negframes

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Two browser tools that close the loop between a one-second video and a hand-printed animation. Page 1 slices the clip into evenly spaced frames and tiles them onto a letter sheet of negatives, ready to print on transparency. Page 2 takes the scans back, re-registers every frame to a common grid, and compiles them into a video. Everything runs locally in the browser — no upload, no server.

PAGE 1

Build the negative sheet →

Drop a 1–2 s clip. Pick 4 / 9 / 16 / 32 frames, set the gap, the black registration border and the white inset, adjust levels, contrast, greyscale and inversion, and inspect it under a hover loupe at print resolution. Exports a vector-clean PDF plus the config file page 2 needs.
PAGE 2

Assemble the scans →

Drop the config and your scans. Click the four corners of each printed border — or let it find them — and every frame is un-warped onto one canonical raster. Preview the loop, then export MP4, WebM or a PNG sequence.
  1. Shoot a short clip — one to two seconds is the sweet spot.
  2. Tile it on page 1 and export the PDF at 300–600 dpi, plus the .json config. Keep the config.
  3. Print the PDF onto transparency film. Turn on Mirror horizontally first if you contact-print emulsion-down.
  4. Expose and develop each frame — cyanotype, van dyke, whatever the process is.
  5. Scan the finished sheets, one image or PDF per sheet, at a consistent resolution.
  6. Register on page 2: the printed black border is the fiducial; four clicks per frame fixes any rotation, scale or keystone the scanner introduced.
  7. Compile at the frame rate the config recorded, and export.