How to capture jpegs from DVD when on pause?

[skanda]

First, thank you all - members, moderators, financer(s) and operator(s), for this site.

As you can tell from my language I am not experienced at technical aspects of video or computers. I researched this site for half an hour - vocabulary, forum and guides, using the terms I am familiar with such as 'stills', 'jpegs' etc and nothing came up. So, if this question has been answered elsewhere in this section, I apologize, and ask to be directed there.

I am familiar with imovie. I watch many DVDs and wish to be able to capture decent quality jpegs from what I view.

To begin, I am happy to report that I learned from another site that there is a built-in screen capture function: Command [that funny symbol with the apple] + shift + 3. Press all three at once and I get an image on my desktop. Problem is the quality. I tested it on a website page. Text looks horrible.

I used to get my jpegs images (useful for photoshop or similar software ways of adjusting) by meticulously going through the following steps...

1. Run DVD from DVD player machine to camcorder.
2. Run mini-DV tape to imovie in computer
3. Use pause function and take stills in imovie.
4. Use stills as desired.

But that requires three pieces of equipment and a lot of time. I am on the road now and would like to be able to do it quicker and easier - perhaps using some freeware that is a no-brainer.

Anyone have experience doing this?

[skanda]

I forgot to mention... I have a G4, and Toast is installed. Super features is not as important as reliability and simplicity of use.

[Frobozz]

You can use VLC Media Player to pause and capture frames as still images.

[Stu Jordan]

Have a look at Yade X. It will allow you to veiw and save the individual frames you want. It is very easy to use. The frames are saved in the Pict format.
Check out this link:–
https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=YadeX

you can download it from here (Version 1.0):–
http://www.macetvideo.com/dl_center/dl_center.html

[oliverw]

Also Capture Me http://www.chimoosoft.com/captureme.html
and
DVD Capture http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/software.php3
support DVD still capture

~ow

[tomlee59]

By the way, you shouldn't expect vidcaps to be of the same quality as a photo from even a low end digital camera. A DVD frame, for example, typically consists of a third of a megapixel, so if your standard of comparison is what you see from a 5MP digital camera, you will be disappointed, no matter what software you use to do the capture.

[skanda]

Yes, my standard of comparison is what I get with a digital camera (well, a camcorder). Screenshot per se is not what I want. I want to learn how to convert a sampling of a video, or on pause in the DVD player, a true jpeg version, as I was able to do with the several step method using three pieces of euipment. Not possible?

Oh, perhaps you meant comparing the images taken by a video camera lens and chips to a screen shot.

[tomlee59]

What I meant was that you should not expect a vidcap to be of the same quality as a still photograph taken with an ordinary digital camera (not video camera), because of the resolution difference, among other factors. Many consumer digital cameras have imagers with several megapixel resolution. A DVD, on the other hand, uses frames with resolutions of well below a megapixel (a third of an MP, typically). All of this is simply to set expectations properly, because it wasn't clear from your initial post whether your vidcap method was degrading the quality, or whether it was working as it should, but that your expectations were unrealistic.

[skanda]

Thank you Oliverw

I downloaded DVD Capture. I am very happy with it. There are a few, very small, improvements that I think could be made. It is not perfect. But it is a close as I expect for the price (0 dollars and zero cents). It works almost seamlessly with the built-in laptop DVD player. No hassles, extremely easy to learn (I think the word is 'intuitive') and fast. I highly recommend it to non-techies.

I downloaded the other softwares you recomended. One was no longer in biz (?). The other(s?) I either couldn't even install or they seemed to be a hassle.

Top marks for DVD Capture!

Again, I apprecaite the lead.