I have a specific task I need to do: I need to view a DV stream captured from an NTSC video source via DV bridge and capture screenshots. Since there is a lot of footage, I need to be able to seek easily through the stream (not unreasonable since DV is purely intra-coded, i.e., it consists of independently coded keyframes). Since this is television source material, I want the data competently deinterlaced while viewing and certainly when the screenshots are taken. One more thing — I want the screenshots to retain their 720×480 resolution that looks correct on a computer monitor, and not be squished down to 640×480, overscan region and all.

If you must know, it’s because I play lots of games for my Gaming Pathology project and contribute data for them — including screenshots — to the MobyGames database for posterity. I have a huge number of console games yet to cover and the screenshot dilemma is one thing that is holding me up. Consider the need to properly preserve representative screenshots of the Sega Saturn version of Space Jam for future generations of video game historians to study.

I didn’t think this would be such a tall order. Continue reading →