I have on occasion had to get reference from dvd movies.Rather that simply shoot such shots with my digital camera with the movie on hold , is there a way of doing screenshots? I've tried the ordinary way,by hitting the screenshot button ,saving the image & going to Photoshop to convert it into a jpeg,but whenever I attempt to print it it I get a solid black rectangle.Also I run into problems if I try to crop it.Is there an easy way that I am somehow overloking?
Many thanks!
Dietz

Have you tried with Fraps?

Hi James, the best way is using your Windows Media Player to play the DVD. Pause the movie where you want to take the still image from (actually, you don't even need to pause, it just helps you to identify what it's going to look like ) and then hit Control-I on your keyboard. It will pop-up a window asking you where you want to save the screenshot. It takes a screenshot directly from the movie frame only so you will end up with the perfect screen capture, no need for cropping even .



MrVH

Fraps seems to work like a charm...many thanks!

quote:

Originally posted by MrVH:
... Windows Media Player to play the DVD. Pause the movie ... then hit Control-I on your keyboard. It will pop-up a window asking you where you want to save the screenshot.

Is this option possibly not available with Windows MP in VISTA? The Cntrl-I procedure doesn't work for me.

quote:

Originally posted by jamesdietz:
Fraps seems to work like a charm...many thanks!

Same question: Fraps does not capture a frame from my playing video/DVD in WMP? Am I doing soemthing wrong...or is it a VISTA anomaly?

Umm... not sure. I'll have to try on my Vista laptop before I answer.


MrVH

Playing around with screen capture as well and this is what I found;

The older DVD's I presume is not so well protected for copying. For them it is very convenient to do screen capture is Virtual Dub mpeg-2 version as well as Vegas movie studio.

Some videos are better protected (eg Band of Brothers) and I was unable to upload their vob video files to Virtual dub or Vegas. WMP did load some of them but had problems to do screen capture with fraps or the PrtSc function.

I however found the VLC media player to read all the DVD's and it has a nice "snapshot" function that worked fine. Just a bit difficult to pause at a specific point to do the screenshot.

quote:

Originally posted by biltongbru:
...The older DVD's...not so well protected for copying. For them it is very convenient to do screen capture is Virtual Dub mpeg-2 version...
Some videos are better protected (eg Band of Brothers) and I was unable to upload their vob video files to Virtual dub or Vegas...

Oddly enough, I have complete success with ripping VOB files from the Band of Brothers DVDs (using DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0)....then I open the VOB file in VDub 1.8.6 and export selected frames as "image sequence"(individual frames) in Jpeg or BMP format.
I was hoping that it would be much simpler to just play the DVD and capture a 'screenshot' from WMP as seems possible for others.

Of course, using VDub I can also convert and modify/filter the VOB's into AVI video and later, if desired, convert in Windows MovieMaker to WMV format.

BTW, Biltongbru, for the "Brothers-in-Arms" FPS Game, I substituted a Band of Bro's video clip for the default UBI Logo opening video....see below for a crude filefront version; the *.bnk "Bink" format version required for BIA is much better resolution:
http://files.filefront.com/DemoM1ClipIntrowmv/;12276247;/fileinfo.html

Downloaded the decrypter and also the AC3ACM codec for audio and now I have success with VirtualDub and Band of Brothers...Thanks Doolittle for the advice!!
Your clip is great; one of the core moments of the series...