Help! Are Quality Production stills from AG-DVX100p possible?
 

Help!!
I just finished a film on my AGDVX-100 and need some high quality productions stills from a few frames of the film, for my Press Kit. After I log my clips into Final Cut Pro III, the resolution is only 72 pixels per inch =( Which is not usable for my purposes. With a coolpix500 I took some digital camera hi rez stills on the set, but they turned out..well,, cabbage!

That's why I'm hoping the my AG-DVX100p might be able to save me

Is there any way to get a higher resolutions (say 300 dpi)
directly from the camera that I can use for printing??

Thanks in advance!!
- Tommy Merry

NTSC DV-25 is always 720x480 pixels so that's the highest resolution you can get from a frame grab. Note also that the pixels aren't square, so you need to resize to either 640x480 or 720x540 in Photoshop of the pictures will be horizontally stretched. Of course you can also use Photoshop, and various plugins, to save these at any size and dpi, but remember the old axiom "garbage in, garbage out"...

There's a program out there called Photozoom Pro. It can enlarge still images (or DVX frame grabs, in your case) to whatever size you select. It uses complex S-spline algorithms to enlarge the images. Supposedly, the results are amazing.

http://www.trulyphotomagic.com/short...rie_info&cat=3

I should say, that I haven't tried it myself, but they do have a free trial download available, so you can't go wrong.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Boyd and Jamie for the quick reply, I will definitely try your recommendation/program -

the question I'm still facing is what is the best way to capture the frames - should I use FCP to capture the segment of film then do a frame grab from within the program
as I have previously been doing, or is there a better way, for instance - say on my PC etc..?

Thanks All!
-Tommy

Tommy,

my way may not be the best way... buy I either do the "apple+shift+4 pdf capture" or use the "Grab" program thats in your utility app folder, and saving the canvas window (set at 100%) to tiff format. Then I open that file in PS7 and do any touch-up, additional cropping..etc, and save.

I'm using these 2 methods for stills I use on my wedding dvd inserts.

there is a way to grab a still from within FCP. I'm not at a computer with FCP on it, but if you look it up in the FCP Help files you'll find it.

Happened to be cleaning junk off my powerbook and stumbled across a program which might be of use, Image DV.

Thanks Bill and Jeff,
I will be trying all software suggestions that were made as well as techniques and use the one that allows the best resolution for a third party to print from.

I know that while during the filming of my movie, I should have had a killer dedicated photographer taking production still etc.. but the whole pre-production was a blur and I never got around lining one up =(

Now, all of the festivals that I'm planning on submitting to, want production photos (or frame grabs if I would have been using say; a 35mm film camera) and its too late to go back.
And we all know the "Hindsight.." axiom =)

Thanks again All - This board definitely ROCKS!
-Tommy