[HowTo] Making a Screen Capture (Screenshots of a Video)

Last edited by jholic on Sat Sep 30, 2006 1:30 am; edited 2 times in total

i'm trying to take an image snapshot of my favorite video files (avi, mpg, ogm) so that i can make a cd cover for myself. (don't worry, i have no intention of selling it or anything.)

i thought i could just do a PRINTSCREEN (windows screen capture / screen shot) and paste. but nope, after reading what i could find in google, i found out that dvd or video files cannot be captured by the printscreen function. just the black box comes up.

could anyone assist me? i tried checking on this site, and a search on google only came up with a LOT of screen capture programs. do i need a program? or is it possible to do a screen capture if i change a setting?

thanks in advance....

Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 8:56 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

u can use print screen if u turn off video acceleration in wmp...

(tools > options > performance > video acceleration - none)

Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 9:08 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

I used to do that whole windows media player thing but it doesn't work everytime. What you need to do is get BS player if you don't already have it. Then, press P, to cap the original picture or shift+p to capture the screen size you see. Or just right click on bs player and go to options>capture frame and you can do it from there. Easy right? Big Smile

Posted: Mon May 24, 2004 10:15 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

eh I just load the video up in VirtualDubMod and use its frame copy feature.

Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 7:44 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

yee-haw! bludawn, thanks for the excellent write-up. w00t

i read something about the video acceleration, but i couldn't find anywhere that said you could turn it off. i tried it and it worked.

vibius/Kai Lien: thanks for your input as well. appreciate the help.

Ruroshin: i also tried virtualdub, and it worked. question: should i use 'copy SOURCE file to clipboard' or 'copy OUTPUT file to clipboard'. i tried both, and it kinda looked the same to me. Neutral

thanks to you guys, i can start designing some cd covers. Big Smile

the difficulty was really about those older series that you can't find images or photos of.

Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 8:30 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

all you gotta do is turn off video acceleration on the settings in WMP. then print screen all you want!

Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 11:47 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Tue May 25, 2004 11:55 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

thanks, Ruroshin! Smile

Posted: Wed May 26, 2004 12:35 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0

where can u get virtualdub?

Posted: Wed May 26, 2004 4:58 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 4:25 pm Post subject: Screen captures Post Rating: 0

Ha! Screen captures!

Well, I can't seem to do it. :(

I'm on a PC, and no mater what player I use (WMP, RP, DivX, VLC...) I can't simply pause the picture, hit *control-print screen* and drop the image into Photoshop...why not?

So, how do YOU do it?

Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 4:33 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

what are you trying to screen capture?
AVI files? Mpeg files??

download BS Player it will let you do screen captures of almost anything.
all you do is press "P", and an automatically named screen capture will be
in the programs/webteh/Bsplayer folder (this is the default location when you install BSplayer).
If you get a black screen, you have to turn off something outlay in the Options>Video section. (not at my home pc, so i gotta double check).

good luck!

Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 7:32 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

You cannot make screen shots (or window shot) of these players because they use the overlay display technique. Either load the video into a tool which doesn't use overlay (e.g. VirtualDub) or use the screenshot feature that some players offer (e.g. Media Player Classic or BSPlayer). I use VirtualDub because the feature in MPC didn't worked for me last time.

thanks for the hint with BSPlayer. btw, this is what i get with it. Sad

Posted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 10:24 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0

if you search this section for "screen capture", you'll find my thread that i posted before.

the solution for my problem was simple. in your player, you need to turn OFF video acceleration. in wmp, i believe you go to options/performance, and turn video acc to none. then, just do a simple windows capture.

that should do it.

(the junk thing is that the capture will not be as great as if you had vid acc turned on. Crying

)