You can capture frames out of AVI movies and save them as image files.

Edward from Portageville, Missouri, wants to know how to pull stills from an AVI movie. We found a great free program called Avi2bmp that will pull out AVI stills and save them as bitmaps. You can download it from WebAttack.com.

Here's a more thorough explanation.

Get the video

If you're like Edward and you already have the AVI file, then it's no problem. If not, you might be interested to learn that you can capture streaming video into an AVI file.

Convert the video
You may have video in another format, so you'll need a program like ABC VideoRoll to convert your file into an AVI. Alternatively, if you have a high-end product like Adobe Premiere you can capture frames in that program and skip the following process.

Capture the frames
Using Avi2bmp:

  1. Open Avi2bmp.
  2. Press the Open button.
  3. Browse to the AVI file you want to capture a frame from.
  4. Set the rows and columns you wish to capture. This tells Avi2bmp how to lay out the frames in the BMP.
  5. Press the Save BMP button.
  6. Name the file and save.


Edit the frames
Now go to a program like Paint Shop Pro or Microsoft Paint.

  1. Open the file you saved. You should see frames from the AVI laid out in the number of rows and columns you suggested.
  2. Use the paint program to crop out the still you want.
  3. Delete the rest of the content.
  4. Save the result as a file.


Now you're free to do whatever you want with that file. Yay!

A cheap way to capture a still
Also, a cheap way to make a low quality screen capture is to pause the video in Windows MediaPlayer and press the Print Scrn button. This will capture your whole computer screen. You can then paste this into an image editing program like Microsoft Paint or Paint Shop Pro.