How to capture snapshots of DVD/MEPG/AVI movies?

[hsugawar]

I guess this has been discussed a million times, but I forgot the pointer!

I need to capture snapshot still images out of movies played back on my PC. Some players like WMP used to allow me to do so with a simple push of the "PrintScreen" button (really), but today all I would get with such an action is a black rectangle. Please let me know how to.

Thanks,
hiro

[drjtech]

Instead of WMP use Media Player Classic. "File", "Save Image" will save a snapshot of the current frame.

-drj

[mats.hogberg]

PowerDVD has a similar function for DVD

/Mats

[thor300]

The black square is coz of the overlay, goto screen properties and turn off hardware acceleration for the screencard. Just remember to turn it on again after you finished capturing frames, it sucks without HW Acceleration.

[smoki]

try also BSPlayer, it's a good and compact mediaplayer that allows you to save frames as jpegs.

[hsugawar]

Oh, how much I love this site! Thanks all of you for the great answers. The Windows Media Player Classic solution appears most practical to me. Is this a derivative of WMP?

I played back an NTSC 4:3 movie with WMPC, but its aspect ratio looks distorted. My actuall measurement is about 24:19, about 6% compressed hrozontally. The captured still image is now 720x480 or 3:2 so that it is again distorted in aspect ratio (horizontally stretched). I can of course compemsate with a tool program, but it's still a little bit inconvenient...

hiro