: Need to extract highest possible fidelity/detail of single frame from poor video, which tool to use? I have a poor quality video, but it's the only source for a particular image. It was taken

Posted in: #Color #DataExtraction #Video

I have a poor quality video, but it's the only source for a particular image. It was taken on a moving mobile phone, it's blurry, it's poor quality - it's honestly everything abhorrent to graphics professionals, but it's all I've got for this item.

What I need is to get the most faithful and detailed extraction of that frame I can. The problem is that by definition, I can't compare the proposed image to some "ideal version" to check how faithful it is. So I'm going to have to go by whatever tool's reputation I use.

As the best tool might depend on the video codec, this is the information I have from VLC:

H264-MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)
1280 x 720
frame rate 20.751022
Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV
Video (excluding audio) bitrate: 9987 kbps

So I guess I need the tool that gets the best result from such a file.

My criteria

My main criteria is detail faithfulness - so if the original includes subtle details or shadings, or a slight colour nuance in some area might hint at a detail, that's what I want to capture those as accurately as I can. The large scale colour faithfulness (ie same shade of blue is rendered as original scene even if more or less detailed) isn't so important as the nuances of shading and detail that the original video has captured and might reveal, not being lost, and extra granularity or colour "steps" not being introduced which reduce the exactness of detail in the original.

In other words, the overall colour balance is less crucial, it's really the detail of what the image shows, and the rendition/graduation of colour detail and variations, that matters.

Initial tool thoughts

I've got VLC and FFMPEG but I don't know how good they'll be, since their primary target is probably a user watching a movie. They aren't really designed for this, and the kind of detail I'm after would probably be harmed by any temporal processing whatsoever, so an ordinary media player is perhaps not best.

Another option might be a pure codec-conversion program (VirtualDub/FFMPEG in direct decode->recode mode rather than frame extraction mode) to convert the segment of video to totally uncompressed format, on the basis that this would ensure it's a pure codec-only action and wouldn't add any post-conversion processing other than mandated by the codec format, to produce a pixel-by-pixel version of each frame?

But I'm hoping there is a better tool for this, perhaps one designed to handle that specific codec or one which is more likely to be a good fit for the task.