How do you take accurate screenshots?

[Dapilot1]

So I'm trying to show some friends various encoding levels for videos on their iPods and I was wondering how do you take accurate screengrabs? I was trying to do it with VLC, but it is more difficult than it should be. Is there some way I can type the frame number and it will output a .png? Thanks in advance.

[Guest]

What is the type of your source video?

[themostestultimategenius]

Use VDub. Use directshowsource to open the video.

[J_Darnley]

ffdhsow can grab single frames, take a look at it's grab filter.

[KoD]

Avidemux (http://fixounet.free.fr/avidemux/download.html) can do that for most files. Grab one of the latest available SVN builds instead of the official one. Don't be fooled by the "avi" in its name, it knows more than that.

[castellanos]

@Dapilot1: Welcome to the Forum!
I wanted to recommend you Media Player Classic... but then I saw in your post: VLC and .png so I think you are using a Mac, right?
If you are a Mac user, KoD's suggestion is one of the best.
If not, use Media Player Classic (http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=82303&use_mirror=internap&filename=mpc2kxp6490.zip&74596477), save the screenshot as .bmp and convert it to .png.
Greetings! :)

[Dapilot1]

The videos are in really small x264 .mp4 files.
VDub is having problems with x264/.mp4.
I have no idea how to use ffdshow.
I have a question about Avidemux.
I do not like MPC, I do not have a mac, and I use .png because it looks just like .bmp but is a lot smaller (and thats what VLC grabs them in.)

Sorry I waited so long, but I have been (and still am) very busy. I run Ubuntu linux and just last weekend I upgraded to 7.10. Avidemux is in the repositories, but do you know any other good video file converters? I really like StaxRip, but thats widows only. It is a pain on linux with all of its little programs that it controls.

Thanks for your help.

[Irakli]

Hi!

Hopefully you'll find some useful information about software for linux here:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=89543 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=89543)

You can also try this link:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=628816#post628816

Regards,
Irakli

P.S.: I am also running latest Ubuntu, but still on dual boot (together with WinXP) since I get used to MeGUI so much that cannot give up using it.