> This list is not Linux-on-Inspiron list, it just so happens that many of us use
> Linux. Feel free to ask any Inspiron related question.
> Avi
Okay. I thought it was. I stand corrected. :-) Here are my DVD questions.
Has anyone tried doing still-frame video capture from DVD movies using their
Inspiron? I've got a 3200 with the standard Torisan DVD-ROM drive and the
Margi DVD-to-Go PCMCIA MPEG2 decoder card and player software. When I try to
capture a frame from the movie to an image file I get an image that is
squashed horizontally to approximately 1/2 of its original horizontal size.
The vertical size is unchanged, with the result being that the image appears
thinner and taller. I've tried doing the capture with the built in capture
button on the Margi DVD-to-Go player software, and also using the HyperSnap
DX 3.30 beta program (www.hyperionics.com) to do the capture using the same
DVD-to-Go player to get the movie on the screen. Same results with both.
Now I can stretch the shrunk image back to it's correct resolution, but the
resulting image doesn't look as good as the still image in the player window.
My untrained-for-computer-graphics eyes can't tell whether the poorer image
is the result of poorer color resolution per pixel caused by the capture
process not correctly capturing the full color depth (cause even before I
stretch it, it looks like it has more artifacts), or from poorer pixel
resolution, quite possibly caused by the shrinking and stretching.
Does anyone know how to do good quality capture with this hardware and
software?
Other tidbits and specifics and some related questions about resolution:
The DVD-to-Go software under configuration or somesuch button has an
information panel that says that the DVD is 720x480 resolution. The captured
images are according to HyperSnap DX at 360x480 resolution, and when I
compare the windows on the screen they do indeed match up exactly on the
vertical dimension. When I stretch the captured image horizontally so that it
matches the player window picture exactly in the horizontal dimension,
HyperSnap says its 640x480. Why the disrepancy between 720 and 640?
What's the real resolution here?
I only tested this so far with one movie (Top Gun). I tried it with both
widescreen and standard play modes, with the same results in both. I tried
this with Windows set to 16-bit color at 1024x768 and tried it also with
24-bit color at 800x600. The captures were definitely worse in both color
depths. I didn't try to tell whether the capture in the 24-bit depth was
better than the capture in the 16-bit depth.
Other players: There appear to be a number of software-only DVD playres out
there (eg PowerDVD, SoftDVD, XingDVD), but as far as I can tell, none of them
is downloadable, nor even for sale. They are all bundled as parts of other
products. Does anyone know of the cheapest easiest way to get a hold of one
of these programs? I imagine they might be bundled with various desktop DVD
hardware, so I doubt I would want to buy anything that might bundle one of
them. Do you use a different player program than the Margi player and if so,
where did you get it?
-Karl
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Karl Pfleger [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.stanford.edu/~kpfleger/
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