Capturing Screen Shots from Videos

[FairytaleDREAMS]

Hey everyone,
I'm not too sure if this is the right place to post my question or not but I hope it is - I am not looking for trouble so I hope all is good.
Anyway, my question is I am trying to capture some screen shots by using the "Print Screen" key on my keyboard and most of the time I am able to do that but sometimes on particular videos I am not able to do that.

What happens is when I try to paste it, say in Paint, the screen part becomes transparent and when I save it the screen part turns black.

Am I making any sense? I'm really bad at explaining I hope someone understands what I am trying to say...

P.S This problem only occurs in some videos

[John]

If you're trying to capture from a RealVideo, you need to tune your settings.

Tools / Preferences / Hardware, and then drag the "Video Card Compatibility" slider all the way to the left. Then close and re-open RealOnePlayer, and that should solve your problem.

[Zaius]

In Windows Media Player:

Tools-->Options-->Performance Tab-->Click the "Advanced" Button-->Uncheck the "Use Overlays" box under "Video Acceleration".

For DVD's, do the same under the "DVD Video" section on the bottom.

The video quality seems to be a little worse without overlays, so I recommend rechecking those boxes when you're done doing screen caps.

[AIWANNABE]

I don't know if this is the right pleace to ask but it has been bugging me.

The people who do screenshots of shows such as the Bachelor, how do they do it?

[John]

With a TV card, for about $40 from Best Buy. Plug your cable in, or route it from your VCR, and voila.

[FairytaleDREAMS]

Thank you soo much John and Zaius!

That was really helpful - I am able to capture screen shots now

[Maxima]

There are so many ways to do it, let me begin to the most accurate and complex one, if you want best quality and frame-to-frame accuracy.

1. Capture your video with a lossless codec, such uncompressed or HuffYUV.
2. Open your captures with a video editing program, such as VirtualDub. Choose the frame you like and copy it to clipboard.
3. Open a graphic editng program, such as Photoshop, paste it into an image.

I use this one because it offers the best quality and frame-by-frame accuracy across the timeline.

If you don't know how to use above programs, the simplest way is to play the video through a media player, pause it, press Print Screen key, or use player's capture function, the paste it into graphic program. The problem with this approach is that quality is not the best, and many times you don't have frame-by-frame accuracy, which means you might miss some very good pictures. I only use one as last resort.

Hope it helps!