Exporting Stills for DVD Artwork on HDV Timeline
 

I know a lot of you guys use XH A1's as well. What is the best way you have found to get great looking stills for Wedding DVD artwork? I have tried exporting out of the timeline with Quicktime conversion, creating a freeze frame and exporting, using Quicktime Pro, and After Effects(the best so far). Maybe it is my settings but there. Would someone be kind enough to share their workflow? I am shooting 1080i and I am getting interlacing artifacts no matter how I de-interlace. I will try to post a pic when I get home but I am really interested on the best way. Thanks in advance!

In vegas you need to set the preview quality to best and then use the copy/save icon.

IT still looks crap as HD is still only about 1.3 megapixels and as you say its interlaced. Its for this reason we take our EOS along to get stills for a slideshow, DVD menus and the DVD scribe.

easy as pie in PProCS3, if that is your NLE?

file > export > frame
- make the size 1920 x 1080,
- square pixels ratio (1.0)
- 'deinterlace video footage'

oila!

You PP users always have to go one better dont you

I am sorry guys that I did not mention which NLE I use. Final Cut Pro is my blade of choice.

Jonathon, this is back to a question I've been looking to answer. I thought I saw an answer a while back on DVinfo and haven't been able to retrack it.
How to grab a 60i still without the interlace artifacts. I don't think it's possible.
I'd be interested to see if anyone with PProCS3 can post a full resolution pic from 60i footage without interlaced artifacts.

I think you might be right but I would love to be proved wrong. Is the answer to shoot progressive to get good stills then? I would love to unveil the mystery. :)

here's a framegrab from a wedding i'm editing right now infact

it's completely unresized, or untampered with in photoshop (although colour-graded in PPro, and logo added in photoshop)

taken from xh-a1, 50i, as a deinterlaced framegrab from PPro:
http://www.fxfilms.co.uk/downloads/x...ab_example.jpg

Beautiful scene but if you take it into photoshop and view the pixels at 100% then you will see the interlacing artifacts I am talking about. It is particularly noticeable in a close-up shots. My problem is that I could zoom out the pic to say 55% and get a decent image but then what happened to my nice big 1080i resolution?

Here is a wedding I am working on but when it is viewed at 100% it looks bad. Good for web but bad for print :( Again how could I keep the full resolution?

This picture looks really good. I guess my problem boils down to fast action stills from 60i. Maybe if the scene is not moving the picture comes out better when de-interlaced.

I'm using Vegas 8.
I'll post a sample later today.