I know any capture is better than nothing (unless it's very bad), but sometimes I get tired of seeing a lot of low to mediocre quality images added to this site, why does hardly anyone take captures from DVDs? Surely a lot of people have DVD drives on their computers by now, since computer games are now written on DVDs, and taking captures is very easy to do if you have a program like PowerDVD. And you don't just have to buy DVDs (although many of them are getting very cheap nowadays, less than the price of a film magazine or cinema ticket, at least in the UK), you can rent them from online rental services. I think the USA has ones like Netflix and probably Blockbuster, but surely other countries have them as well?

Sorry to moan, I don't mean to cricitize anyone or be ungrateful, I just wanted to get something off my chest I know antp doesn't like it when I say things like this.

I think in some cases, it's all a person has to work with, and no one else has stepped up. I know for instance, there's a TV movie I want to do, but it's not available on DVD at all and only available on a VHS that's very hard to find. So if I ever get my hands on it, it won't be up to my usual quality and will likely even affect what I can use.

Mine all come from the best copies I can find and I rent a lot from Netflix. Unfortunately, as was the case with the "Lassie" TV series, sometimes even the DVD version isn't very good either.

You tend to do that a lot (just kidding ... )


The only bad quality movie I have uploaded would be this one:
http://imcdb.org/movie.php?id=758730

It turned out that it was a bootleg DVD copy, and not very good quality.
I bought it from some guy who "said" he got it for his son, but the son didn’t want it.
Thinking nothing of it at the time I said sure and paid him $5.00 for it.

I especially don't like it when people take captures by taking pictures of their TV with a digital camera. It looks so sloppy

Yes those look really bad, but it is still better than nothing.
I personally get many movies as divx/avi, the quality is not like a DVD but again why not add that rather than not having the movie listed?
For movies for which there is a real interest (vehicle action, ...) I try to get a better quality, e.g. Fast & Furious 4 or Largo Winch that I added in HD recently.

No, that's fine. It's a fair comment.



Personally I'd rather people just not bother than do that


TV Boy, I know what you're saying but I was really talking about more recent mainstream films, which are all available on good quality DVDs. Although I have used a few DVDs which were just ones you get free with newspapers (a fairly basic transfer and no chapter selection).

Well, I really was joking (more like hoping you would say sometime in return with a bit of humor)

Oh, and don’t forget YouTube. I and others have used it to get hard-to-find captures.
Though it is best when the quality enhancement is available. Still better than taking a photo of a TV.
I only use YouTube as a "last resort" ...

I guess if that's the way you choose to watch movies, then yes, why not. But I think it's a pity more of us don't use DVDs for our captures (of course you have to wait to for the DVD to come out). Do you go to the cinema much, Antoine?

I personally find it a bit silly when people use downloads where the quality is not as great, especially when adding the "bigger" movies. I mean usually the captures are replaced anyways and we're left with a bunch of thumbnails that aren't so great. No offense intended to those who do this, but I don't see the need to be in such a hurry in these cases.

Not "much", something like once every 2 or 3 months.



Yes, for such movies it is annoying. It is not like less-known movies which may never be on the site else, and for which it is better than nothing.
But for "big movies" (blockbusters, as they're called here, I guess this term is used in US too) it is still useful to post main movie cars, else we would got lots of people submitting/commenting these anyway. And it is IMCDb's role to provide people info. We can't wait for DVD release before putting at least main cars.
But I fully agree about extra thumbnails: these are useless if bad quality. Same for background cars.
It is a much harder work to replace car pictures than put new cars pictures (you have to be careful to make same shots, not miss a background car, then when replacing them see which ones are already there).
That's the reason why I still haven't replaced of "Quantum of Solace" despite I have the movie in HD.
Luckily for Fast & Furious 4 I could post pictures first There were only the few main cars, I was surprised that for such movie we didn't get more pics

I definitely agree that if the quality is sub par its best to leave it til later when someone can provide high quality pics especially if its having to be captured by photo from a tv.
With my recent Transformers contrib in the forum, if the quality i had found had been crap i would have just left it until the official dvds/blurays came out
But the quality i found was exceptionally good so i thought sooner rather than later could apply this time.

Are you talking about when pictures from previews/trailers are posted, or when a vehicle is added without a picture? In this case I can understand. It's only meant to be a temporary solution and a perfect example of this is Transformers 2. We all know that it will be completely added at some point in the future given it's popularity and car theme. So in cases like these I can understand.

I did not think to these examples (but indeed pics from trailer & main vehicles without pics are ok), I was rather thinking to low quality images taken from divx files made with videocamera in movie theatre. Such low quality images for background cars & very minor role cars are more annoying to replace after fews months by better pics.

Yes, the upload of HSM3 (by me) I only used that low quality copy because I knew knowone else would be bothered to actually watch and enjoy the film... ;0

Out of curiosity marioman, it wasn't possible for you to get ahold of a good quality copy?

No, sister got that one from mums friend, and didn't end up getting a good one. I hope it doesn't matter. Also, on another note, I need a better playing program that WMP. what should I get. I want to be lazy and just press capture. Instead of pausing, Prt Scr'ing, pasteing in paint, cropping, saving, repeat. So, ideas on free download ones that don't give virus's and arn't trail ones?

To be lazy and just press capture, VLC is the best to get.
Jsut remember to make sure you set where you want the captured photos to go.

I prefer MPC (Media Player Classic) which works better for frame-by-frame playing, to find the best shot of a car in some action scenes.
Though that latest versions of VLC allow that too, I think.

Where is the best to download? thanks.

MPC was replaced by MPC-HC: http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/
and for VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/