Getting screenshot stills from dvd's?

[lionheart]

I feel silly asking for help, but if anyone could help me with finding a way to capture screenshots from my dvd's, I'd owe you one. I'm trying to redo my desktop to fit with my current mood, along with making a few alternate avatars, and every time I try to capture a scene, it doesn't work...

[ChristianKitsune]

there is a button on most keyboards called "Print Screen" its usually in the upper right hand corner of your keyboard with three other buttsons "Scroll Lock and Pause/Break"

Press the button whenever you see a scene you like, and it will sort of make the screan freeze for a second. then you can copy and paste whatever you wanted onto a program like paint or photoshop...

hope that helps

[Tenshi no Ai]

there is a button on most keyboards called "Print Screen" its usually in the upper right hand corner of your keyboard with three other buttsons "Scroll Lock and Pause/Break"

Press the button whenever you see a scene you like, and it will sort of make the screan freeze for a second. then you can copy and paste whatever you wanted onto a program like paint or photoshop...

hope that helps

It doesn't work though :/ You see, if it's something from a media, when you paste it and try to crop it, it's as if the screen is still there and won't budge. A little hard to explain unless you've tried it yourself.

As for myself, I THINK I was able to do it once before but unfortunately, I have been unsuccessful ever since (that is, if I remember correctly that I did do it that one time).

[Cognitive Gear]

Before you try the following, a disclaimer: I do not take responsibility if you accidentally screw something up along the way. I also do not condone the copying of copyrighted materials. That said:

You can try turning off hardware acceleration. If you are using windows XP, you can find the options under:

Right Click on Desktop>Properties>Settings>Advanced>Troubleshoot

Set Hardware Acceleration to "None"

Then, in Windows Media player:

Tools>Options>Performance

Set hardware acceleration to "none". Then use "Print Screen" to take a screenshot.

I don't remember if this works for DVDs, but it does work for other video files on your computer. Please note that by completely disabling hardware acceleration, your computer will run very slowly when playing videos. Make sure that you set everything back to "Full" when you are done.

[Radical Dreamer]

Before you try the following, a disclaimer: I do not take responsibility if you accidentally screw something up along the way. I also do not condone the copying of copyrighted materials. That said:

You can try turning off hardware acceleration. If you are using windows XP, you can find the options under:

Right Click on Desktop>Properties>Settings>Advanced>Troubleshoot

Set Hardware Acceleration to "None"

Then, in Windows Media player:

Tools>Options>Performance

Set hardware acceleration to "none". Then use "Print Screen" to take a screenshot.

I don't remember if this works for DVDs, but it does work for other video files on your computer. Please note that by completely disabling hardware acceleration, your computer will run very slowly when playing videos. Make sure that you set everything back to "Full" when you are done.

That's what I did when I was trying to take a screenshot. It works well enough, but yeah, it makes the computer run slowly. XD You may want to pause it at the place where you want to take the shot and then fiddle around with the hardware acceleration, instead of having to find the right place in the video, like I did the first time I tried this method. XD

[lionheart]

Thanks for the help everyone!

Window's media player keeps giving me error messages about my video card--even though I can play dvd's just fine with media player classic--and on the family computer all I've gotten is a black screen when I've changed the acceleration settings. But at least now I know that there's not a magic "capture screenshot" button that I've been missing out on for dvd's.

[MyrrhLynn]

Well actually some programs do have "Capture Screenshot" buttons. (Power DVD would be an example of this). Although they usually take tiny crappy screenshots so you aren't missing much.

Sometimes all you have to do is turn off hardware acceleration in your player and it will work, that is what I do to get screenshots from non DVD video clips (since it's not such a safe idea to do it to your whole computer). You could also try to Google this topic as I think there are several discussions on this very topic on many "geeky" forums.