Yes, but the solution is so idiotic, that you will sit and cry.
Don't select the clip in the timeline. Select the clip in the media library. The result is the same, the video appears in the preview window. Now the difference:
If you select the clip in the timeline: snapshot is 1920x1080
If you select the clip in the media library: snapshot is of clip resolution.

Why? I really don't know.

Hatti. Win 10 64, i7-4790k, 32GB Ram, 256 GB SSD, SATA 2TB, SATA 4TB, NVidia GTX1080 8GB, LG 34" 4K Wide, AOC 24" 1080

Quote Yes, but the solution is so idiotic, that you will sit and cry.
Don't select the clip in the timeline. Select the clip in the media library. The result is the same, the video appears in the preview window. Now the difference:
If you select the clip in the timeline: snapshot is 1920x1080
If you select the clip in the media library: snapshot is of clip resolution.

Why? I really don't know.

Hatti.

Thank you very much for the quick reply ! That worked.

I noticed the resulting JPEG even in 4K is highly compressed - only about 600KB.
I downloaded VLC and it extracted some PNG frames that are lossless and were 7MB each.
Both look good on my 30" 4K screen and are probably good enough to print around that size. MSI X99A Raider
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2 x LG 32UD59-B 32" 4K
Asus PB238 23" HD (portrait)

Hi Julien Pierre -

Apples & oranges... comparing a JPG to PNG. Still, what used to be an excellent feature in PDR is now a bit of a pain.

VLC Player does do excellent snapshots. PDR can too. In the timeline, with the timeline marker where you want, right click > Edit video/image > Freeze Frame will give you a full resolution snapshot.

Snapshot from UHD video (.png format)
VLC - 16.1MB
PDR Freeze Frame - 16.2MB
PDR Media Library - 5.98MB (??? go figure)

Snapshot from UHD video (.jpg format)
VLC - 2.11MB
PDR Freeze Frame - 708KB
PDR Media Library - 671KB

Clearly PDR uses maximum compression for .JPGs!

Cheers - Tony
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Quote Hi Julien Pierre -

Apples & oranges... comparing a JPG to PNG. Still, what used to be an excellent feature in PDR is now a bit of a pain.

VLC Player does do excellent snapshots. PDR can too. In the timeline, with the timeline marker where you want, right click > Edit video/image > Freeze Frame will give you a full resolution snapshot.

Snapshot from UHD video (.png format)
VLC - 16.1MB
PDR Freeze Frame - 16.2MB
PDR Media Library - 5.98MB (??? go figure)

Snapshot from UHD video (.jpg format)
VLC - 2.11MB
PDR Freeze Frame - 708KB
PDR Media Library - 671KB

Clearly PDR uses maximum compression for .JPGs!

Cheers - Tony

Thanks, that was helpful ! But it's a lot of steps to do this in the timeline. And it inserts an unwanted object on the track, which then needs to be deleted subsequently (actually, just hitting CTRL-Z for undo).

As far as the difference in size between "freeze frame" and "media library" in PDR, it is because the former is at full resolution (4K) and the later is HD only. That really makes no sense. I can understand that as an option, but not the default. And there should be a way to get a full resolution snapshot in both the timeline and media library. I hope Cyberlink is listening. Did this work at some point and get broken ?

Re: the difference in size for PNGs between PDR and VLC,, that's much less clear. PNG is supposed to be lossless,. Were you encoding the exact same frame ? Even if so, there is often more than one way to encode the same data in any given compression format. It is possible that PDR is just more efficient at compressing than VLC. A good test would be to export both of them to uncompressed BMP from the same application (say, Windows Paint), and then compare the output BMP files. That would require that no meta-data gets encoded into each BMP, though, like timestamps, names, etc.

And yes, PDR really uses very high compression on the JPEG also. But that's less relevant now that I found the preference to turn on JPG. For purpose of doing prints, I will be using PNG. It is really amazing what a 4K camera can do. OTOH my 17 minute cat video took 11GB. But there are so many expressions I can extract and print, it is just amazing. Like having a 30fps 8 MP camera..
I just need to up the shutter speed when shooting, as there was a lot of motion blur on many frames, which I am guessing is not just due to compression. This will have to be compensated by larger aperture and/or higher ISO. Not sure how to find what the shutter speed was in my video and how to find out in the MP4 file. Maybe it was 1/30th to match FPS in the video. MSI X99A Raider
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6 x 1 TB Samsung 860 SSD (striped)

2 x LG 32UD59-B 32" 4K
Asus PB238 23" HD (portrait)

Hi Julien Pierre -

Quote: As far as the difference in size between "freeze frame" and "media library" in PDR, it is because the former is at full resolution (4K) and the later is HD only

That's not the case - both Freeze Frame & Media Library snapshots are full resolution, in this case 3840x2160.

