I am preparing images for a publication, I am not a tech-whiz and it is getting pretty desperate, please help! The issue is getting stills from dvds (cat on a hot tin roof, saturday night fever and citizen kane). The highest res I can get with vlc software is 720×576 which is not high enough to get an adequate dpi for even the modest size figures such as you might get in a ‘normal’ size book with illustrations.

At the moment I am not considering getting blu-ray technology or approaching the film studios for official images. As I understand it a still image can be published under fair use and so is free, which is essential at this moment.

very many thanks in advance!

720×576 is the resolution for 720p (PAL) and is native for DVD. The only way to get higher resolution is from Blueray, or search the internet for higher resolution images.

that /|\

you could use some image editing software to up-scale the image, but that’s just a bodge by making up pixels.

As I understand it a still image can be published under fair use and so is free, which is essential at this moment.

As I understand is not the same as yes you can… Probably best to check first then find someone with a blue ray player on their pc.

Even then Blueray is only 1920×1080.

Try google images search and limit only to high res images?

As I understand it a still image can be published under fair use and so is free

whats the publication? are you sure it’s ‘fair use’?

very many thanks guys!

Gosh, it is a small production academic text. I was assured it would be OK but will double check. I obviously will properly cite the films in the image list.

If the publishing (the paper is to be published, right?) organisation has a licence, it is definitely not “fair use”.

edit – more information on the Law here: http://www.cla.co.uk/apply/do_i_need_a_licence

Rachel

My understanding was that a reproduced still of a film does not constitute ‘the work’, however you are not allowed to take screen shots because the dvd itself is copy-protected and you aren’t allowed to break it. This latter part is clear, however, I would like to know what the deal was regarding the former bit.

https://twitter.com/wittertainment
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lvdrj
A tweet or a nice email to these 2 will probably get you a decent response on where to get things from and some legality – you might have to listen to the show to get your answer though