Video Screen Captures With Large AVI's

[Hunter D]

I was wondering, what program(s) enable you to take a screen shot of a video file (avi). The OS that i wish to do this on is Win98SE, I've used PowerDVD to cap DVD's, and a few other small mpeg's, avi's, but now i have a 700MB video with which i wish to get a few caps so i can make an avatar. The damn thing jumps back quite a few frames when i try to capture the exact frame that i want, ive tried ACDSee's screen aquire function but it just caps a full black image. Can someone please help me out, and if possible explain the last part also. Thanks a lot! :p

[sonyfier]

Hmmm! For the last hour I've been scratching my head trying to remember a program I was using 6 months ago for doing exactly what you want but I can't remember :( :o Must be going senile :D

I was capturing frames to use on VCD cover slicks I was making for a TV series I collect. It was a great program too. If it comes to me I'll post again. ;)

In the mean time a quick and dirty method is to play the file in windows media player and pause the scene you want and hit CRTL + I (This works in XP but not certain of 98)

You will have to resize the image to what's required using another program such as photo shop.

You could also try some of the shareware or freeware programs available from sites including:
http://shareware.cnet.com
http://www.tucows.com

Or do a google search for more results

[Hunter D]

:D ty sonyfier, ill try ctrl+i but i already searched the net with google and searched cnets downloads and didnt come up with much :( ill also try those apps you suggested, but not right now, im eating dipsy doodles.... by the way, do you like star trek? i love the next generation.

[sonyfier]

Yeah you could say I like Star Trek :) I'm a big Science Fiction fan generally and I've been hooked on ST since it's first screening. I was only a kid in the sixties when the original series was first screened but shows like ST forever shaped my viewing taste.

Back on topic:

There's a program called Snagit available from http://www.techsmith.com/ From what I've read elsewhere it's supposed to be pretty good. There's a 15 day trial version of the program available from above link which might get the job done. They also sell a more comprehensive program called Camtasia Studio.

Still can't remember that other program I used, going to drive me nuts until I do. ;)

[Hunter D]

Thank you sonyfier, i used techsmith's SnagIt Studio 6, and edited my screenshots in photoshop 7, this was something that ive tried to do for a long time, but only now ive started looking around on how to do it, thanks again sonyfier! :dD

[sonyfier]

No worries, glad you got it sorted out. :)