I had a bit of a dig into JPG compression ratios, which explains the very low file sizes. I used JPEGsnoop to analyse various JPG snapshots.



BTW - your Pana GX85 uses a compression ratio of ~11.46:1

Anyway, aside from the issue with timeline snapshots, it's eneough to convince you NOT to set file preferences to JPG snapshots in PDR.

Cheers - Tony
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Quote Hi Julien Pierre -

Quote: As far as the difference in size between "freeze frame" and "media library" in PDR, it is because the former is at full resolution (4K) and the later is HD only

That's not the case - both Freeze Frame & Media Library snapshots are full resolution, in this case 3840x2160.

Oops - you are right, snapshots from timeline are the ones in HD only, who knows why ?

I had a bit of a dig into JPG compression ratios, which explains the very low file sizes. I used JPEGsnoop to analyse various JPG snapshots.



BTW - your Pana GX85 uses a compression ratio of ~11.46:1

Anyway, aside from the issue with timeline snapshots, it's eneough to convince you NOT to set file preferences to JPG snapshots in PDR.

Absolutely. I hadn't realized that there was an option for taking the snapshots in PNG instead of JPG. I have that on now.

However, I have had problems where PDR actually is recording the following frame when using "freeze frame", and not the frame currently selected. And it is sufficiently different given it was a cat moving, that the snapshot captured ends up being blurred, and not the intended one. This is a really annoying bug.

As far as the file size, capturing the identical frame in both PDR freeze frame (by going back one frame) and in VLC, both in PNG, I got different results resterday. The 4K PNG from PDR was 11MB. And the 4K PNG from VLC was 9MB.
But the one from VLC looked noticeably sharper. The snapshot from PDR was not good enough quality to print in this case. I was using a zoom lens at the long end and in low light conditions.
The snapshot from VLC was sharper and good enough to print. Didn't look at great enlarged at 10x17" (on 10x20" cut of roll paper) though. I don't think I will end up framing that one, but it will go in one my large size photo albums.

I have since been told that the 4K photo mode on the camera generates MP4 at 4:3 aspect ratio, ie. using the full sensor area, and the clips are 3328x2496, which is over 8 MP, but not traditional 4K or UHD. Whereas doing a movie recording in 4K, the camera captures frames in 16:9 at 3840x2160, but the top and bottom parts of the image are cropped.
4:3 paper and frames is much easier to find than 16:9. At least there is 8.5x11 which is close to 4:3 and universally available.
16:9 snapshots are a pain to print and even more pain to mat and frame.

I'm now finding myself longing for the 6K photo mode of the GH5 But at the same time, I wanted the higher ISO of the GH5s. And I like the built-in flash on my GX85 also, and its compact size. Why can't all the features be in a single body ? I'm guessing they can't shrink the electronics just enough yet. GH5 or GH5s are not in my budget yet anyway, let alone both.

GH5/GH5s also have a 400 Mbit recording mode in 10-bit color/4:2:2, which would be even more suitable for frame captures to do prints, in that there would be enough headroom to adjust the picture before printing.
I'm wondering if the codec would work with PowerDirector or not.

Google search shows that PD16 cannot yet ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2smRf3C-wx8

Hope that will change in PD17. MSI X99A Raider
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6 x 1 TB Samsung 860 SSD (striped)

2 x LG 32UD59-B 32" 4K
Asus PB238 23" HD (portrait)

Looks like the even "Free frame" feature does not work in certain cases, and still produces 1080p snapshots.
Case in point. I shot some 3:4 vertical video with my DMC-GX85 at 2496x3328 resolution . This is from the "4K photo" mode, so the only purpose is to extract frames.

PowerDirector does not recognize the clip as vertical, so it shows it as 4:3 3328x2496 .
I set my project to 9:16, which is the only vertical format that PD supports.
Pasted the clip on track 1, set "crop and zoom" to 270 degrees (why not 90 ? mystery) and zoomed enough to avoid black bars on the sides - I still had some black bars on top and bottom, unfortunately.

