Easy way to do video captures?

[SteelDraco]

So I had a strange problem come up today, and wondered if anybody had a good solution I might not have thought of.

I was trying to pull a screen capture from a video today for a wallpaper. I figured I'd just be able to pause the video, hit Print Screen (which, in Windows, copies your current view to the clipboard). I opened up Photoshop, hit paste, and... just a full black screen. I try it a couple of times, with different video players (Windows Media Player 9, Media Player Classic, and Winamp). Same result for all of 'em.

I looked around in MP9 and Media Player Classic for a Screen Capture command, but couldn't find anything. I looked for plugins to do screen captures, as well. I tried a few external programs, most of which were pretty poor in actual execution.

Does anyone have any recommendations, short of something like Premiere, of a good way to pull images from a video source? (DivX, in this case) I've solved the problem for now, but it's a silly, poor-quality, and way-too-complicated workaround for what should be a fairly easy problem.

 

[Thanee]

Are you using fullscreen mode or window mode when doing the screenshot?

Maybe you should (if possible) just use window mode and increase its size to match the full screen instead of actual fullscreen mode.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Redrobes]

...just a full black screen.

I know the answer to this one. Your video playback is using a rarely used bit of your video card which is called an overlay. The overlay is switched into the video area on the graphics card at the point of the video stream exiting the card so the computer is not aware of it as part of the desktop.

If you get the playback software then it should have settings for the renderer used and you will have it set to a hardware one such as DX. If you change that to a software one then it play back much slower but the desktop (GDI) will be in the loop and you see your screen shot when you print screen capture it.

WinAmp is a classic one for this as it makes use of the overlay when available. I guess they all are now then... You can usually tell that its doing it if you grab the border and move the window, the video lags and draws into non windowed desktop area for a split second until the framework catches up and tells the card clip region to move.

--update, just checked WinAmp has Preferences/Video/"Use Video Overlay" checkbox. Untick it, restart it, and try again. Once your done then tick it again as its faster to use an overlay if one is available.

 

[Wonko the Sane]

Isn't Alt-Print Screen the "copy to clipboard" command?

 

[Thanee]

I think it's Ctrl+PrintScreen

Bye
Thanee

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Does anyone have any recommendations, short of something like Premiere, of a good way to pull images from a video source? (DivX, in this case) I've solved the problem for now, but it's a silly, poor-quality, and way-too-complicated workaround for what should be a fairly easy problem.

If you have access to any simple video editing software (even Windows Movie Maker) you can probably grab a still. In the case of Windows Movie Maker, its under Tools>Take A Picture From Preview. Pause the video where you want it, and then select that option; you can save it whereever you want to.

That's assuming that you can open the file in the video editing program, which if its a DVD, might be a challenge of its own.

 

[SteelDraco]

If you get the playback software then it should have settings for the renderer used and you will have it set to a hardware one such as DX. If you change that to a software one then it play back much slower but the desktop (GDI) will be in the loop and you see your screen shot when you print screen capture it.

Aha! Yep, that did it. Hadn't thought about hardware rendering not updating the desktop as to its contents.

Thanks, all!