Windows Media Player Screenshot help

[AMG]

How do you take a screenshot in WMP 10 on XP? When I hit ctrl+prnt scrn I get a blank pic. Thanks.

 

[Eleventeen]

You have to turn off your hardware acceleration. Right click your desktop and click 'Properties' , then click the settings tab and look at the bottom. Youll see Troubleshoot and Advanced. Click on Advanced. You will then see a troubleshoot tab at the top. Click on that and you will see Hardware Acceleration. move the slider to 'none'. Hit apply and then open your video, and take your screenshot. Dont forget to turn this back on 'full' when you are finished.

 

[Sharkfood]

Go to www.fraps.com and use FRAPS. With Fraps running, just hit F10 to have screenshots captured to the C:\Fraps folder.

Windows Media Player, WinDVD and other such programs use "Overlay" video, which isn't a normal part of the windows display. In order to capture the "Overlay" video, you need a special capture tool- which FRAPS indeed does.

Turning off hardware acceleration will also work since this disables the Overlay and uses standard windows GUI/2D display routines. This also slows the video down to a crawl and wont allow any of the deinterlacing or image enhancement features your videocard normally has in its Overlay mode.

 

[AMG]

Thanks for the ideas. But the library computers have hardware acceleration set to full and I can take a screenshot on them just with print screen. Any ideas on what they did?

 

[Sharkfood]

Those PC's likely do not have any true hardware acceleration/Overlay modes support on their videocards. They are likely generic, integrated video on the motherboard.

Hardware Acceleration, checked or unchecked, can just simply mean MMX/SSE support on the CPU. If the videocard/gpu in question offers no extended Overlay modes, hardware deinterlacing or other technologies specific to streaming video, the PC simply uses the GUI/2D mode + cpu enhancements (if any).

Also, the video drivers can be "kludged" to trap for printscn/video capture and sense if Overlay is the front-most display, to capture THAT to the windows clipboard/buffer. It's a nifty feature of some videocard drivers to "seamlessly" capture the right buffer space, but very few hardware companies incorporate that into their drivers.

 

[AMG]

I didn't understand a word of what you just said but ok :grinthumb

 

[sc173]

yeah or you can just hit Ctrl+I