: How can I extract and magnify video frames? I am hoping this is the right area to post this. I have 1080p trail camera footage of someone stealing equipment. The truck plates are a little

@Sims5801359

I was able to export a bunch of still images from the video using Photoshop. I tried VLC, but the more frames I wanted to capture the more the video would freeze up; VLC would only capture the frozen frame a bunch of times. So I used Photoshop (free trial), which worked much better. I took those images and stacked the images on top of each other using the open source software, "Enfuse." That did a pretty good job of getting the license plate clearer. I messed around with the color levels, and was able to get a much more detail of the characters on the plate.

Link to Enfuse: Link

Demo/Tutorial

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@Murray664

Use VLC with a 1080p monitor

(I say 1080p because that's the resolution of your video if it was 4k use a 4k monitor etc.)


In VLC press the E key to go frame by frame until you can find the clearest image you can find.
VLC has options to zoom in as well in it's effects settings.
(That will be useful if you're not using a high res monitor.
That's because a screenshot is just using the resolution of your monitor. NOT the resolution of the video file.)




After you've tried this...

So, you've gone frame by frame. Hopefully you're viewing this on a high resolution monitor. Even if it's not, you've zoomed in using VLC to see as much detail as possible that exists. After all that if the video isn't clear then their is nothing you can do. You can't "zoom in and enhance" information that's just not there. This is not a hollywood film. In that case you're out of luck.

Try to figure out the make and model if you can't get the plate.

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@Pope1402555

Like Scott said this isn't CSI so there's a limit to how much clarity you can get out of an image. Pixels are pixels and can't be enhanced beyond their limits.

A better method to extract the video frames to attempt to enhance them would be to use VLC.

NOTE: You might need to run VLC as an administrator. To do this opposite click on the icon and select run as administrator.


Create a folder to store your frames and copy the path to it.

C:Users[USERNAME]DesktopVideo Frames for example.
Click Tools -> Preferences in VLC.
Under “show settings”, click “all”.
Under “Video”, select “Filters”. Tick “Scene video filter”.
Expand “Filters” and select “Scene filter”,
Paste the path from earlier into “directory path prefix”.
Decide what proportion of the frames you want to export. For example, if you want to export 1 in 12 frames, type “12” in the “recording ratio” box.
Click “save”.
Click Media -> Open Video and find your video. Patiently let the whole thing play.
Click Tools -> Preferences. Under “show settings”, click “all”. Under “video”, select “filters”. Uncheck “Scene video filter”. Click “save”. This is so that VLC won’t generate thumbnails the next time you play a video.
Open the folder you created earlier. The thumbnails should be there.

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@Caterina889

In general, if it's unclear and unreadable watching and pausing the video, you probably aren't going to be able to "enhance" it enough to make it readable.

Technology just doesn't work the way tv shows such as CSI would have you believe it does. There's no "zoom and enhance" that suddenly makes an overly blurry small number remarkably readable.

Taking screen shots is customarily not much better (or worse) than copying clips from the video and pasting them into an image editor. Video has a set (low) resolution. The whole 480/720/1080/4K all refer to the width and height, not the pixel resolution.

And in reality, sometimes reducing the size of a 720/1080/4k video can make it clearer. If you view a 1080 video, pause it, then reduce the dimensions down to 480... the pixel density of the video increases possibly allowing a bit more clarity. It doesn't change the actual video, only how the pixels are interpolated on a display. This is the entire theory behind retina and 4k displays... larger images reduced to increase pixel density. It allows pixels to be displayed tighter together which can, at times, make a video appear sharper even though it's the same video.

Of course, I'm generalizing. It may be possible to sharpen enough to tell if "that" is a B or an 8. However if you can't even see enough where you know it's either a B or an 8 it may be a lost cause.

Without a sample image I don't think I could be definitive in what may or may not work.

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