How to take Screen Shots of videos (WMP)

[Dave]

Hi everyone,

A few people have asked me to explain what you have to do to get screen shots of videos playing in Windows Media Player. You cannot nomally do this because of what Oksana has mentioned before as "overlays" - a virtual (fake) screen for displaying the video that sits "in front of" the main screen. This allows video acceleration to be used by your computer to good advantage - but you cannot capture the virtual screen (overlay) with the Print Screen button.

But if you disable Video Acceleration in Windows Media Player, you can then use the Print Screen key to get screen shots of the video. You mist remember to re-enable it when you've finished!.

Method

In Windows Media Player:

1. Open your video file and stop it at the beginning.

2. Click 'Tools' - Options - and on the dialogue box that opens, click the Performance tab.

3. Near the bottom of the box, move the "Video Acceleration" slider to the extreme left "None". If you can't see or move the slider, click "Restore defaults" first, this should reveal the slider and make it work.

4. Click "OK", and then, if a warning message pops up (about having to restart your video) click "Yes".

5. Right Click to set the video size to normal (100%). Full Screen display may not work so in the case of videos with large frame sizes, you may have to close things like the Media Player "Now Playing" list or the Video Brightness controls etc., if they are cluttering up the screen.

6. Play the video, pause and take your screen shot - using the Print Screen button. Open your image editing program (Paint should be fine) and paste each image into it then save it as an uncompressed image - image.bmp for example. You can later crop out the video frame from the rest of your 'captured' screen.

7. When you've finished, restore full video acceleration by clicking Tools - Options - Performance tab. Move the Video Acceleration slider to the right (Full) and click "OK". Click "Yes" on the Warning Message (about restarting your video) and it's finished.

Everything should now work as normal - it does for me - so please post in this thread if it doesn't (Oksana?). If anything needs clarifying, ask away and any feedback on this will be welcome. Not all computers are the same!

Dave

[postscript]

Thank you Dave,

Your tips on editing WMV copied and pasted in my archives.

Peter S.

[roger]

Don't worry, Peter. I had tips pasted in my archives once but the tablets sorted them out!

Roger

[Oksana]

dave said:

If you can't see or move the slider, click "Restore defaults" first, this should reveal the slider and make it work.

Thank you for sharing this Dave! I had read about disabling the video acceleration to take screenshots, but it wouldn't let me do that; so your post was really helpful.

I'll use this method to take screenshots from now on. My media player still isn't streaming embedded videos, but I'll give it a few days to 'recover' and maybe it will start to work again!

Oksy

[postscript]

I really did have a good look around, Mods, before plumping for this thread. I wanted to share some information which I thought might be of interest to those, like me, aspiring to move with the times and keep abreast of what is going on while not actually being techie material.

CNet run a variety of courses geared to people like those I have just described and are about to start (18th September) a new course vhs-dvd-movies.workshops.help.com/ on 'Save Video Home Movies to DVD'. I thought other members might be interested. The course is free and linking to the URL above gives you the page to learn more and to enroll.

Yours aye.

Peter S.