[thelist] Tip: Screen capturing digital video

Chris Johnston fuzzylizard at gmail.com
Mon Feb 21 09:41:37 CST 2005


On Mon, 21 Feb 2005 11:33:37 -0000, Francois Jordaan
<Francois.Jordaan at wheel.co.uk> wrote:
> <tip type="Screen capturing digital video" author="Francois Jordaan">
> If you've ever tried to capture a frame from a video clip playing on your
> PC, e.g. to use as a thumbnail image, you may have discovered that the
> Windows clipboard will not do it. (Presumably for DRM reasons, regardless if
> it's your content or not.)

> 
> The answer? If you have more than one networked PC, use VNC. (RealVNC,
> UltraVNC, TightVNC, whichever -- basic VNC software is free and easy to
> install and use.)

I believe the reason you can not do a screen capture of video, or some
video games for that matter, is because of the video overlay that is
used to display it. I do not understand enough about how video overlay
is different then what you normally see on your screen, but it
definitely is. If you try to do a screen capture, you will get
everything but the video as it is somehow not a part of the actual
screen as windows sees it.

When you do the VNC trick, you effectively flatten the screen and
remove the overlay, thus rendering the video as just more pixels on
the regular screen and allowing you to do a screen grab.

There are programs out there that will allow you to do a screen grab
of video, I am just not sure what they are called.


-- 
chris johnston

www.fuzzylizard.com

"For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals and
something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination, we
learned to talk."
Pink Floyd


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