Getting high quality stills out of DV camcorder?

[Homer_Bart]

Googled but found nothing relevant, so I'm posting here
I have taken 30 minutes of photos and videos using my tape camcorder yesterday. On the camera's screen, the pictures look extremely high quality and clear. But when I get the video stills and photos to the computer, the quality is just about the same as a VGA camera. (I haven't tried retrieving videos yet, will do later.) I'm using DV GatePlus via the DV cables.

There are these few modes to save the stills/photos in:
>JPEG
-4:3
-16:9
-movie
>BMP
-4:3
-16:9
-movie


So, is there any way I can do to get the best quality photos/stills out of the camera?
An exmaple of the crappy quality...

[fbc]

You'll be limited to whatever resolution the camcorder is taking & storing the images in - any idea what that is?

[Homer_Bart]

^how can I check?


Edit: on the tape itself, it says 60/90. is that the resolution?

[fbc]

The manuals? But they'll only tell you what the cam is capable of taking. The images you've already taken will be stuck in the resolution they're currently in - if the cam is capable of taking higher-quality still images you'll presumably have to change some settings on the cam itself.

I'm presuming that the software you're using isn't doing some manipulation on the images as they're retrieved from the cam.

[Shawn]

Although I have never owned a DV camera I doubt you'll be able to do anything to improve the photos. Unless you have an HD camera it's not going to record in a significant resolution, so unless your camera has a separate sensor for photos it's not going to be any better than what a 1-2mp digicam would give you.

The videos are probably not more than a few hundred pixels wide/long, whereas on a modern digicam you'd get photos which are a few thousand pixels long/wide.

[Viper007Bond]

DV doesn't mean high quality, it just means 1's and 0's rather than analog. Yes, it's better, but you're still recording SD stuff, not HD.

[Homer_Bart]

Then it goes to say I can chuck this camera somewhere and never see it again, and go right to the shops for a new HD camcorder?

[db2450]

If you do end up checking this thread again today, try the free Give Away at: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/
It seems to use frames around the frame you are trying to get a still of to improve quality.

[jeffy777]

Originally Posted by Homer_Bart

Then it goes to say I can chuck this camera somewhere and never see it again, and go right to the shops for a new HD camcorder?

Whether the camera records HD video or not doesn't really affect how well it takes still pictures, because recording video and taking still pictures are of course two different things. Almost every camcorder made today has a seperate image sensor for taking still pictures.

You don't necessarily need an HD camcorder. If you are interested in taking both video and good quality pics, then you just need to make sure you get a camcorder that has a high quality Image Sensor and a nice number of megapixels for taking stills. Many camcorders have nice video quality, but only take still pictures at 1-2 megapixels....so you have to research that before you buy, and make sure you get something better.

If you are going to buy a new one, read a lot of reviews first. Don't just buy one because it's HD, because it still might suck:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/
http://reviews.cnet.com/camcorders/
http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/camcorders/
http://www.videomaker.com/learn/prod...order-reviews/

[HarLeQuiN]

Originally Posted by Homer_Bart

^how can I check?


Edit: on the tape itself, it says 60/90. is that the resolution?

That is how long you can record for. sp=60mins/lp=90mins. Most standard def cameras are about 800k resolution so the photos won't come out that great.

The only cameras that have a decent megapixel are the HD Sony video cameras (I think 10 megapixel), but they won't take the same quality of picture like a 10 megapixel still though. They do come out clear, but the photos were more equivalent to a 3-4 megapixel camera.

By the way, video and photo on a small screen look great cos its soo small, but pc screen and tv have higher resolution so they have to stretch the pixels out to fit on the screen.