Got to the right frame, and then did edit/freeze frame . I got a 1080x1920 snapshot.
I guess the lack of 3:4 support in PD is really problematic here. But also, the fact that the clip is not recognized as vertical is a problem.

The other problem is the dual preview.
I have 3 monitors. Two are 16:9 4K .
One is in portrait mode to the right and 1080p - ie 1080x1920.
Dual Preview always shows the preview on the portrait monitor, which is wrong 90% of the time - though not for this project.
PD really needs to support setups with more than 2 monitors, and let you select the secondary monitor for preview. I have complaind about this for years, and it has never gotten fixed MSI X99A Raider
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6 x 1 TB Samsung 860 SSD (striped)

2 x LG 32UD59-B 32" 4K
Asus PB238 23" HD (portrait)

Quote Looks like the even "Free frame" feature does not work in certain cases, and still produces 1080p snapshots.
Case in point. I shot some 3:4 vertical video with my DMC-GX85 at 2496x3328 resolution . This is from the "4K photo" mode, so the only purpose is to extract frames.

PowerDirector does not recognize the clip as vertical, so it shows it as 4:3 3328x2496 .
I set my project to 9:16, which is the only vertical format that PD supports.
Pasted the clip on track 1, set "crop and zoom" to 270 degrees (why not 90 ? mystery) and zoomed enough to avoid black bars on the sides - I still had some black bars on top and bottom, unfortunately.

Got to the right frame, and then did edit/freeze frame . I got a 1080x1920 snapshot.
I guess the lack of 3:4 support in PD is really problematic here. But also, the fact that the clip is not recognized as vertical is a problem.

The other problem is the dual preview.
I have 3 monitors. Two are 16:9 4K .
One is in portrait mode to the right and 1080p - ie 1080x1920.
Dual Preview always shows the preview on the portrait monitor, which is wrong 90% of the time - though not for this project.
PD really needs to support setups with more than 2 monitors, and let you select the secondary monitor for preview. I have complaind about this for years, and it has never gotten fixed

Unfortunately, VLC player has similar problems with vertical footage, though not quite as bad.
By going into tools/effects and filters/video effects/geometry, I can play back the clip vertically.
However, at that point; I have black bars on all 4 sides. And if I take a snapshot; it is 3348x2496, ie. horizontal format. Better than PowerDirector, but still quite wrong. And of course there is no "back" frame function in VLC which makes it very hard to get the right frame.. Sigh. Guess one is supposed to use the tiny camera screen to save the snapshot for 4K photos... MSI X99A Raider
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2 x 480 GB Sandisk Ultra II SSD (striped)
6 x 1 TB Samsung 860 SSD (striped)

2 x LG 32UD59-B 32" 4K
Asus PB238 23" HD (portrait)

Quote
Unfortunately, VLC player has similar problems with vertical footage, though not quite as bad.
By going into tools/effects and filters/video effects/geometry, I can play back the clip vertically.
However, at that point; I have black bars on all 4 sides. And if I take a snapshot; it is 3348x2496, ie. horizontal format. Better than PowerDirector, but still quite wrong. And of course there is no "back" frame function in VLC which makes it very hard to get the right frame.. Sigh. Guess one is supposed to use the tiny camera screen to save the snapshot for 4K photos...

Looks like Photofunstudio, which came with the camera, does what's intended (well, almost).
After copying the video to the SDD (opening directly on the SD card is not allowed)I, went to edit/edit video / still image capture.
I hit the rotate button. I can then playback the video, get to the right frame, and record it.
This outputs a 4:3 JPEG about 2MB in size at 3348x2496 . Still 4:3 format. But it's at full resolution, with no black bars, at least.
And should be suitable for photo editing or printing, unlike what comes out of PowerDirector or VLC in this case.

Wish I could use PowerDirector for this instead. I guess this may be the the only feature I will ever use Photofunstudio for. MSI X99A Raider
Intel i7-5820k @ 4.4 GHz
32GB DDR4 RAM
Gigabyte nVidia GTX 960 4GB
480 GB Patriot Ignite SSD (boot)
2 x 480 GB Sandisk Ultra II SSD (striped)
6 x 1 TB Samsung 860 SSD (striped)

2 x LG 32UD59-B 32" 4K
Asus PB238 23" HD (portrait)