3 Replies Latest reply: Oct 31, 2014 6:22 PM by JJMack RSS

    Is there a way to view all frame thumbnails in a video layer?

    victoriavanpatten Community Member

      I'm aware of the "frame animation" option, but video layers are much more convenient. Ever since this addition Photoshop is nearly on par with TVPaint for drawn animation, but my only problem is that even when fully zoomed in I can't see my video layer frame by frame. Does anyone know if there is an option, script, or plugin to make this a reality? It's hard to know where to hold, insert, or remove a frame without being able to see the one coming up next, and even if I scrub through to see I constantly find myself second guessing that I'm in the right spot.

        • 1. Re: Is there a way to view all frame thumbnails in a video layer?
          JJMack Community Member

          You can flatter video into frames but then I do not think they will be playable. Digital Video is not like a frame animation or even like a movie reel of film.  There are actually   whole frames only every so often.  To be able stream video you need to keep the data rate low so video need to be highly compressed. So whole frame are the exception in between frames are partial frames the part that had motion the parts that changed.  To give you some idea if the size difference.  Animated Gif only support 256 colors.  I took a couple seconds from a cilp my wife shot with our canon 1D Mk IV.  1920x1080 with sound  I timed it down to two seconds.  and rendered it  as a h264 mp4 using Photoshop Video Preset High Quality.  The mp4 produced was around 6MB is size had beautiful Color and sound.  I then flattened the video into frame layers and was able to make a Frame animation. I save the frame animation all 58 frames 1920x1080 as an animated Gif the file was around 24MB the color awful and there was no audio.

          • 2. Re: Is there a way to view all frame thumbnails in a video layer?
            victoriavanpatten Community Member

            I wasn't asking about actual video but rather video layers in photoshop, which can be scrubbed through frame by frame. Rather than having a single frame displayed at the front of the layer, I was wondering if there was a way to show each frame thumbnail, similar to the frame by frame feature in photoshop, but without having to create a new layer for each frame.

            • 3. Re: Is there a way to view all frame thumbnails in a video layer?
              JJMack Community Member

              The thumbnails you want displayed do not exists. The only full frames in most video files are  key frames that are generated at regular intervals in video file.  There may be one thumbnail for a video file to help identify its content..