pictures from video

27 May 2006 2:07 PM

bmntech

I'm interested in a stand alone inexpensive solution for my PC to
extract pictures from (interlaced) home videos. Any recommendations?
Preferably the solution would be very simple to use, cheap, and would
automatically extract photos with the best possible quality.

30 May 2006 9:48 PM

bernie

Windows Movie Maker? Very inexpensive - free - and easy to use.
Quality of picture is 720x576 (Europe) as made in your camera.

1 Jun 2006 9:31 AM

bmntech

bernie wrote:

> Windows Movie Maker?

Thanks for you answer, bernie.

WMM, it was installed on my computer so I could test it.

0. MVM doesn't play my MPEGs, captured by ATI Radeon 9800 - it just
displays a black screen. Some of these files were processed by Video
Redo, which I trust. All of them are playable on Microsoft's own
Windows Media Player!
1. I'm using interlaced videos, and I need de-interlacing. Preferably
I'd like a took that uses a few adjacent frames to enhance the
snapshots.
2. WMM allows you to advance frame by frame and then take a snapshot of
the current frame. I'd rather have a tool that I can order to take
snapshots from start time to end time, and then select the ones I like.
Otherwise it's too time consuming.

1 Jun 2006 7:35 PM

bernie

That's the trouble with MPEG - it's an output format, not an editing
format.

I think interlacing is the least of your problems. Most MPEG works by
only supplying a complete frame every so often - once an second or more
maybe - and then filling in with difference frames. So if you pick an
arbitrary frame it'll most likely be made up of bits and pieces - not
hughly high quality unless you have very big file sizes.

I don't know of a low cost system that can do what you want, maybe
someone else will. An alternative would be to covert the material to a
format that you can edit - re-constructing complete frames from all the
difference frames and then picking out stills, but don't expect amazing
quality.

Bernie

2 Jun 2006 1:10 PM

bmntech

There should be no great loss of quality converting it because when I
captured it I instracted the ATI board to use only complete frames
(AFAI remember it was called I-Frames).

There is one tool that I know of that works with MPEG, and it's called
Topaz Moment, but I was shopping for alternatives.