Quote Reference Post: https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/79919.page#post_box_328688 .
The Snapshots.zip posted earlier show the PD17 Media Library video snapshot button captures were the poorest when compared to those of PhD10 and VLC. The square pixels appear to be double in size indicating it is 1920 x 1080 scaled up to 3840 x 2160. There is a loss in resolution.

Conducted tests using PowerDirector previous versions 12 and 14, PhotoDirector 10, and VLC. Surprise! PD17 Freeze Frame are indeed full resolution unlike that found in the PD17 Media Library using the snapshot button. See the attached marked up screenshot for the comparison.

The UHD video used in this comparison is “4K Chimei inn (60mbps)” from this website: https://4ksamples.com/4k-chimei-inn-60mbps/ . This is an avc encoded video that works with the earlier versions of PD. Screenshots were taken at 38 sec. !6 frames in the video on each software.
Software----Size--------How Taken
PD12………9.15 MB….….Timeline Snapshot button
PD14………9.15 MB……..Timeline Snapshot button
PD17………9.15 MB……..Timeline Freeze Frame
PD17………3.77 MB………Media Library Snapshot button….(The Worst)
PhD10…….7.35 MB………Snapshot button
VLC…………6.66 MB…..….Snapshot
It is interesting that the PD12, Pd14, and the PD17 Freeze Frame captures are all the same file size of 9.15 MB. The comparison show that a PD17 user does not have to go elsewhere to obtain good 4k snapshots from videos.

. At times I use a second or more still frame and then start motion (4K). Have to use VLC for the still or the difference will show. And my PD14 is not as bad as 17.

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Too bad CL didn't take the initiative and correct, many issues when they deployed in PD15 and plenty of time since then to do right for such a basic feature. Ironically what tomasc claims keeps a PD17 user going elsewhere to obtain good 4k snapshots from videos, is in fact according to CL a bug! Read PDM's exact words here: https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/15/50730.page
"The fact that 4K snapshots are still available in Freeze Frame is a "bug" (it wasn't changed as well). RD and PM are currently discussing revisiting this feature because of this discussion."

2 1/2 years latter after CL indicated they would revisit the issue, users still left with no improvements.

Jeff

Agreed Jeff!

It's a bit concerning to think of thew amount of time I (& many others) have spent scratching around comparing snapshot quality in PDR. Over the past few days, I've been doing it again & it's driving me batty.

I agree with tomasc's statement that the image quality of Freeze Frame snapshots in PDR17 is far superior to Media Library snapshots when you're working with UHD/4K video. The samples I've gathered recently show that this has been the case since PDR14. PDR13''s UHD snapshots are of consistent quality, whether taken from Media Library, Timeline or Freeze Frame.

Using the UHD video tomasc linked above, here are 100% crop comparison snapshots from media library & timeline from PDR13-17:

JPG Comparison PNG Comparison

I've come across a few other observations too. With JPG snapshots, the higher the resolution of the source video the greater the compression ratio is!



I didn't include the data from Adobe Lightroom in the table above, but I can state with confidence that both PhD & Lr give you the best quality JPG snapshots, by a significant margin.

If you're interested, I've uploaded all the snapshots I used for comparison, from 1080p - 2.5K - UHD - 8K, in both JPG & PNG. Each zip file includes a side-by-side comparison of 100% crops. View at 100% for best comparison.

1920x1080

2560x1440

3840x2160

8192x4096

That's it for now. Like Jeff, I'd be very happy if the CL developers could give this issue some serious attention, so that users aren't forced to "go off-shore" chasing good quality snapshots.

Cheers - Tony
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Thank you Tony for your time and hard work in making these snapshots. It looks like that you have a late nvidia card installed that allows you to edit 8k video clips. It is difficult for me to see the difference on some of the snapshots as I do not have a 4k monitor. Will find the time to magnify viewing of each image. Did not know that the poor image quality from the media library started with PD14. We received incorrect information from CL that the starting with PD15 media library was the only way to get good quality.

No user reported and supplied the snapshots showing these results as evidence in the past in the forums. If they did one us us would have investigated it.

So the freeze frame feature is better than taking a regular screen shot?

Hi Mouhamad -

Yes. In PDR17, if you using anything greater than 1080p clips, it's way better than doing a media library snapshot... and way way better than doing a timeline snapshot.

All -

For completeness, I did a JPG & PNG comparison of Media Library, Timeline & Freeze Frame snapshots from PDR13 to PDR17. It doesn't really show anything that hasn't been posted above... except that in PDR13 & 14, the quality of Timeline & Freeze Frame snapshots is roughly the same.

JPG Comparison

PNG Comparison

Cheers - Tony
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Thank you for filling in the missing information on Timeline Snapshots that 4k(uhd) resolution are not available in recent versions of PowerDirector, being only 1920 x 1080. This completeness will help any new users to read and understand this thread. It will help users on what to expect and how to achieve it!