I don't want any virtualdub features...just a user interface that allows stepping through a video when searching through a video for frames to capture. It's more convenient to use the built-in capture, but it has a clumsy interface that make it difficult to select the best quality frames. Using an external program means that I have to add the images to PVD manually when I'm done capturing frames.
I add them manually anyway with a link to a folder to avoid PVD replacing the timecode or frame numbers I've saved in the filenames.
Perhaps forward stepping might not be that difficult but backward stepping appears to be a tall order when it comes to compressed videos, certainly fast backward stepping.
I've tried many programs for this purpose. Virtualdubmod hasn't been updated in a long time, and the last time I used it I got a message that you might be better off using a newer program. Virtualdub is good but doesn't support a lot of formats unless you first put them in a .avi container with Avisynth after scanning them with a program like DGMPGDec. (If you're opening transport streams, I can see scans might be needed, but DVDs should be perfect files.) And it doesn't save the frame number or timecode in the filename (but you can use a macro to capture it from the control in the bottom part of the window).
AVIdemux is similar but can be set to auto-scan the file upon opening and supports more formats. Scans aren't essential for all files, but if you don't scan, you'll sometimes get an error while scrubbing and have to reopen and scan, which is annoying when you're in the middle of something. Likewise with
VideoReDo, and it supports fewer formats.
TMPGEnc MPEG Editor may work, but its been discontinued.
MPEG Video Wizard is my favorite because it
- doesn't require any scans
- allows viewing in fullscreen mode
- lets you toggle deinterlacing on and off with a hotkey so you can pick a frame that doesn't have interlacing from telecining
- lets you turn DVD subtitles on and off so you can choose whether or not they get displayed in the screenshot
- is very fast, displaying a lot of frames while scrubbing, especially when holding down the left or right arrow keys
- lets you use CTRL+arrow keys to step by I-frames and SHIFT+arrow keys to step by P-frames
- saves frames with timecode in the filename using the F4 key and bypasses the Save As... dialog box if you use F5
Sometimes it doesn't do well with non-MPEG formats, but its reliable for DVDs.
Video Thumbnails Maker is often touted as good, *if* you get the paid version, which I did, but it only supports stepping in 1-second intervals, so I've given up on it, but it does have more options than PVD's Screenshot Maker.
I try to use
BSPlayer when watching movies because that's the only player I've found that supports backward stepping by storing the frames in RAM so that you can instantly go back and reevaluate whether a previous frame was better than the current one. And you can set the screenshot filenames to use timecode and frame number using something like:
[bscap] %F %E [%T] [%FR]Its just a bit of a pain getting it set up initially. You have to uncheck 'Seek by keyframes' and choose the right 'Video Rendering Mode,' which varies depending on which graphics card you use.
Next I'm going to look into noise reduction for some of my grainy screenshots.
Neat Image and
Neat Video have impressive-looking samples.
