Frame Grabber makes snapping pics of squirmy kids on your HTC EVO a breeze
Anybody that has young children in their lives, whether they be offspring or siblings, knows how hard it can be to snap a good picture of them, especially when you are using your HTC EVO.
I'm not talking about little Johnny turning green when you snap a pic of him with your HTC EVO 3D either. No, I'm just talking about children's nature in general.
Most of them don't like to sit still.
But as people who love the kids in our lives, we need to document their existence somehow. But do we really want to have a scrapbook of blurry photos and just-missed moments because our HTC EVOs can only take one picture every seven seconds?
Well, we would have . . . until Frame Grabber came along.
The easiest solution to not missing the exact moment a child smiles or something funny happens is to take a video. But, as G&E reader Darth Obama brought to our attention, there is no way to steal snapshots from a video by default on our HTC EVOs.
That's where Sony Digital Network Applications's Frame Grabber comes in. It's the perfect solution to grabbing still images from recorded video.
The EVO 4G is an officially supported device and any video shot can be scrutinized for snapshots. The EVO 3D, although not officially supported (and not tested by me, due to a lack of 3D in my life), should be able to take advantage of this app as well.
Frame Grabber's interface is a bit tricky to figure out at first. But once mastered, it is very intuitive.
First, you select your video and are brought to a screen that has a bunch of little pictures of the video you are grabbing still images from.
The center button can be dragged in four directions. Moving it up "zooms in" the capability of the app. This allows you to select screenshots at closer and closer intervals (advertised up to .04 seconds, I personally got up to .08 seconds).
You can also hit Menu and Zoom. This will let you go frame-by-frame until you find the least fuzzy picture to save in the FrameGrabber folder on the root of your SD card.
Although the quality of the photos snagged from recorded video is not the best, they're good enough for a Facebook upload or a quick 4×6 that goes on the fridge. Compare the snapshot from Frame Grabber (above) with a scaled down 8MP picture from the EVO 4G's camera (below).
Frame Grabber will set you back around $2.99. There are free alternatives like Freeze Frame, but those can be more of a guessing game. They do not allow you to go frame-by-frame and rely on your ability to hit the pause button at the right time.
If you have some children at home that can't sit still for a picture or are always doing things at the spur of the moment, then take a video of them. Then when you want a still picture from that video, use Frame Grabber.
Links: Market (EVO) | Market (web)
