Creating a Freeze Frame in Final Cut Pro

Do you ever need a still image from a particular frame in your clip?  Creating a freeze frame in Final Cut Pro is actually really easy to do.

Park your playhead over any frame within a sequence and go to Modify > Make Freeze Frame or use the shortcut Shift+N.  This places a freeze frame of the clip into the Viewer window.  Unless you've changed your still/duration freeze frame preferences, you end up with a freeze frame that has 10 seconds of duration marked in the middle of the clip. This duration can be adjusted in either the Viewer or the Timeline, and you can also change the default duration. Now you can click and drag the still into your timeline and it will act the same way as any other image you import.

If you create a still frame and then insert it into the timeline at the exact frame it was created, it will look like the action freezes.  You can then make the clip start again at the next frame so the video will play, pause on a frame for however long, and then continue to play.

You can also export a still image from Final Cut to a stand alone media file.