Screenshots of avi files

[Julian Roe]

How do I take screenshots of divx, .avi or .mov files? Whenever I take the screenshot and paste it into Paint or Photoshop it just comes up all black and the still image of the .avi file doesnt save.. really starting to annoy me... :)

[lisaj]

The reason for this is because of a technology called video overlay. Your PC is not drawing the video image, but rather feeding the video data to your video card and telling it where on the screen, and how big it should render it. Since your screen capture function is operating before the video card stage, it only sees a black rectangle, and not the video image. Obviously therefore you can do one of three things : 1. Get some capture software that operates on the 'external' side of the video card. 2. Turn off video overlays - this will severely inhibit the playback performance, but will allow you to take a screen capture. 3. Use a piece of software that 'magically' manages to capture the image despite video overlay still being enabled - try PowerDVD...

[BagpussDave]

lisaj is correct, however there was no description of how to switch off video overlays. This is how you do it: In Media Player, right click on the movie, and go to Options. There should be an option to switch hardware acceleration off - when this is done, you should be able to capture screenshots of the movie. I'm using Media Player 6, if you are using a different version then the option might be somewhere else.