My laptop’s Media Player won’t even let me go frame-by-frame, let alone creating a JPEG from a moment fronzed from a DVD playing.
What kind of program would I need to be able to do this? Other functions (downloading & editing clips) would be a bonus, but the screengrabs will be sufficient.
Thanks!
You want a single, still image? Have you tried shift/prtscr (Win/PC)? That puts the screen image in the clipboard, from which you can paste it somewhere else, like a graphics editor.
I haven’t used it in a while, but in my old job I was addicted to SnagIt.
Given that my Windows Media Player doesn’t let me advance frame-by-frame, even if this seemed like a viable option, the painstaking trial-&-error task of eyeballing the exact second to hit pause is something I’d rather not go through (what I’m planning on doing does require a certain specificity).
At work, I had something on my desktop called WinDVD I think, and that worked great. Just thought I’d ask around at what the Teeming Masses used.
Use VLC as your media player. If it can be played, VLC will play it. And it’s got frame-grabbing built in
info.
I’m a little unclear whether you just want still images or video. For still screenshots, my go-to is the good old “Print screen” button. For video screen catpure, Jing is awesome and free.
You don’t need frame-by-frame, just a pause button. It has that, but I’ll admit it would be hard to stop on exactly the right frame.
All video editors have that feature and much, much more. How about Power Director? Under $100.
EXACTLY. Stopping on the exact frame from a two hour movie just using that status bar at the bottom of the screen? Ridiculous.
I’ll investigate some of the suggestions listed. Thanks everyone!
I second VLC. It has built in screenshot capabilities, and you can turn down the playback speed extremely slow.
I think this sort of thing is basically what Virtualdub was made to do.
I concur with virtual dub and vlc both.they are excellent programs.
Also check out mplayer.
It will actually take a section of the film, out the whole thing, and dump each frame into a jpg of it’s own.
Oh you know around the time you want, it can give you a few frames before and after.
Also, by default, the period key advances gene by frame.
Fraps maybe?
I just use Picasa for screengrabs. If you start picasa it will automatically take a screen captures folder. You can click on the pop up window if you want to edit the picture immediately. The screengrab is a bmp file, but when you save it, it is converted to jpg. Picasa is free.