One For Chico......

[ToraToraTora]

Chris, I have downloaded footage from my security cameras the file is AVI, the cameras are HD but the video seems to be somewhat less than HD. I'm using windows media player. Is there a better viewer I could use? do you know of any image enhancing software? basically I'm trying to read a number plate from a car. Thanks.

[Togo]

Have a look here 3T. Perhaps best if you research it first, but comes up trumps everywhere that I have looked.

https://www.wondershare.net/ad/video-converter-ultimate/bing.html?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=BingvcwinUK&;msclkid=27d2a76b257110aeb941facf8be6c602&utm_term=avi%20to%20hd&utm_content=~flash

[Buenchico]

Almost anything is better than Windows Media Player!

However there's just one player that's consistently recommended here on AB, as well as in the technical press and on BBC technology programmes: it's the mighty VLC:
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.en-GB.html

If I was trying to read a numberplate from a video playing in VLC, the first thing I'd do would be to crop the top and bottom of the video, to effectively zoom into the required part of the image. (To do that, go to Tools > Effects and Filters. Select Video Effects > Crop. Guess at the number of pixels you want to remove from the top and bottom. (Try something like 100 or 200 to start with). As you enter your figures the cropping will occur on your screen. (You can do this with the video either running or paused; I'd probably pause it). Then click Close. Play the cropped video and when you think that the best chance of reading the number is coming up, press the Pause button. Then use the 'frame-by-frame advance' button to find a nice clear frame.

If you still can't quite make out the number there are further video effects in VLC which might possibly help but my own instinct would be to use the Windows Snipping Tool to capture the best available frame, save that as a jpeg file and then try playing with it (e.g. by using the 'Sharpen' function, or by increasing the contrast, in an image processor, such as Photoshop, GIMP or Irfanview).

[SlackAlice]

Buenchico beat me to it, second vote for VLC

[ToraToraTora]

thanks guys, I'll work on that, cheers