Monitor Screen Capture

[CSULB71]

What "screen capture" program will capture video that's being played on a media player like MPC or WMP? I've tried CamStudio, but after capture, the playback area where the video should be is blank (black), but the audio is there. Is it something simple like a missing codec, or won't any screen capture program do that?

[MOVIEGEEK]

In WMP go to Tools->Options->Performance and turn off acceleration.

[CSULB71]

Tried that, didn't help.

[poisondeathray]

in mpc , change the renderer to vmr9 renderless, instead of overlay mixer

you can also use fraps, but it's not free

[CSULB71]

Just tried the MPC setting change -- no dice. Also tried all the other settings on that screen -- no video (still had audio, tho).

[poisondeathray]

camtasia studio and fraps work here, camstudio doesn't seem to (it sort of works on my system, but the image is garbled)

[MOVIEGEEK]

Are you trying to playback the original capture or a new capture?
The original won't work no matter what, only after turning off acceleration and overlay mixer will capturing work.

[jagabo]

Cheap trick for this video overlay issue since only one player can use video overlay: start a media player playing a video you don't want to capture. It will get video overlay. If you try to capture this you'll get a black capture. Then start the player you want to capture from. It will write directly to the Desktop. You can capture this with any screen capture program. You can pause the first player once the second player has started.

[CSULB71]

MOVIEGEEK: I'm using MPC, and I can play the "source" FLV just fine. I changed the playback setting to "vmr9 renderless" as suggested by poisondeathray (there is no acceleration setting to change), try to capture the video region (area) using CamStudio, and then play back this "original capture" AVI in MPC and get no video, only audio. Tried several of the capture codecs in CamStudio: MS video 1, Xvid, DivX, even CamStudio Lossless codec -- none give me a captured video, even though they all work just fine capturing a web page.

jagabo: I thought you might have had the answer, but that didn't work for me either, using MPC to play the source video.
I tried it with both settings: video overlay (system default) and with "vmr9 renderless".

Edit/update: Finally got this to work using WMP to play the source FLV video, with acceleration turned off, using the MS Video 1 codec in CamStudio (for some reason, CamStudio won't capture with DivX or Xvid codecs in this way). Playing back the captured video in WMP also works, and I can open the captured video in VDubMod to edit. I don't normally use WMP, but if this is the only way to do this kind of capture, I'm happy. Thanks.

[jagabo]

You can also use VLC with its Windows GDI output to avoid video overlay problems. Tools -> Preferences -> Video -> Display -> Output -> Windows GDI video output. You may have to exit the program and restart it for the change to take effect (like all the other players).