Capturing Stills from DVD

[shmendrapolk]

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but it didn't fit any of the categories.

I'm trying to capture still shots from a DVD I'm playing in my computer. I've tried both the keyboard's (Win XP) printscreen button & also Paint Shop Pro's screen capture feature. Although it looks as if it works at first, the image captured from the DVD is actually just a replica of the DVD movie window. So when I close the DVD, the image goes black. I don't really understand why it works this way. Does anyone know a way around this?

Thanks!

[jggimi]

Hello, and welcome to the forum.

Video Overlay areas, used for video performance, are not "capturable."

If your current software DVD player doesn't have an image capture capability, you might try using Media Player Classic (Link to NT/2K/XP version here (http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Players/mpc2kxp6482.zip)) as it has a File...Save Image command.

[shmendrapolk]

Thanks!

[johnnieboy]

problem with MPC is that a 16:9 saved image gets squashed up to a 4:3. How do I keep the aspect ratio on a saved image please

[lejudew]

Play your videos or DVD's using VLC, and it's capture option should do what you want. It is a free program.

[olyteddy]

You can also turn off acceleration. Power DVD I know has that on one of the set-up pages, or you can disable acceleration/overlay from the display page(s) in Window's DXDiag applet.

PS: You can also sometimes cheat by opening a second instance of your player program. Generally only the first instance will use overlay so the second one will printscreen fine.

[Benihana]

Or you can use VirtualDub to open the video file and then advance it to the frame you want and use print_screen. Works pretty well with me! :)