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. Every sheet gets four corner marks, full or not. Exports a vector-clean PDF plus the config file page 2 needs.
PAGE 2

Assemble the scans →

Drop the config and your scans, dragging them into sheet order if they arrived out of it. Click the four corner marks on each sheet and every frame on it 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: four clicks on the sheet's corner marks place every frame on it, fixing any rotation, scale or keystone the scanner introduced.
  7. Compile at the frame rate the config recorded, and export.