# Taking stills from DVDs **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 9, 2003, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-stills-from-dvds/147475 "2003-01-09T07:30:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Rider](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/dc4da7/32.png) [@Rider](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rider)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-stills-from-dvds/147475/1 "2003-01-09T07:30:03Z")
Not sure if this is the right forum, but… Does anyone know if its possible to capture still images from a PC/laptop DVD player? Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-stills-from-dvds/147475/2 "2003-01-09T07:58:32Z")
It is possible. In fact, most PC DVD software have built-in commands to do so. ---
**Author:** ![orr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e47c2d/32.png) [@orr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orr)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 8:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-stills-from-dvds/147475/3 "2003-01-09T08:18:40Z")
Yup, it’s definitely possible. PowerDVD, which came with my cheapo (yet high-quality) Lite-On DVD-ROM drive let’s you take bitmap screens. I’d imagine that most, if not all, DVD players allow you to perform such basic functions. Even the standard Windows Media Player will let you take “Print Screen” button screen shots as long as you turn off hardware acceleration. You’ll probably need a plugin of some sort to play DVDs through Media Player, but I’m not all too sure about that. Like I wrote above, I got a full version of PowerDVD with my drive so I never used Media Player to watch DVDs. ---
**Author:** ![Miss\_Mapp](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miss_mapp/32/369_2.png) [@Miss\_Mapp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miss_Mapp)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2003, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/taking-stills-from-dvds/147475/4 "2003-01-09T11:44:00Z")
I’ve been using Power DVD to make wallpaper. If you have Photoshop, you can convert the huge bitmap files Power DVD creates (~1 MB) into gifs or jpegs that are in the 100-200 KB range and much easier to handle.