Please Help (general DVD question)

[mckracken]

so now that I have a DVD drive in my computer, i tried to grab a few frames from Pathfinder... needless to say, the normal method of doing a "Print Scrn" or off the wallpaper, and opening a new document in photoshop and CTRL-V hasnt worked so well. When I flatten the image and save it as jpg the desktop shows up, but inside the movieplayer window its turned completely black... what gives?

how can I save movie frames from a DVD?

I'll continue to try till i figure this out.

the VLC media Player has a snapshot icon, it makes a tiny thumbnail in the upper left hand corner however after a few seconds, it just fades away...

[Kaeos]

I have no idea if this will work or not...but I've had luck with

Ctrl + Alt + Print Scrn

You may want to paste that into photoshop and crop it because it will literally capture everything on the entire screen.

Good luck dude!

[mckracken]

nope... no good, the ctrl-alt-print scrn alone APPEARS to work... it APPEARS to capture the image... however since the image is bigger than the space it occupies, when you move the JPG around, the frame stays put (moving the document shows "around" the image but when you save it, its a black screen.

I'm also trying to figure out what the snapshot function does... it doesnt appear to work in the way it was intended and even in the prefs, I can chose a directory, but nothing goes there when I try the snapshot option.

[DarkJedi]

I believe you're talking about a frame capture software mckracken, right?

Something like DvdGo Pro software (http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/showsoftware_dvdgo_pro_432.html)?

[neglet]

I was trying to figure this out a couple weeks ago, so that I could capture a shot from my concrete break to send to my Grandma, but none of my video playing software had that option. The reason you can't use the Print Screen button is that DVDs are played with an overlay--that solid color screen that you get when you paste the image you capture.

So either you have to download software to capture images (there are quite a few programs, just google "capture image from dvd"), or turn off "hardware acceleration" to use the Print Screen function. This site (http://www.acasystems.com/en/screencapturepro/faqs01.htm) seems to have good instructions on how to do it--but I can't vouch for the site personally. And I don't know how turning off hardware acceleration might will affect your computer otherwise--I assume you can turn it back on when you're done with your screen capture and there aren't any long-term effects.

Of course, you could also search the help feature of your software, or Google "capture image from DVD" with the name of your video software, to find instructions if your software has that capability. Mine doesn't (my computer is four years old and the older version doesn't have it. Poop.), but if you have a new drive and software yours might.

[mckracken]

it pastes, but it is an overlay (thanks Neglet) and you cant capture the overlay, in fact you lose the image when you remove the DVD from the drive!

so more software eh? well that sucks... got more important things to do right now than that.

I can grab audio files though, that I use my AudioRack to capture and Cool Edit Pro or Audacity to edit wav's.

[omicron]

I use Intervideo's WinDVD player and it has a screen capture function that works great. I've used it several times for things. It should be a free download to, if not, head to HP's website, I know they use it as their default DVD software.