean(app.stringIDToTypeID("png24Transparency"), true);
desc1.putBoolean(app.stringIDToTypeID("png24Interlaced"), false);
desc1.putBoolean(app.stringIDToTypeID("png24Trim"), false);
desc1.putBoolean(app.stringIDToTypeID("png8Transparency"), true);
desc1.putBoolean(app.stringIDToTypeID("png8Interlaced"), false);
desc1.putBoolean(app.stringIDToTypeID("png8Trim"), true);
executeAction(app.stringIDToTypeID('6f1c2cf5-4a97-4e32-8f59-f5d7a087adef'), desc1, DialogModes.NO);
};
roxon wrote: “I could just use marquee tool to select each frame but it would take me forever ”
Yes, the rectangular marquee is clumsy and difficult to work with, for the trial and error needed to work out the correct size and offset of the crop frame. Although it’s easy to resize and reposition a rectangular marquee using Select > Transform Selection, creating a new layer (for each frame) from a selection would drop the selection. I decided to try a different approach based on using a rectangular path (not a shape layer). A vector path is easy to save, easy to adjust, and easy to create a selection from. Using this path-based approach, trial and error goes much faster, and I was able to get the core of an action down to 6 steps.
This is how it works:
- Draw a rectangle path (not a shape layer) around the first whole frame, and name the path something like "Crop path".
- Note the vertical dimension of the path. Then test:
- With the path selected, in the Free Transform Y position field in the options bar, offset the path by the same value as the vertical dimension. For example, if I was testing a vertical dimensions of 1050 px, add "-1050px" to the end of the existing Y value and press Enter.
- Repeat until it becomes obvious that the frames stay consistent or drift. If it starts to overshoots or undershoot, adjust the vertical dimension and the offset.
- When it stays aligned when it reaches the other end of the filmstrip, it’s good. I worked out that the frame height was 1050 pixels.
- Adjust the action using the verified vertical dimension and offset.
- Run the action, clicking once for each frame in the strip.
The action does the following:
- Create selection from path "Crop path".
- Choose Layer > New > Layer via Copy (the old standby Command-J shortcut). This creates a new layer from that frame. Photoshop drops the selection.
- Select the Background layer to set up the next selection.
- Use Free Transform to shift the Crop path up by the vertical offset. Now it’s ready for step 1 again.
- Click the action Play button until all the frames are done.
After all frames are done, simply use Layer > Export As to export all layers as separate image files.
Looks like I could have cropped out a little more of the sprocket hole on the left. That would easily be done by moving the left edge of the vector path rectangle to the right by a few pixels.
There are still areas of this that could be improved by scripting, such as putting leading zeros into the layer/file names so that the frames sort properly by name, and maybe have a way to detect the end of the filmstrip so that the action could automatically run itself and stop itself. But I’m not good at scripting.
I’m going to remove my earlier demo (ACR-based), because it didn’t contribute to the discussion.
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