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Geek Culture / Ever try to take a screen shot of a video in windows media player?

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Physics coder
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2004 17:21 Edited at: 23rd Aug 2004 17:24
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I was trying to take a screen shot of a frame of a ffx 2 video in windows media player, (using the "Prt Sc" button, and pasting it in mspaint) and the weirdest thing happens.

Instead of getting an image of the screen, it gets the video display memory or something. So if you continue and then pause the video at a different frame, the new frame will be in the image. I then saved the screen shot and used it for my background. The background shows the current frame of the video(except when playing, so you got to pause it to see it on the desktop background). (I'm using Windows XP Home, idk if it happens in other versions)

I don't know how this works or if this is a bug or a feature, lol. Anyways, i took a screen shot in realplayer to get an actual, normal, static screen shot.

-----------------------------------
To delete the bug, delete the code.
Specs: Sony VAIO Laptop, Windows XP, P4 2.8Ghz, 512MB RAM, ATI Radeon 64MB video memory, DBP Upgrade 5.3.
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Van B
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2004 17:24
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Not exactly sure what you mean, but to capture video, you should use a third part screenie grabber, like the one included as part of PSP. This is doubly true for DVD's, but it probably applies to MPG's and AVI's as well.


Van-B


Muhahahahaha.
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walaber
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2004 18:52
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it's because media player uses an overlay... basically Media player just creates a completely black window (according to Windows). then it tells the video card to overlay the video onto the black part of the screen. so when you press PrtScn, windows gives you a big black square, because that's what it thinks it's displaying. then when you paste it into Paint, the video card slaps the video over the black parts.

RealPlayer probably doesn't use the overlay feature (which is usually smoother because it lets the video card scale the video via hardware), allowing you to take screenshots of the video

to test this, play a video in Media player, and then open Paint. make the window small. so the little color palette in the lower left corner is overlapping the video screen. you should be able to see the video peeking through the palette (if you have black as the foreground color).

Go Go Gadget DBPRO!

Athlon XP 2400+ || DDR-SDRAM 1GB || Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 AGP 8x 128MB
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Ian T
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Posted: 24th Aug 2004 00:23
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Just about all players use an overlay. I think it has to do with copy protection among other things.

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the_winch
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Posted: 24th Aug 2004 00:45
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More to do with speed than copy protection.

shrink those dbpro exes
Create patches for your dbpro games
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 24th Aug 2004 00:56
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Microsoft Media Player (and Quicktime) both run on DirectMedia Layers, which are not render to your monitor in the same thread as the GDI+ which your desktop uses.

There are some games which will also show these glitches when you try a PrnScrn ... suchas Counter-Strike Source. Because they use MRT Technology which basically renders out in several areas outside of DirectX's main backbuffer.

It is known as the 'Hard to get DirectX Layer'
Before you ask, there is no way that I know of to actually aquire this from Media Player 7/8/9. It seems to run completely on it's own thread external from everything, which suggests it is partically copyright protection... or maybe just Microsoft being bloody Minded.

You'll find this is the same with WinAmp movies as well.
There are a few media players which will export screenshots, personally I use WinAV to convert then into raw formats and then use Image Ready.


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Ian T
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Posted: 24th Aug 2004 00:59
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CHANGE YOUR OBNOXIOUS, ANNOYING AND USELESS SIGNITURE **NOW**

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Preston C
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Posted: 24th Aug 2004 01:04
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If you need to take a screen grab from Windows Media Player, go to options, performance, and turn off hardware acceleration. You'll then be able to use prtscn on it till your hearts content.

Cheers,
Preston


Intel Celeron 1.3 Ghrz 512 MB Ram nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB
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Ian T
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Posted: 24th Aug 2004 01:06
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Ooh, good pointer...

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DrakeX
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Posted: 24th Aug 2004 03:12
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raven - wrong wrong wrong! it's simply a hardware feature. as walaber explained, all it does is make a black (or near it - RGB(16,0,16) in actuality) square and tells the video card to replace every pixel that is 16,0,16 with video.

try this - open a video in WMP or something. then run this tiny DBP program, making sure you have it set to windowed (not FSW).

ink rgb(16,0,16),0
box 100,100,200,200
wait key
end

move the window around and - cool, it's a little window on the movie!

OK enough of that damn DBP fanboy banner. i'm NOT a DBP fanboy in any way. i haven't used DBP in over a year, and i don't really plan on using it again.
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Physics coder
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Posted: 24th Aug 2004 03:40
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nice.
raven - your sig takes up the whole screen. take out the girl or scale her down to 1/4 the size and put her to the side of the raven studio.

-----------------------------------
To delete the bug, delete the code.
Specs: Sony VAIO Laptop, Windows XP, P4 2.8Ghz, 512MB RAM, ATI Radeon 64MB video memory, DBP Upgrade 5.3.
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