Able Video Snapshot

If you wish to save your favorite moments in home-made videos, movie and TV show collections, you may want to try a frame grabber software solution, such as Able Video Snapshot.

The UI (user interface) is minimalistic; this can be a good thing for users who just want to get the job done or a downside for the users who need a bit more control over the experience.

You get a Play button flanked by two more with arrow icons however there's no way to know how many frames they skip. The tooltips, “Left 2”, “Right 2”, “Left 1” and “Right 1”, don't quite shed any light on the matter. By clicking the buttons, you find out that “” can rewind and fast-forward, respectively, the timeline by 1 second. The other two are similar but they only jump in one-tenth of a second intervals.

On the plus side, you are able to set the speed of playback. This comes in handy when you are dealing with action scenes and want to capture frames back-to-back.

The minimalistic feel quickly fades away when you access the Editing window. Here you can flip the image vertically or horizontally, adjust color settings, apply effects and equalize the image with just one click.

A slight drawback is that the only way to get to these tools is by ticking the “Edit before saving” box in the Options window. If you are not paying attention, you might miss this feature altogether.

Delving deeper into the color adjustment settings, you find sliders to fine-tune contrast, gamma correction, hue and saturation. All of these combined allow you to tweak the image so you get the desired output.

Moving on to the effects section, you are greeted with a range of possible filters and alterations that can drastically change the look and feel of the source file. While less useful overall, it's a nice addition for users who want to make the image pop.

Although, in theory, an auto equalizer is great to have when you don't want to manually adjust the above-mentioned settings, the integrated one is generating unrealistic and distorted images.

If you are just looking for a program that allows you to capture stills of key moments in videos, you might want look elsewhere. But if you want the power to fine-tune the movie frames, then Able Video Snapshot is the application for you.