Grabbing screenshot from a movie...

[RyanSpaulding]

Hey guys,

 

Small issue here. I have a client who got a video from us a while back and he wants a still from the project. I have the final video, but the DVD we placed all the files on is corrupt and I cant grab files or cope them from either DVD

 

I have screen capture software, but when i try to capture a still when playing or paused, the screen comes up black where the vido should be. When I import into Adobe Premiere, it says it's an unsupported compression.

 

So, I need to:

 

a) know if there's a program that can handle this

b) know if there's a prog that analyzes video codecs for a file

 

Any help is appreciated.

[Ernest Burden III]

First, try the 'corrupt' DVD on every DVD drive you can find. One may just read it where the rest don't.

 

Second, does the movie play in regular DVD software? If so, use a player with a capture function. I've used CyberLink PowerDVD, it has a hotkey to capture to a BMP file at full res.

 

Premiere won't play the file? That's a surprise. If you check the propoerties of the DVD file in XP it will usually identify the codec in 'advanced', so will QuickTime.

 

Good luck!

[Ernest Burden III]

Oh, and if you have the original model/scene why not just re-render the frames your client wants?

[RyanSpaulding]

Thats the thing...all of the DVD was corrupted (both versions...we write 2 to HD). So all my DWGs and VUE files are gone now.

 

Also, I downloaded a prog called GSpot that analyzes AVIs...it say I have the codec installed...but neither Premiere or After Effects opens the file.

 

Time to try to find a DVD player with capture function...

[Ernest Burden III]

Time to try to find a DVD player with capture function...

 

I've used CyberLink PowerDVD, it has a hotkey to capture to a BMP file at full res.

 

Depending on how long ago you did the project, look for backup files on the machine that hosted the project. Maybe there's something there, if it was recent baybe some files will be un-erasable. You didn't copy the files to any other machines for backup or for running frames?

 

In the future--for backup also use an external hard-drive. Its fast for daily or even hourly backups and can be moved to another machine in seconds should one station go down. When its full, stick it in a cabinet, plug in another one. I use the Lacie Porsche drives.

[RyanSpaulding]

Hooray for VLC Media Player.

 

THE best media player out there, bar none.

 

Cant believe this ll got corrupted....blah. Thanks for the help Ernest.

[Ernest Burden III]

Thanks for the help Ernest.

 

It doesn't look like you paid much attention to what I said, but you're welcome.

 

The bigger question here is how did two DVD backups get corrupted (suggests a bad burner or storage damage) and why didn't anyone test them before deleting the hard-drive material?

[F J]

sup Ryan,

i was just wondering when u get black screen with ur capture software, if u could just try n hit PrintScreen n then check ur Clipboard.. i wonder..

[Ray]

. . . and why didn't anyone test them before deleting the hard-drive material?

 

Exactly!

[RyanSpaulding]

It doesn't look like you paid much attention to what I said, but you're welcome.

 

The bigger question here is how did two DVD backups get corrupted (suggests a bad burner or storage damage) and why didn't anyone test them before deleting the hard-drive material?

 

Actually, I did pay attention. You gave me the idea to hunt down a player that could grab a screen from the...just didn't have PowerDVD on my system so I scoured through waht I had. I likely would have scoured the net for screen capture progs. I also looked on the HD of the comp I used at that time, no-go. And I read your codec info response after dl'ing GSpot...so I just found a different way there. I'm more thanking you for assisting.

 

And yes, that is a bigger question. I'm not sure what happened...but we do check them after each burn. I've even pulled stuff off of that burned DVD before...it has a few projects on it. Looked like a pretty budget DVD...no label or anything. The DVDs just sit there and spin forever, windows explorer freezes and then crashes...and no amount of time goes by to alleviate this. It's almost as if it has a bad header or something...but it cant read a thing from either DVD.

[Ernest Burden III]

Try the DVD reader in your laptop, in somebody else's machine, in a Mac... some discs just fail in a lot of drives but will read in a different, random drive.

[Jim Mann]

sup Ryan,

i was just wondering when u get black screen with ur capture software, if u could just try n hit PrintScreen n then check ur Clipboard.. i wonder..

 

That tends not to work with DVD's in my experience. I always assumed that it was related to copy protection but as Ernest noted, Power DVD lets you save out screen shots from DVD based movies.

 

Ernest, I like the idea of filling up lacie drives too although I started using the big disks, the 500GB ones and felt very pleased with myself till it corrupted and I lost a ton of work. Thankfully, most (thuogh not all) of it was also backed up on duplicate DVD's as well but just in case, I now have two 500GB disks filling up in parallel. There are probably better ways of doing back-ups but if something goes wrong and a project isn't backed up somewhere, once its gone, its gone forever.

 

JM