I would like to make a print of an image from a DVD or Blu-ray movie.

[Joe S]

I understand that Photoshop CS6 will work for this but would appreciate some guidance.  I assume Blu-ray would yield a better quality image than DVD. 

Thanks for any assistance.

[I.T. Supplies]

If you're making a print, it won't matter if you do it from either Blu-ray or DVD.  Blu-ray provides higher resolution when displaying it on screen vs DVD, but printing is good either way.  It comes down to the image format and resolution to provide a good quality print out.  And Blu-ray holds TONS more images than DVD (space/storage wise).

Are you doing the print yourself or having someone do it?  If you are, just need to make sure your computer has the Blu-ray drive to access the disc/image(s) to work in Photoshop; otherwise you'll need to make sure the place you're having it printed through has the Blu-ray drive as well to access the image(s).

[Joe S]

OK, so print quality will be just as good with DVD.   My computer has what appears to be a DVD only drive so I guess the choice is made for me.  How much resolution can I expect to print with?    I will be making the print myself with an Epson 3880.

Thanks.

[Rhossydd]

If you're making a print, it won't matter if you do it from either Blu-ray or DVD.

Yes it will. Blu-ray is a high definition format, whereas DVD is standard definition. So you should get better results from a Blu-ray format, if both are given the optimal data when written.
In practice things aren't quite so clear as it will depend on how the disks have been authored.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

If you're making a print, it won't matter if you do it from either Blu-ray or DVD...

How so?

High-definition (HD) video may be stored on Blu-ray discs with up to 2160p resolution (3840×2160 pixels) and at up to 60 frames per second. DVD-Video discs were limited to a maximum resolution of 480p (NTSC, 720×480 pixels) or 576p (PAL, 720×576 pixels).
Blu-ray - Wikipedia

[Joe S]

OK there seems to be some disagreement on the subject.

I would like to make a 18" or 24" print from a scene in a current movie DVD or Blu-ray.   Is the resolution suitable for this task?

[Rhossydd]

I would like to make a 18" or 24" print from a scene in a current movie DVD or Blu-ray.   Is the resolution suitable for this task?

The simple answer, in photographic terms, is no.

You could make a print that size from a frame grab, but the quality will be very dependent on the actual frame content. With video the continuous stream of moving images on screen always looks better than any individual frame.

Another factor is viewing distance. Seen from a long distance away it may look quite acceptable, closer up it may look really terrible.

Plus grabbing frames from commercial movies contravenes their copyright.

[TommyWeir]

Single frames in video streams are rarely crisp images unless the camera and subject are both pretty static.  The frame rate of video, 30 or 25 per second, is too low for it.

The resolution of standard definition video is 720x480 for NTSC (US and Japan), for PAL it is 720x576 (EU and ROW).   Not advisable to print either of those larger than a polaroid frankly.

Feature films rely on on-set photographers to provide stills for marketing and other uses.

HD multiplies the resolution by a factor of approximately 2 (1920 x 1080) and then 4k repeats that so things do improve if you use a higher quality source such as a HD Blu-Ray or a 4k file should you pick one up from iTunes or similar.  However you won't escape the smearing from fast moving subjects or camera motion given the frame rate of video.

And depending on your use of these images, such as selling them or using them in marketing, you can contravene copyright and attract legal attention.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

OK there seems to be some disagreement on the subject.

I would like to make a 18" or 24" print from a scene in a current movie DVD or Blu-ray.   Is the resolution suitable for this task?

Yes, from Blu-ray, providing the scene in the movie is not blurred by movement, as explained by others.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

For example, this is a scene from a TV series, streaming on Netflix or Hulu, an FBI office environment. It was captured by iPhone, from a TV screen. The hand was moving toward the pen, and it took several attempts at freezing the frame to find the moment when the movement stopped. But the image contains a lot of sharp details. The banknote on the left (coincidentally from my home country) was even captured from a computer screen, and yet contains plenty of details, so do his fingers.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

OK, so print quality will be just as good with DVD.   My computer has what appears to be a DVD only drive so I guess the choice is made for me.  How much resolution can I expect to print with?    I will be making the print myself with an Epson 3880.

Hi Joe,

To add a new angle to what has already been said.

An image from the DVD data itself, versus a display capture, has the benefit that it has not yet been 'enhanced' for viewing at several meters / many feet distance (normal sharpening settings often adds halos, and removes noise(?)). Otherwise, the number of pixels remains rather limited for the purpose of somewhat larger printed output  (and the chance is that the pixels have some motion blur).

Topaz Labs 'A.I. Gigapixel' to the rescue ...
https://topazlabs.com/ai-gigapixel/

There are several threads about this new application on the LuLa forums already, so I'm not going to repeat all that, but I think it's very well suited for the exact challenge you are facing. It offers one of the few possibilities to add actual realistic looking resolution where there is none in the original image, and you can upscale the image to 600% (which would allow a decent sized print).

It might be a bit expensive for 1 image (there are discount coupons available), but it's a useful tool for other image rescaling operations as well. I've added it to my toolchest, also given the fact that Topaz Labs promises free updates and full version upgrades for life. So it's a one time expense, and no subscription or upgrade fees after that.

