#1 — fuzion

That’s a pretty neat tip. I’ve hunted for a solution many times in the past until I found out how to do it in ffmpeg.

#2 — Austin

A lot of software DVD players already have this feature built in, so you don’t have to mess with hardware acceleration. For example, the free Media Player Classic Home Cinema has a small menu option to take screenshots whenever you like.

#4 — phillwv

Like Austin, I’m offering a player with screen capture because I like to plug it at every op.

This player is significant for being a GNU project and a player so universal we use it as the default on company PCs, and tell our staff to revert to WM or QT only if desperate.

It’s notable as not nagging for codecs, and for home PCs that’s a bonus as we all know how many often the useless WM wants codecs, or how often the media file is a Trojan pretending to want a codec.

Of course, referring to Videolan.org’s VLC media player.

Oh and thanks Jeff for the bottom line tip, as I never figured that out, which set me on the search for a player to do the trick :)

#6 — Teddy

Thanks for posting this tutorial, Jeff! I learned this technique a year ago or so (yea, I’m quite slow when it comes to video stuff) but never bothered to write a tutorial - thanks for sharing! I am aware that many modern, third-party players do offer screenshot function, but I prefer the good old way of hitting the print screen button because sometimes, the screenshot function fails or doesn’t work at all. To make things worse, some players don’t tell you where the screenshots are saved, hah!

Thanks for explaning why using hardware acceleration makes taking a screenshot impossible - I didn’t know why is that so until you wrote about it :)

#7 — Kim Woodbridge

Aahh … very nice. Didn’t know this. I use VLC to play video and it has screenshot capability built in.

#9 — Teddy

I’m yet to venture into videography and editing. It’s not my cup of tea, although many time-lapse video took my breath away and I’m trying to use my camera to achieve the same effect. The fact is that besides making a graduation video for my college class, I’ve never made any other video in my entire life, hah! If I have any questions perhaps I can consult the guru here.

#11 — Teddy

Ah, you remind me so much of my dear roommate! He was once a Adobe Flash guru - at 13 he designed flash navigations that respond to mouse gestures and etc, I remembered even my computer lab teachers were wowed. But now he only uses Flash to create vector graphics and has since moved on to After Effects. He told me he totally forgot about action scripts and etc, haha!

Regarding infrared photography, you don’t need to have special lenses to do so. I only know how to do it using a dSLR though - all you need is to invest in a decent tripod and a great infrared/far red filter (those that block out lights of wavelengths 720nm and below). Since most dSLR manufacturers place infrared blockers in front of the CCD/CMOS sensors (apparently, some clothing appear to be translucent when photographed in infrared, lol!), even under bright sunlight, exposure time ranges around 6 to 15 seconds, depending on the camera.

You simply have to attach the infrared filter (I use a Hoya R72 filter - Hoya is a Japanese brand and their quality is excellent) to the lens. Hoya offers a range of diameters for the infrared filter, I use a 55mm one so that I can screw it on to my Sony A200 kit lenses.

I bought my Hoya R72 filter from a local dealer at a rather hefty price of SGD90 (approximately USD60). There are cheaper ones out at eBay, but after including shipping costs and time, I preferred to buy it from a local dealer. Since you’re in the US, you can get free shipping so it shouldn’t be a problem. You should expect a price of around USD40 to USD60 for Hoya R72 filter. Speaking of which, be extremely careful when it comes to buying infrared filters - some unscrupulous sellers pass RED filters (not far red or infrared filters). A quick check will be looking through the filter - if you can see clearly through it and everything appears red, it’s a fake. Infrared filters let you see a little bit of red when viewing against very bright objects (eg lightbulbs, sun etc) while darker objects will be invisible. The filter should ideally appear to be almost completely black.

Oh, and before getting a filter, check if your lens causes hot spots to appear in photos. Some lenses (usually kit lenses, but mine worked well) will produce hot spots due to the different refractory index of infrared light in the lens.

I’ll be happy to answer more questions :)

#13 — Darfuria

I personally chuckled to myself when I was younger, and was attempting to take a screen shot of a video I was playing in VLC media player. In fact, it happened to be an episode of Family Guy.

Anyway, I paused the video and hit the print screen button, opened good old MS Paint and hit paste - whilst simultaneously resuming video playback in VLC media player.

Needless to say I was quite surprised, and amused, when my screenshot was playing in MS Paint. I then proceeded to exercise my immaturity by drawing genitalia on the playing video and giggled to myself when ever it appeared near someone’s face.

Good times.

#14 — Alex Fink

I’ve found that FRAPS is a nice program to do the screenshot job. Have a look.

#15 — Castian

Great tip thanks