This is a challenge. Convert AVI to stills.

My father's girlfriend has a year-old Canon point-and-shoot camera that also takes movies. She somehow had her camera set to movie mode instead of picture mode and proceeded to take 150+ movies on a recent European vacation. I've been tasked with screen capturing from those 150+ AVIs in order that at least something of the trip is preserved.

Quicktime 7 will view and play the movies but I want to grab a screenshot from the movie and turn it into a JPEG or other picture format. My dad was told by someone at a camera store that iPhoto has a "grab" option that will do this, but I can't find it. Nor can I find this option on QT 7 standard. If QT Pro will do it, I'll upgrade to it, no problem.

If I can successfully complete this task my reward is an all-expenses paid visit to Ruth's Chris steakhouse for me and my wife, so I'm motivated here.

Thanks for your help, in advance.

Apple + Shift + 4 will bring up cross hairs allowing you to select whatever you want, saving it to your desktop

Or a little quicker just not as pretty is pressing Spacebar once the cross hairs come up, this turns the Crosshairs into a camera, click the QuickTime window and it takes a screenshot of the window

You could also try using converting it to a JPEG sequence using an editing program like Adobe Premiere or some video conversion utility... I don't think FCP/Compressor will open AVI files.

Not sure if this is only in QuickTime Pro but if you go to File -> Export you can go from Movie -> Picture and export it as a jpeg from there as well

sarahsboy18 said:

You could also try using converting it to a JPEG sequence using an editing program like Adobe Premiere or some video conversion utility... I don't think FCP/Compressor will open AVI files.

Click to expand...

I'm going to use the mod's suggestion and get them all into PNG files. From there, I hope I can get automator to convert them to JPEGs.

Automator Question:


I've figured out how to do a batch image conversion in automator, but I cannot figure out how to put the file in a specific folder as a third step in the process. I've attached a screenshot of my automator so far, and it's self explanatory. I want my step 3 to be the equivalent of "place in folder xxxx". Is this possible?

badmojo said:

Automator Question:


I've figured out how to do a batch image conversion in automator, but I cannot figure out how to put the file in a specific folder as a third step in the process. I've attached a screenshot of my automator so far, and it's self explanatory. I want my step 3 to be the equivalent of "place in folder xxxx". Is this possible?

Click to expand...

Never mind....I'm getting too technical with myself. It changes them in the SAME folder. Man, automator is great.

trpnmonkey41 said:

Not sure if this is only in QuickTime Pro but if you go to File -> Export you can go from Movie -> Picture and export it as a jpeg from there as well

Click to expand...

Yea, that's a pro-only feature, but it may be a worthwhile feature to upgrade to pro.

All done. Thanks all for your suggestions; it really helped. Mods, you can delete this thread if you want to. mac-forums rule.