Cheers,
Bart

[Alan Klein]

While commercial videos are provided in 4K on B-R, you can publish your own 4K videos on DVD at home using MP4 H264 format and codecs. However, you have to play them back on a B-R player for 4K.  Or you can copy the file to a memory card to play through the USB connector of your 4k smart UHDTV which is what I do.  Data transfer is quicker than using a B-R player disk which sometimes hangs up if you're transferring at a too high data rate.

However, you can't do menus when Publishing videos in 4K.  If you want menus, you have to keep it down at 2K - 1080.  These can be burned on regular DVD's and played in regular DVD players. 

[Joe S]

"An image from the DVD data itself, versus a display capture, has the benefit that it has not yet been 'enhanced' for viewing at several meters / many feet distance (normal sharpening settings often adds halos, and removes noise(?)). Otherwise, the number of pixels remains rather limited for the purpose of somewhat larger printed output  (and the chance is that the pixels have some motion blur)."


Please explain what DVD data vs display capture means.    My intention was to just get the DVD or Blu-ray disk, whichever is better and capture a portion of the display, looking for the best possible frame.   Is there a better approach?

Thanks for the Topaz tip.

I have no intended commercial use so copyright is not a problem.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

"An image from the DVD data itself, versus a display capture, has the benefit that it has not yet been 'enhanced' for viewing at several meters / many feet distance (normal sharpening settings often adds halos, and removes noise(?)). Otherwise, the number of pixels remains rather limited for the purpose of somewhat larger printed output  (and the chance is that the pixels have some motion blur)."


Please explain what DVD data vs display capture means.

If you photograph the image as projected on a display, your image data will often be somewhat altered, based on the display settings. How the image data on the DVD is converted depends on the drivers that are used and the settings that are used.

For example, is the data displayed 1:1, i.e. 1-pixel input to 1-pixel output? Or is there anti-aliasing going on, or is the signal interlaced between two subsequent images, or is there edge contrast enhancement going on, or noise reduction, and what is the colorbalance or even colormanagement, what playback speed is used, and is that matched to the recorded number of frames/sec or is there temporal interpolation/filtering going on?

Also when reproduced from a display, are there any room reflections visible in the image?

So it's best to get a good quality DVD player application or editor where you have control over the various video driver aspects, and where you can capture single frames as direct as possible from the video pipeline, in a known colorspace.

My intention was to just get the DVD or Blu-ray disk, whichever is better and capture a portion of the display, looking for the best possible frame.   Is there a better approach?

Besides the above considerations, look at the actual resolution of the data. Blu-Ray may have several to choose from because more data can be stored on a single disc, and maybe with different resolutions (full HD or 2K / 3K / 4K / and in the future 8K?). Can your display manage that resolution without scaling?

Thanks for the Topaz tip.

I have no intended commercial use so copyright is not a problem.

Personal use (e.g. a backup copy) is usually covered by the fair use doctrine, and a single frame is also, more often than not, fair use, within the other restrictions of one's jurisdiction.

The quality of a single frame is usually compromised by motion blur and/or depth of field limitations, so not losing more information during the upscaling, but possibly adding some useful resolution, can be very useful for such an enlargement needed for larger format print output. Topaz A.I. Gigapixel is a very promising application, in fact, currently it's the best I've tried.

Cheers,
Bart

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Couple of years ago I tried the same thing, i.e., extracting a scene from a movie on a disk. I think I gave up. It is not trivial. You have to have a specialized software, could be expensive, and if I remember correctly, there is always a lot of (technical) hurdles regarding copyright protection. That was a couple of years ago, so the situation might have changed, for better or worse.

[Alan Klein]

My video editing program Adobe Premiere Elements allows capturing one picture from the video file.  I don't know if they capture two and combines them if there is interlacing going on.  Maybe someone else here knows.

Bart: Why are room reflections applicable.  I don;t think they have any effect.

Regarding stills from videos, my camera if set up this way will shoot a real still picture when you start video capture.  That way you get a really nice still picture at the start of the video which is a nice way to fade into the moving section when playing back.  Check to see if your camera has this feature.

[Joe S]

I have become aware that my less than accurate language has caused some confusion.   When I said, "My intention was to just get the DVD or Blu-ray disk, whichever is better and capture a portion of the display, looking for the best possible frame"  I had not considered and was not thinking of the possibility of playing the video on a large screen and using a camera to photograph it.   What I meant to say was that I would view the movie in Photoshop CS6 on my computer and select the best frame and make a print from it.   So if I understand, this would still be the best approach but I might not get the results I am hoping for.   For the best chance of success, I should get a Blu-ray player for my computer and purchase the Blu-ray edition of the movie over the DVD version and consider using Topaz to upscale the image. 

"Couple of years ago I tried the same thing, i.e., extracting a scene from a movie on a disk. I think I gave up. It is not trivial."

I'm beginning to see that.

[Alan Klein]

Joe, Curious if the studio furnishes jpeg of various pictures from their movie that you could use or even a poster to buy?  Why not check with them?  Anything that plugs their movie means money for them. 

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... What I meant to say was that I would view the movie in Photoshop CS6...

I must admit I am not an expert in Photoshop CS6, but I doubt you can put a Blu-ray (or DVD) into your computer and simply ask PS to play it. There has to be, if I am not wrong, a conversion to a format PS can understand. That is when it gets tricky and possibly expensive. Again, IMHO.

[Joe S]

This makes it seem easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZup--tpyzk