screen captures?

[bigpoppapumpg]

I want to capture a paused video screen shot and use it as my desktop.

I downloaded 2 free screen capture utilities as well as using the print screen button to capture the screen image to the clipboard then pasting to paint. when I use the utilties to save the screen shot as a jpeg, bmp or png... the file is completely black (no picture) It seems as if you should be able to capture a screen shot from an avi,divx,mpg etc... so how do you do this?

[benneke]

the normal printscreen-tric doesnt work on a movieclip, maybe if you search on google, you'll find a program that does the trick

[keijo]

I use BSPlayer: http://www.bsplayer.org

It has a nice "capture frame" feature, and the other features aren't bad either.

[Kero-chan]

Originally posted by benneke
the normal printscreen-tric doesnt work on a movieclip, maybe if you search on google, you'll find a program that does the trick

yes it does you just have to know the trick...

quite by accident i discovered this:

say you're playing a divX avi file, but it wont capture. simply first open any divX or mpeg file with windows media player. then pause the video and minimize it or keep it in the background or whatever.

then open the film you want to capture in a new media player( i use zoomplayer: http://inmatrix.hoyty.com/mirror/zplay280.exe ) but you can use wmp. pause it at whatever part and hit print screen. i forgot how to capture a window. shift+printscreen?

anyways, paste it in mspaint or photoshop or whatever and you're done

i dont konw anything really about the inards of video cards, but i guess maybe cards with dual head are using that as a frame buffer or something. so the video data is in memory or something and i guess print screen only captures what is not in memory or something... man, i dont know. all i know is my old video cards never had this problem, not until i got a gf4 and radeon...

let me know if any of this sounds possible or right or whatever

anyways, i know that trick works. the only thing i really have problems capturing is tv with the tv tuner on my AIW.

[posthumous_GRIN]

snagit is what I use, it may do the trick...

[bigpoppapumpg]

Originally posted by Kero-chan


yes it does you just have to know the trick...

quite by accident i discovered this:

say you're playing a divX avi file, but it wont capture. simply first open any divX or mpeg file with windows media player. then pause the video and minimize it or keep it in the background or whatever.

then open the film you want to capture in a new media player( i use zoomplayer: http://inmatrix.hoyty.com/mirror/zplay280.exe ) but you can use wmp. pause it at whatever part and hit print screen. i forgot how to capture a window. shift+printscreen?

anyways, paste it in mspaint or photoshop or whatever and you're done

i dont konw anything really about the inards of video cards, but i guess maybe cards with dual head are using that as a frame buffer or something. so the video data is in memory or something and i guess print screen only captures what is not in memory or something... man, i dont know. all i know is my old video cards never had this problem, not until i got a gf4 and radeon...

let me know if any of this sounds possible or right or whatever

anyways, i know that trick works. the only thing i really have problems capturing is tv with the tv tuner on my AIW.

Dude those directions don't make any sense. The film I want to capture, what the hell are you talking about??? Snagit didnt work either, picture shows up as all black... this can't be that rare a thing to do

[Kero-chan]

Originally posted by bigpoppapumpg



Dude those directions don't make any sense. The film I want to capture, what the hell are you talking about??? Snagit didnt work either, picture shows up as all black... this can't be that rare a thing to do

dude, wait, you mean you want to capture a picture from video?
if this is the case, i know my directions dont seem to make sense, but it works. i can prove it...
i just took a shot describing my method, but i need someone to host it...

in the screen shot, you will notice that the wmp is a blank screen, but the second video i loaded will capture perfectly fine with the print screen function.

[sourdaisy]

This is how you do it:

1) Play movie.
2) Pause movie at desired location.
3) Hit printscreen or alt+printscreen (depending on whether you want the whole desktop captured or just the movie player's window).
4) Paste into a photoediting program and modify as desired.

Or, are you trying to do something else?

[bigpoppapumpg]

I figured out what you mean, have 2 different instances of WMP open and on the second process you can use print screen to paste to paint and save to background... that does indeed work. how odd that you need 2 WMP's open for that to work.

[Kero-chan]

Originally posted by bigpoppapumpg
I figured out what you mean, have 2 different instances of WMP open and on the second process you can use print screen to paste to paint and save to background... that does indeed work. how odd that you need 2 WMP's open for that to work.

yes, that is indeed what i mean
i dont know if it works for dvd capture though...

[steppy76]

I think it has to do with the way windows "overlays" the video.

[bigpoppapumpg]

Originally posted by sourdaisy
This is how you do it:

1) Play movie.
2) Pause movie at desired location.
3) Hit printscreen or alt+printscreen (depending on whether you want the whole desktop captured or just the movie player's window).
4) Paste into a photoediting program and modify as desired.

Or, are you trying to do something else?

sounds great, but doesnt work... try it!

[sourdaisy]

Originally posted by bigpoppapumpg


sounds great, but doesnt work... try it!

Ok, now I see what you're saying. It's not so much that it's solid black, but that there is a "hole" in the screen where the movie should go. It looks black, but if you have the movie still open and you drag the screenshot around, the movie will display through the screenshot window! Crazy Windows. . . interesting thing is that you CAN take screenshots of media player visualizations. . .

sorry bigpop. . .I guess I don't know any other solutions except, use another OS (just kidding of course, though linux doesn't have that problem)

[Kero-chan]

Originally posted by sourdaisy


Ok, now I see what you're saying. It's not so much that it's solid black, but that there is a "hole" in the screen where the movie should go. It looks black, but if you have the movie still open and you drag the screenshot around, the movie will display through the screenshot window! Crazy Windows. . . interesting thing is that you CAN take screenshots of media player visualizations. . .

sorry bigpop. . .I guess I don't know any other solutions except, use another OS (just kidding of course, though linux doesn't have that problem)

we fixed the problem... scroll up and look at my solution


"you are a genius washu!"
"washu! you are the greatest!"

[bigpoppapumpg]

yes problem solved, but how bizzare windows is... and how odd that you have to jump through hoops just to get a damn screen picture of a media file. that media player that someone suggested does work, kinda... but it's somewhat buggy.