Capturing a still pic from video

[King Kong Matt]

This is perhaps a more general computer question, but this seemed to be the most appropriate forum.

What is the best way for me to capture a still photograph from a DVD? I have a dive video that was recently made and would like to generate single images. Other than taking a screenshot (which seems to be a really crude way to accomplish this), I'm not sure how to do this?

Any suggestions would be great. Thanks in advance.

-kkm

 

[mrjimboalaska]

Matt, most video editing programs will allow you to capture a frame of the video and save as a photo file (i.e. .bmp) I use Extreme Media Digital Studio, it is a few years old, but works for me, good luck

 

[King Kong Matt]

Matt, most video editing programs will allow you to capture a frame of the video and save as a photo file (i.e. .bmp) I use Extreme Media Digital Studio, it is a few years old, but works for me, good luck

Thanks for that. Perhaps I should add to/modify my original request - is there anything out there that is shareware/freeware?

Thanks again for the help!

 

[miket]

If you are using Windows XP you can (kind-of) do it with Windows Movie Maker.

- Launch Moviemaker
- Load the AVI file you want to get the frame from
- Get the movie to the frame you want a still for
- Under tools select - "Take Picture from Preview"

This creates half quality frame grabs. They are only 240 pixels high, width depends on widescreen (16:9) or Standard (4:3). My widescreen images from Moviemaker are 424 x 240 max.

Standard DV video is 720 x 480. It is either streched to fit 16:9 or shrunk to fit 4:3. When I use Premiere to get my frame grabs they are 720 x 480 and look squished, I then have to re-size the picture to 853 x 480 so it looks correct.

Another thing about screen grabs from video. Sometimes it will look like it has horizontal lines all thru the image. To fix this you need to find a graphics program (like Photoshop) that has a "De-interlace" filter. In Photoshop it is under Filters-Video. This cleans these frame grabs up great!

Almost any video editing application will have a way to export frames as images.

Hope this helps...
- MikeT

 

[miket]

This is the maximum size (resolution) you will get out of a Mini-DV video (853 x 480). HDV stills are 1440x1080.

-MikeT

 

[diversteve]

I use the BlazeDVD player. It has a screen capture feature. It's $29.
http://www.blazevideo.com/

There's dozens of free/shareware program on Tucows that probably do the same thing.
http://www.tucows.com/

 

[Scubasw]

I use a program called MpegStreamClip from http://www.squared5.com/ . This program is freeware and handles most video files including the VOB files from DVD's. It's primarily for editing and converting video files, but it alos has a frame export feature that I've used before. Just be aware that a captured still image is almost never as good as an image taken by a dedicated still camera due to the lower resolutions. Also your eye fills in the details of the moving image and it appears better as a moving pic rather than stills usually

 

[likelite]

Seconding Streamclip. It's a great!! program.

You can do this easily on a Macintosh; Macs ship with IMovie. 'Capture still shot' is a menu option in Edit, I think.

 

[larsdennert]

Since you say "from DVD" you can try WinDVD from Intervideo that's installed on many machines. I think it has a frame grab feature.

Otherwise, set the screen res to 32K colors, play it back in full 100% size, pause where you want, press Ctrl PrtScrn and paste it into PhotoShop or Paint. Crop as needed. It will be the same quality.