Using WinDVD have the following advantages over PowerDVD:

1. You get to preview the captures while you are taking the shots.
2. You have a choice of saving them in JPG so no conversion is necessary.
3. You have a choice to save captures to different folders.
4. The shots are automatically named after the film rather than PDVD_001 and so on.
5. The shots are automatically sized at 640x480

what does it mean by clipboard, where are the shots saved if I want to retrieve them.
Thanks

When you cut/copy/paste in applications, images (or any other type of data) is copied to the clipboard. To get it back choose the option paste from the application (ie from Paint Shop Pro).

Ali

To capture using free VLC player from http://www.videolan.org/ (plays most formats inc DVD)

VLC player when started;


To play DVD select File->Open Disc


..playing DVD...


..to capture select Video->Snapshot


..to configure where to save the images Settings->Preferences->Video

... note you can change the output format to JPEG from here but it's best to capture as PNG then convert to JPEG afterwards as capturing using JPEG seems to produce very degrading screen shots.

Ali

From what I can see does this mean that there will be Videos of aswell on Zulm

Rough guide to getting aspect ratios of DVD videos - it's not as simple as seems

Example 1 - 4:3 ;



..simplest to work out - it's a full frame snap and the screen shot size is 640x480 (could very well be 720x540 to similar) - 4:3 ratio is calculated from 640/480 == 1.33:1, commonly referenced as 4:3.

Example 2 - letter-boxed, non-anamorphic ;



..remove the back border from the frame - I'm using Jasc Paint Shop Pro v7 - any image/photo touching program will be able to do the same action;


and to get this image;

..which is 720x373 wide giving a displayable AR of 720/373 == 1.93

..but you will notice some small black bars on the sides (if framed properly and authored these should never be there alas this is a from T-series DVD ). You can again crop this;


.. to get a image like;

..which is 704x373 == 704/373 == 1.88:1 (roughly fitting 16:9 wide-screen TVs, maybe with a slight top/bottom black border).

Ali,
Let me thank you for ALL your hard work you are doing a fab job

As far as croping goes If the DVD authors took more time and effort and thought less about filling there pockets this would never happen in the frist place
JAT

Example 3 - 16:9 enhanced/anamorphic DVDs;



...853x480 which is the 16:9/anamorphic frame i.e. 853/480 == 1.778 or 16:9. Again crop the black bars to get the film AR;



...getting...



..which is 853 pixel high & 369 pixels wide == 853/369 == 2.31 (since it's a manual cropping of images giving room to slight errors - this can be rounded to nearest common standard which in this case would be 2.35:1 - which most modern films are now).

Ali

when posting screenshots, try to include the following info in your post

REGION
CASE
DISTRIBUTOR
VIDEO FORMAT (ntsc/pal), AR, and WHETHER ANAMORPHIC
AUDIO (and whether 5.1 separation is genuine on 5.1 track)
SUBTITLES
RUNTIME
EXTRAS
IRRITANTS

also, can someone give a breif describtion on the differences between NTSC and PAL, it will be good for the new members or guests visiting the website.

Just explain:

- The Difference Between the format of NTSC and PAL
- Why is makes a difference?
- How to find out the format
- How does it effect the DVD

I was taking a few screen shots for posting but as I took and selected the screen shots it made me wonder which screen shots should be posted ?? Here is the scenario:

For Progressive DVDs any screen shot, in principle, is the same as one film frame. So No issues here.
But, for Field Averaged DVDs, it's a mess, no matter how good a running picture looks. About 80% of the moving sequence frames are fuzzy or multi images or missing limbs.
If we take SSs at random, 80% of them will turn out crap and the running picture from playing DVD will look a lot better than the screen shots.
If we pick only the good screen shots, where there is no fuzzy pic or no multi image or no missing limbs, then the screen shot will look as good as running picture but when trying any freeze frame or frame by frame advance, in a moving sequence, it will be crap 80% of the times.

So, what's the better representation of DVD picture quality, random screen captures or selected ones ?? Which ones are more useful to zulmis for judging the PQ ??

-------------------
I know, it has been said before that SS should be captured in "Orig" color setting but even among the best DVDs the picture comes washed out on my monitor if the color setting is "Orig". May be it's my PC screen that's set too bright and hence I end up using "Vivid" setting ??

Idea behind that was not to manipulate screens shots beyond their original versions, so always should be taken with the original colour profile and not vivid setting (I think this only applies to PowerDVD). Try calibrating your monitor using this website;

http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/

Ali