Downloads Beta

Ever wanted to capture still images from an especially good CD/DVD slideshow? It's actually pretty easy. Fire up the free KM Player, Media Player Classic, or something similar. Then you can capture the stills (hit F5 in MPC or CTRL+A in KMP) and edit them in your favorite editor. I was pretty enthusiastic when I heard about about Topaz Moment, a program that promises to not only capture but optimize your stills for resolution, clarity, and color. But then I tested it.

Before I go any further, I should say that Topaz Moment actually does a pretty good job of optimizing captures. No better than I can do with MPC and Photoshop, but with a bit less hassle. But my enthusiasm for the program was tempered quite a bit by the fact that it relies on Media Player Classic (legally, under the GNU license) for a large part of its functionality, adding only the automatic photo optimization features.

Alas, the resulting combination is not as pain-free as it should be. First off, MPC's transport controls are neither intuitive nor very effective. What appears to be a rewind button actually decreases playback speed and there's no way to easily skip forward or back a few seconds. The latter is a real problem because the source material isn't paused for Topaz Moment's post-capture processing. I often found that the video had moved past a scene I wanted to capture by the time the processing of the previous capture was finished. All in all, I found the process of capturing multiple stills far more clumsy that I'd hoped.

--Jon L. Jacobi