StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Ever since I updated my video card drivers, PowerDVD has been broken, as has WMP 10 for playing DVDs.

Windows Media Player Classic, however, works fine. Problem is I'm trying to take screencaps and they come out like ass. Observe:-


By vympel

Help! How do I get it to come out nice (i.e. actually reflect the aspect ratio as I'm watching).

Resize them manually after taking the screenshot.

Standard Definition TV screens do not have square pixels like on a computer. For 4x3 standard definition they are slightly taller than the are wide. However, with 16x9 widescreen, the image is compressed horizontally and then stretched back to normal by the DVD player or TV.

Basically, your media player is taking a screenshot of EXACTLY what was on the DVD at that frame. Some players will automatically stretch the image to match on screenshot, but MPC doesn't, so you will have to do it manually in a program like Photoshop to 848 x 480.

Fuck. Well, I don't have photoshop, so that kills WMP Classic for me in so far as taking screenshots is concerned. PowerDVD was great like that, you could set what size you wanted the screenshots easily.

IrfanView is good for things like this. I suggest setting it to resample rather than just resize, though, otherwise it'll look rather blocky.

Thanks for that, works like a charm!

Also, Paint.NET is a good free image editting program.

Or you could use VLC Media Player. You won't have to resize.

Another player that's both very cooperative in playing various file formats and takes screencaps (only 320x240 I believe) is GOM Player. I actually prefer it to VLC player because it has a playback priority setting which determines how much the program can tax your CPU. A great way to improve file playback if your machine is old or having problems.