Extracting one frame for still shot
 

My daughter in law trains horses, and videos them to have a record of their progress. She is now using a Sony D8 which on the video looks good. At times she wants to take one video frame and make a still shot at the point where the horse is at its best position during a jump. Of course the resolution of the camera she now has is very poor and grainy when extracting one frame. My question is--- Is there a camera, or can someone recomend one with progressive scan that would make a good quality photo from one frame? I have a Canon Pi that has progressive scan I am going to experiment with it tomorrow.

Thanks for your help,

Bob J. Trimmer

The best image you are going to get from a video still is 720x480 at 72dpi. That's it...it cannot be improved upon. This doesn't matter if it is your home camcorder or professional digibeta camera. Well, the digibeta is 720x486, and has really good 3-chip CCDs, so the image quality will be better, but still 72dpi. Guess what you need is a good 3-chip (3-ccd) camera. But still, video does not make the best stills. Even from digibeta.

Make sure that you DEINTERLACE it either with the editing application, or photo software.

Well, unless you go up to HDV, but that is still relatively expensive ($1500-1600 for the cheapest Sony HDV camcorder, the HDR-HC1). You can get 1920 × 1080 pixel still frames from the 1080i HD signal the Sony HDV camcorders record.

Thanks Shane & Christpher For your response. Both of your replies cover what I was thinking, I was wanting my thinking verified.

Thanks again,
Bob J. Trimmer

These are the unfortunate facts of life, 720x480 is all you get from video. If you have ever windered why movies and TV have a still photographer on the set, this is why.

Having said that, I have occasionally repurposed video freeze frames for print work, like DVD covers, etc.

If you are really good in Photoshop (and have the time), you can give it an "extreme makeover." Up-sampling the image size (1% at a time if you have the patience) will not add detail but will soften the jaggies. Detail can be "drawn" or "painted" in by a good Photoshop artist, and the cloning and healing tools can correct some of the artifacts.

Then there is a plug-in called Lizardtech Genuine Fractals PrintPro, which I have not used personally, so I can't give it an endorsement yea or nay, but some say it works wonders. (Hey, it's "award-winning" and the Adobe Store carries it.)