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How does one do this? I am trying my hardest (I have a DVD player on my laptop), I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro, buy no matter what I try; Print Screen, import, screen capture. It doesn't work!!!!

Ahhhhhhhhh!

Cameras?

Either connect your DVD player to a capture card, or buy a DVD player programme that takes screen captures.

Well I have a DVD player on my computer, and I use Window Media player... Is this a Microsoft conspiracy?

It's something called "colorkey". You need PowerDVD, which is the only legal software that will take screenshots from DVD's.

Darth Wong wrote:It's something called "colorkey". You need PowerDVD, which is the only legal software that will take screenshots from DVD's.

Even then you have to jump through a LOT of hoops just to get it to work and the quality is not THAT great.

Darth Wong wrote:It's something called "colorkey". You need PowerDVD, which is the only legal software that will take screenshots from DVD's.

Okay I am doing a google search for it now.

Alyeska wrote:Even then you have to jump through a LOT of hoops just to get it to work and the quality is not THAT great.

Oi! Don't bust my bubble! You got a better idea?

Alyeska wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:It's something called "colorkey". You need PowerDVD, which is the only legal software that will take screenshots from DVD's.

Even then you have to jump through a LOT of hoops just to get it to work and the quality is not THAT great.

It's not that bad. You have to disable hardware acceleration, and the quality is limited by the source material. DVD always looks sharper on TV because the TV"s native resolution is no better than the disc. But on a computer monitor, DVD's look a bit fuzzy, and when you freeze-frame them, you can really see it. If I rip a DVD and do frame-by-frame extracts, they look just like the PowerDVD screencaps.

Oh, and BTW Crown, you'll need an image editor to resize the screencap properly, since it'll give it to you native (720x480 pixel), which should be resized to 640x480 or 853x480 depending on whether it's anamorphic.

Yeah I have a full working version of Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7. I just couldn't understand why it wouldn't work...

Hmm, I've never really had those problems capturing from DVD with PowerDVD.

Can I get away with the Standard models, or do I need the Deluxe?

Crown wrote:Can I get away with the Standard models, or do I need the Deluxe?

Shit, I didn't even know there was a difference. Mine is a Deluxe, but I do believe that all PowerDVD versions have screencap. Mind you, there's always the piracy option

But I didn't have to, because it came with my Hercules Game Theatre XP as part of the software bundle.

Darth Wong wrote:Shit, I didn't even know there was a difference. Mine is a Deluxe, but I do believe that all PowerDVD versions have screencap.

Well I am getting a little ahead of myself here, let's see if they allow someone out side of North America to purchase their product first....

I have a copy of WinDVD4 that takes okay caps. But they're kinda small and limited by my hardware, I think.

Is there something that's free that takes good caps?

Smartripper, DVD2AVI, and Virtualdub. You can convert a whole DVD into a pseudo-AVI from which you can re-encode or grab frames at will. All it takes is gobs of hard disk space and a few extra steps.

And, oh yeah ... it's a federal crime to use that software in the United States of America, thanks to the DMCA, Fritz Hollings, and the Motion Picture Assholes of America.

Depending on what you actually want to do with the DVD, ripping the scene you want to grab a shot from and dumping the frame to an uncompressed TIFF or PNG file may be better-suited for you. If you want something as a desktop background, you'll want this method. I took ripped a scene from Dogma to a lossless codec (QuickTime Animation) at highest quality and was able to crop and scale it to 1280x1024 with no fuzzy artifacts in the enlarged version at all. I was quite impressed.

If you're planning to go SmartRipper -> DVD2AVI -> Avisynth -> Virtualdub then you'll want to resize the picture. The DVD stores the picture at 720x480 resoultion, and then streaches it when you want to play it. I suggest LanczosResize in AviSynth.