Blu-ray movies screen capture

[amstrad]

Hi,

I want do some screen shot of Blu-ray movies,
and public on this forum

But have some problems - how ?
I turn Off hardware acceleration and use print screen,
but quality of pictures is low.

On blu-ray.com I see beautifu quality of screens.

[ricwhite]

From what I read, I don't think posting the exact method is allowed on this forum for some reason. I don't take computer image captures, but I understand that you need some specific software in order to do it. Do a search on google for computer image captures and blu-ray and you'll probably get some information on how it's done.

[Bobby Henderson]

A lot of people ask about frame grabs since the leading software DVD player programs (Power DVD, WinDVD) as well as Apple's Quicktime player allow users to capture still frames to the clip board and then paste them into applications like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.

[Cinema Squid]

Originally Posted by ricwhite

Maybe somebody can explain the "issues" with this because I really don't understand all the secrecy.

There's a number of ways to make them using free software like mplayer, ffmpeg, avisynth, etc. which is probably how most are doing it.

I'd be more than happy to post my own methodology using mplayer which is pretty simple, but there does seem to be some kind of "first rule of fight club" in effect. I'm not sure if this is the official stance of the forum or just conventional wisdom, however, so I've erred on the side of caution - it would be nice to get a moderator opinion on the matter.

[ricwhite]

Originally Posted by Cinema Squid

There's a number of ways to make them using free software like mplayer, ffmpeg, avisynth, etc. which is probably how most are doing it.

I'd be more than happy to post my own methodology using mplayer which is pretty simple, but there does seem to be some kind of "first rule of fight club" in effect. I'm not sure if this is the official stance of the forum or just conventional wisdom, however, so I've erred on the side of caution - it would be nice to get a moderator opinion on the matter.

Thanks for your comment, Cinema Squid. So, is there something "wrong" about taking a screenshot? I do it all the time with video games and I post them on forums. Almost EVERY forum dedicated to DVD or HD DVD or Blu-ray HAS screenshots of movies. EVERY reviewer who reviews movies posts screenshots of the movies including Blu-ray movies. (Just look at all the computer image captures of movie frames posted here on this site). So, I guess I don't understand what is wrong with telling people how to do it.

If somebody -- like a moderator -- would explain to me why they are nervous about the "knowledge" being released, I would really appreciate it. Since I'm the administrator of the Screenshot Thread here, I get emails quite often asking me how to take computer image captures and I'm unable to tell them how to do it or why there's secrecy involved. (I only take photographs). So, I would certainly appreciate an explanation so I can answer those questions when people ask me. It almost sounds like there are the few "chosen" ones who have some "approval" of some kind to take BD screenshots while the rest of us are not allowed. I assume there must be some "rules" or regulations or guidelines or conditions. Very weird.

[Moefiz]

Already have one going for quiet sometime now...

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...screen+capture

[StretchMaK]

If you are asking about screen shots from your computer why not just print screen and paste into paint and then save as what ever file you want it to be?

[rubberghost]

if it is so "hush-hush" it probably has something to do with the BDA. have you tried asking them? they're not that difficult to deal with.

[Ataneruo]

I know for a fact that Arcsoft Total Media Theatre lets you easily capture blu-ray screenshots and save them to your hard drive. I have no compunction about saying so because if there was something "illegal" about doing so, Arcsoft wouldn't have it in their program.

[rubberghost]

Cinematized, Mac, BD drive. = maybe.

[Cinema Squid]

Originally Posted by Ataneruo

I know for a fact that Arcsoft Total Media Theatre lets you easily capture blu-ray screenshots and save them to your hard drive. I have no compunction about saying so because if there was something "illegal" about doing so, Arcsoft wouldn't have it in their program.

Cyberlink specifically removed the screenshot feature from PowerDVD Ultra version 8 for Blu-ray, so I can only assume there has been some pressure from the BDA or other vested parties to discourage screenshot taking. I would not be surprised if Arcsoft were under similar pressure. All of the open solutions require a "Step 0" which is probably the source of most of the hesitancy around posting specific methods. I will say that none of the open solutions work with copy-protected material and leave the details and extrapolation of that as an exercise for the sly reader.

With that being said, I personally prefer to dump many pre-generated bitmaps and sort through the results with a nice image browser, rather than trying to locate and frame step to specific shots while watching the movie (which can be troublesome with BD-Java navigation restrictions). My current method uses mplayer to dump all the I-frames of a movie file. These occur between 1-2 per second, so doing this typically results in 7000-10000 image files to sort through at a total cost of approximately 10-15GB of disc space.

Assuming the BD-ROM drive is attached at X:, I use the following mplayer command-line:

mplayer -nosound -vo png:z=5 -vf framestep=I X:\BDMV\STREAM\00000.m2ts

This exports each I-frame of the specified M2TS file to a losslessly compressed PNG file. Then it is simply a matter of picking out those bitmaps that you want to keep and deleting the rest. Picking out the correct M2TS or set of M2TS is another discussion altogether, although for most non-seamlessly branched movies this is usually just the largest one.

Depending on the horse-power of your computer and amount of available disc space, you can tweak the png z-value for better or worse compression. Since I only keep a dozen or so shots, I use a midrange Z compression and then recompress the keepers with a more aggressive value (as well as convert downscaled JPG versions) using ImageMagick.

That's it... although there are many other interesting things you can do with mplayer such as autodetect the crop / aspect ratio:

mplayer -vf cropdetect X:\BDMV\STREAM\00000.m2ts

[ricwhite]

Originally Posted by StretchMaK

If you are asking about screen shots from your computer why not just print screen and paste into paint and then save as what ever file you want it to be?

That doesn't work for Blu-ray movies.

[InfectedStranger]

Originally Posted by amstrad

Hi,

I want do some screen shot of Blu-ray movies,
and public on this forum

But have some problems - how ?
I turn Off hardware acceleration and use print screen,
but quality of pictures is low.

On blu-ray.com I see beautifu quality of screens.

I don't have any idea what you're talking about, describe further, please.