Today’s article will cover injecting single frame video bits into a video, that we can use on platforms like Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram, and more! Single frames are a common practice, and a very useful tool in any video based ARG’s arsenal.
What is a Single Frame Video Clip?
Single frame video clips have been embedded in video media for years, and can be found in some popular movies like 1973’s The Exorcist, and 1999’s Fight Club. It was originally believed that this technique was a tool to push subliminal suggestion onto the viewer, despite being proven to not actually work.
However… In the land of ARGs, Single Frame Video clips DO potentially have significant value, allowing the creator to slip a “hard-to-catch” message to the player. This message can be used to relay all sorts of information. We can use pictures of locations or items, for example. Or we can use text to show ciphers, or geo-locations.
What You’ll Need:
For this tutorial, we’ll use a free version of a massively powerful video editing tool, called Davinci Resolve.
- Davinci Resolve (Get it here)
- One “inoffensive” bit of media. The base of your video. Maybe you’re walking your dog, or playing checkers with your sibling, etc.
- One “Offensive” bit of media. This will be your single frame clip.
How to make Single Frame Video Puzzles:
Okay so now that we have our tools, we can get started!
Our first step will be to open up Davinci Resolve, and import our media. I will personally use two images. Also seeing as it’s getting close to Halloween, I’ll be using a spooky image as the single frame, to show a little of my Halloween spirit!
While we’re in Davinci Resolve, I feel like the easier way to do this is in the “edit” tab, at the bottom.
Using this tab, we can easily drag and drop our media onto the timeline. My Inoffensive media is the logo, and the offensive media is the ScaryFace. Simply drag and drop them onto the timeline, to bring them into Resolve. You’ll notice the timeline reflects the clips with a thumbnail of them, stretching across.
If you dragged them across as a group, like I did, your second clip will be at the end of your first. Simply drag that second clip above the first, and you’ll create a second row.
Now that we’ve got our two clips into Davinci, we’re ready to shorten the second enough that it flashes very quickly over the first.
We’ll hover our mouse over the edge of the clip, click and drag, and shorten the time that clip plays.
Afterward, we want to increase your zoom on the timeline, so we can really get into the clip’s length at a much finer level.
And we’re done!
Now that we’re fully zoomed in, we can really lock in the exposure time of the clip. We may find that a single frame is too fast for our taste. Maybe we want two frames, or even three or more. At this point, we adjust to our taste, and it’s ready to go. Simply drag the clip around to where it belongs, and File>Export.
perhaps this and the twine article should be added to the guides page?
You’re absolutely correct! Thank you for pointing that out! You rock!