Hi guys,

Looking for a piece of software that will allow me to take a video (from a mobile phone/camcorder/etc...) and go in frame by frame and allow me to draw (possibly in layers) on top of the film and then output to another video file.

Similar to how you might take a photo and create a transparent layer on top and draw around the outlines of the photo then remove the photo from underneath and put a white background and export it to a jpg.

...


But with video.

Is that kind of thing possible?

Yes, but it's a PITA.
We used to occasionally get up to similar shenanigans at work.
There I'd export the frames from FCP, edit them in Photoshop and import them back into FCP for arrangement on the timeline.
Thinking about it, you can export from QT Pro as an image sequence in a variety of formats - PICT, JPG, PNG etc.
You could then edit them as needed and drop the image files back into your video app.

Or, of course, if it's just text or something simple, then you can use FCP. Create your graphic in PS - FCP knows PShop files, so you can create it with a transparent background. Then you can drop it over your video and adjust however long you want it to last. FCP will handle text by itself.

Depends what you're trying to acheive really - the second approach would probably much quicker.

Thanks!

I was just thinking about messing around with a short clip.

Film someone (probably my brother) running up to a wall/fence and climbing over but panning the camera round the scene at the same time. (hard to explain) Only a short 10-15 second clip.

Then editing it and changing it to line drawing and changing my brother to a stick man.

Just wanted to see the effect really as I thought it would be quite cool.

Is there an equivalent to FCP that's free/open source? I'll prob be using GIMP to do the editing of each frame.

Thanks!

Ooh, a quick Google shows that potentially Avidemux combined with either Pencil or Gimp should do what I'm looking for

At 25fps that'd be 250-375 individual frames to do

Could you try some sort of edge detection?

I think someone will soon know why rotoscoping is an expensive game in the FX business.

I know why, it's why I've stayed out of this discussion.

Mark

LOL

I don't expect it's going to be a quick process

... If I ever get started.

Need to get my Mac back from repair first though

I really would like to see the end result though Oliver.
You could probably do a step-by-step tutorial on it too as you appear to be right at the start of the process.

Mark

Ooh, that sounds like a mini project

I'll see what I can do. I may have to purchase a cheap drawing tablet to do it... or I think my Dad may own one that he never uses!