Screen cap from a movie

davidbarry

All I want to do is capture an image from an avi file, in the original resolution of the movie. Should be simple enough, but not for me. What's the best way to go about this?

wabbiteh

If you've got VLC, open it up and use Video -> Snapshot.

If you're interested, the reason why you can't use printscreen is because windows XP and earlier have a somewhat archaic way of doing video acceleration - the OS actually prints a big box of color (it's a darkish purple), and then the video card replaces anywhere on the screen that has that color with the video. So using print-screen just copies the darkish purple box. This is also why sometimes if you've got a video running in the background, you see it bleed through stuff in the foreground. (This is probably only half-correct, but meh - it's accurate enough.)

davidbarry

wabbiteh wrote: »

If you've got VLC, open it up and use Video -> Snapshot.

If you're interested, the reason why you can't use printscreen is because windows XP and earlier have a somewhat archaic way of doing video acceleration - the OS actually prints a big box of color (it's a darkish purple), and then the video card replaces anywhere on the screen with the video. So using print-screen just copies the darkish purple box. This is also why sometimes if you've got a video running in the background, you see it bleed through stuff in the foreground. (This is probably only half-correct, but meh - it's accurate enough.)

Perfect, thanks a lot.

DekuStick

If you don't have the actual file and are just taking an online video screen cap, right click your desktop and go into properties. Roll on over to the settings tab, click advanced button, then the troubleshoot tab. Turn off the hardware acceleration and all should be fine. Just turn it back on when you're done.