Another means of capturing DVD screenshots

Dec 27, '03 10:27:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Apple does not allow you to take a screenshot of a DVD while its playing. To get around this, you can do this:

  1. Insert the DVD.
  2. Quit the DVD player when it starts initially.
  3. Open up the DVD player again, and right after you double click it, press Command-Shift-4. After you do this, DO NOT click your mouse. Doing so will cause a screen shot to occur ... you only get one, so use it wisely.
  4. Press Control-C to get rid of the controller over the window. If need be, press command-0 to fill the screen with the DVD.
  5. Go to the place in the DVD where you want to get your screen shot. Then press the space bar ONCE; this will cause the crosshairs to turn into a camera which will take a full screen picture.
  6. Click the mouse and you got your pic (find it on the Desktop). You can turn it into a beautiful desktop pic with a nice high resolution graphic.
[robg adds: When I tried this method using the space bar, I got a blank full screen ... but if I just dragged a region (click and drag the mouse) and clicked, then it worked. I'm also not sure how you can set where in the movie you'll take your screengrab, as once you hit Shift-Command-4, you can't control the movie playback at all. I had to run DVD Player once, position the movie on the right frame, pause playback, and then quit DVD Player and re-launch while activating Shift-Colmmand-4. For this to work, make sure the Preferences are set to resume playback where it left off without asking. A previous hint described how to use Ambrosia's Snapz Pro X to take a DVD screengrab. However, I think both these methods will only work on NVidia machines; I don't have an ATI-equipped machine available to test with, though.]

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