Make Screen Caps of Commercial DVDs?

[uncaff]

Hello,

Just joined the forum. As a rank newbie with an older, slower Mac (G3 400MHz) I am not yet trying to make full rips of DVDs. But I would like to be able to take screen caps of individual frames.

So far I have tried using CaptureMe and DVDCapture. With CaptureMe I get very grainy pics and the selected area coverage is inaccurate. With DVDCap[ture I get a blank screen.

Can anyone steer me to an efficient screen-cap app that will work with my G3 running OS 10.3.9?

Any help, suggestions would be appreciated.

[terryj]

Search The Forum, and welcome to the Forums

[Frobozz]

VLC Media Player has a screen capture

[uncaff]

VLC Media Player has a screen capture

Thanks Frobozz. I hadn't thought of playing the DVDs in VLC. I'd been using DVD Player which has no snapshot option.

[albloom]

Apple disabled screen capture with DVD Player.

Anything else? Fine. In VLC you can pause a movie and
use any of the usual screen-snap suspects.

[terryj]

such as CaptureMe and DVD Capture?

AL, I think the poster tried these and wasn't happy
witht their quality. ( I've used CaptureMe and you can bump
up the dpi, so the OP might want to look into that.)

There is also SnapzXPro, iShowU, etc top take screen caps
of what VLC or DVD Player plays.

[Benboom]

Hello,

Just joined the forum. As a rank newbie with an older, slower Mac (G3 400MHz) I am not yet trying to make full rips of DVDs. But I would like to be able to take screen caps of individual frames.

Can anyone steer me to an efficient screen-cap app that will work with my G3 running OS 10.3.9?

Hiya -

I have an old machine too (Sawtooth G4 running 10.3.9) and I was frustrated by this issue too. 10.3.9 treats its screen captures differently than 10.4 and the info I got from 10.4 users wasn't any help. But I did find a way to do it. You need a couple of things, all free. Go get Mplayer and djoPlayer (sorry, you'll have to search for these - I don't have links handy).

Load the VOB of the desired item into djoPlayer (which is really just a front end for Mplayer) and play it until you get to the desired spot. You'll find this MUCH easier than it is with VLC, which really does not work at all on slower machines like ours. You can either use regular mode or put it in full screen mode. After that, just use the regular Mac procedure of cmd-shift-4 then SPACE, then when the camera appears, take your screenshot. It will appear on your desktop as a (ick) pdf file. You'll have to convert this to a pict or whatever. Also, be aware that it is your whole screen, and even if you put djoPlayer into full screen mode the image will be at your full screen resolution, ie, too big for what you want. So you'll either have to resize or crop it.

You can convert the pdf either by loading it into Preview and exporting it (clumsy) or by using another utility such as Kunvert (sorry, search for that one too) to do it for you.

I don't know why this combination works when everything else does not. Also, note that trying to use the Mac Grab of just the window (rather than the full screen) will not work. At least, that's what happens on my system.

The bottom line is that it isn't as convenient as I'd like but it works, and it doesn't invole using VLC.

Good luck.

[uncaff]

Hi Benboom,

Thanks for your very detailed reply. On the advice of the other members above, I found that I could at least make screencaps using VLC, but as you say, VLC doesn't quite get it with the older Macs. For one thing I can't get the single frame advance to work, and "Pause" doesn't work immediately (apparently it's a processor speed issue), so which frame I actually get is iffy.

I'll find and download the apps you mention. I've got Mplayer, but not the GUI djoplayer, so I'll hunt that down. Also thanks for steering me to Kunvert. I've been looking for an easy way to get around the pdf thing, which won't import directly into PhotoShop (at least not into my really old version 3.0) or into my older version of GraphicConverter.

This is a very good forum, especially for video newbies like myself running older equipment.