Taking WOW Movie Screenshots
#1
I have several WOW raid movies (*.avi, *.wmv) where I need to take screenshots from while they're playing in Windows Media Player. Does anyone know which key or keyboard shortcut I have to use to make these? I couldn't figure it out yet :)
"Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays." -- Friedrich von Schiller
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#2
nobbie,Jul 22 2005, 05:43 PM Wrote:I have several WOW raid movies (*.avi, *.wmv) where I need to take screenshots from while they're playing in Windows Media Player. Does anyone know which key or keyboard shortcut I have to use to make these? I couldn't figure it out yet :)
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Print Screen? Then cut out the unnecessary stuff that might be on the screenshot.

Edit: To elaborate, "Print Screen" copies your current screen, so you need to open an image editor and paste it there.
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#3
Well, "Print Screen" was one of the first things I've tried, and it doesn't work :) All you get is the frame of the Windows Media Player with the content window being completely black/empty.
"Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays." -- Friedrich von Schiller
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#4
A very good program for this and much more is Virtual Dub, there is an option to copy frames to the clipboard, which then can be inserted in Paint or whatever.
Get it here: http://www.virtualdub.org/
Its a free source program.
Maya be a bit of overkill for what you want to do, but you will find it has nice options :)
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#5
nobbie,Jul 22 2005, 07:40 PM Wrote:Well, "Print Screen" was one of the first things I've tried, and it doesn't work :) All you get is the frame of the Windows Media Player with the content window being completely black/empty.
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That's because WMP typically uses overlay for the video display. Your video card knows what it's displaying, but Windows doesn't ;-)

I'd second VirtualDub as a great program, but as an alternative Windows Movie Maker (yeah, Microsoft, I know) will allow you to do the same thing. It used to take a small lifetime to import any reasonably-sized file while it sorted it out into scenes; I don't know if it still does this.
You don't know what you're talking about.
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#6
Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately however, VirtualDub doesn't support the WMV file format (which I need), and Movie Maker runs only on Windows XP (which I don't have - still running W2000) :)

I seem to remember that someone once mentioned a key shortcut for taking screenshots in Windows Media Player, even if it uses overlays. Are you sure there isn't one?
"Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays." -- Friedrich von Schiller
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#7
VirtualDub once read WMV's, but does not anymore due to an issue with Microsoft contacting the author and basically saying, "We own the format, you're not allowed to use it." ... this was quite a few years back (2000?). That said, other people out there have created versions of VirtualDub that will read WMV's, since the source code is available. Or if you manage to find an old old old version of it before the incident.

If you're willing to fiddle through a more technical option, you can try mplayer. I don't believe the Windows port has any other option for displaying the video other than in Overlay mode (which means you can't printscreen it), but mplayer does allow you to dump the video frames to tga/jpeg, just have to feed it the right starting/stopping time points (or else you get the entire video's worth of frames dumped).
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#8
Trien,Jul 23 2005, 01:05 PM Wrote:If you're willing to fiddle through a more technical option, you can try mplayer.
Argh .. no GUI here. I'll give it a try anyway, thanks :)
"Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays." -- Friedrich von Schiller
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#9
Cheap way:

Open your control panel > Display - the display properties dialog box appears
Select "Settings" tab
click "Advanced" button - another dialog box appears
Select "Troubleshoot" tab
Move "Hardware acceleration" slider to "None"


What this does is disable the overlay moade of your videocard, rendering movies through Windows routines instead and thus allowing you to take screenshots of them as if they were any other Windows application.

Other ways:

The bsplayer video player (www.bsplayer.com) takes screenshots of the overlay mode video windowwhen you press the "p" key.

Professional screen shot programs such as Hypersnapdx (www.hyperion.com) can take screenshots of video card overlays and DirectX programs.
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#10
Metrocube,Jul 26 2005, 08:21 AM Wrote:Cheap way:

Open your  control panel > Display - the display properties dialog box appears
Select "Settings" tab
click "Advanced" button - another dialog box appears
Select "Troubleshoot" tab
Move "Hardware acceleration" slider to "None"
What this does is disable the overlay moade of your videocard, rendering movies through Windows routines instead and thus allowing you to take screenshots of them as if they were any other Windows application.

Other ways:

The bsplayer video player (www.bsplayer.com) takes screenshots of the overlay mode video windowwhen you press the "p" key.

Professional screen shot programs such as Hypersnapdx (www.hyperion.com) can take screenshots of video card overlays and DirectX programs.
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Works both for me. Bsplayer was just the thing I was looking for for the WMV files. Thanks :)
"Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays." -- Friedrich von Schiller
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#11
Metrocube,Jul 26 2005, 12:21 AM Wrote:Professional screen shot programs such as Hypersnapdx (www.hyperion.com) can take screenshots of video card overlays and DirectX programs.

It's actually hyperionics.com

hyperion.com is a BI/OLAP software provider.
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