Whats the best way to capture pictures?

[chrisy76]

Hello there, I have just bought a video grabber (Easycap USB DC60) so i can watch my videos via my vcr onto my pc. And then hoping to take good quality pictures. I am using ULEAD SE to watch them, its okay quality, but the issue is trying to take a good quality picture, i use Faststone Capture, its the best so far i have tried. Still not satisfied though. Can anyone tell me what i may need to do? some sort of booster gadget to improve quality? or better way of taking a picture?

[redwudz]

You will never get a better resolution than the one that the video is playing at. Even at DVD resolution, that would probably be at 720 x 576 pixels MPEG2 for the PAL region. You might be able to denoise or filter it a little and make it look a bit better, but it will still be at that res. A average electronic still camera these days takes photos at about 2000 pixels or more, horz and vert, so you are a bit limited with screen caps from a video, even at the videos resolution. Not trying to discourage you, but what you have is what you get most times.

But others may have more specific suggestions.

And welcome to our forums.

[guns1inger]

Poor quality source + poor quality capture device = poor quality result. The low quality of the source means you are pretty much screwed form the outset. If you have some higher end hardware processing in the chain before the capture, and a high quality capture device, you might get a better result. However it is folly to expect VHS to give you anything better than moderate quality at a comparatively low resolution. If you had a really good transfer of the footage, and played it through a good upscaler (e.g. a PS3) to a good quality HD TV, then paused the image, and used a good quality digital camera on a tripod to take a still, you might get closer to what you want.

[chrisy76]

Well it seems when i play the video and it transfers on video studio SE the video streaming quality looks good. The problem lies in capturing i think....i wonder if a capture card, codec or some sort of device will enhance this?

[pirej]

Maybe you could try this tool for fixing blurred pictures. It's not perfect, but it's easy to use, it may help you get better pictures, and its free.
I have it in my freeware collection 2-3 months.