How can I automatically pull stills from a video file?

[tomld]

I am having a website made to host all my video files and I want to make it so when I upload them it automatically pulls a still screenshot of the video. My question is what is the best way to pull the still and get a good image? For example a lot of videos have a fade in, so if I pulled the first frame, it would just be a black image. Can you think of any good way to consistantly pull a quality image, such as a specific frame or is there a way to detect when the video has a full image displayed and not a fade in?

I was looking at how video editing software does it and it seems that they dont always pull the first frame in their screenshots of the clips. Does anyone know a good way to accomplish this?

Thanks
Tom

[Nelson9937955]

i would use vdub to capture your stills

[soneman]

I have VirtualDub but I would also like to know how do I capture a bitmap of a still frame in my video file? And can I capture a bitmap from a DVD/VCD being played in PowerDVD?

[edDV]

Two ways to cap stills.

1. cap a frame

2. cap a series of frames and interpolate an average.

Use #1 if video is moving
Use #2 if video is still. You will get increased resolution and lower noise.

[soneman]

Yeah but, how do I capture a still image using VirtualDub?

Does anyone know the exact steps?

[Nelson9937955]

On Vdub to save a snapshot you go to video..... then snapshot source frame. or shift-1. And you can save frame as a bitmap

[soneman]

It worked.

Thanks for that.