Screen capturing tools

[W1nTry]

I was wondering if there are any free apps that will create screen captures of paused screens on say windows media player, or divx player etc. It strikes me that the built in screen capture is just not up to it. I end up with screen captures of media player with a black screen. So other than the complicated method I read up involving windows media encoder etc, does anyone have some short advice, method or app capable of this?

[TriniXaeno]

I would try snagit.

That is a nifty little app that has saved my bacon on many a screen capturing attempt.

features galore. If anyone found a way around it, would be them.


If that doesn't work, you can always get down and dirty with avisynth and virtual dub (not for the feint of heart)

[W1nTry]

Well downloaded, installed, used. Its a nice tool, however it not capable of doing what I want it to do... at least not so far. Now truth be known I do have a tv/fm tuner card that has screen capture capability... however since meh machine in the repair shot, I cyah try that yet.... so any other ideas?

[TriniXaeno]

the TV / FM card will capture live video inputs but not the live screen info. (unless you push the signal out using your video cards S-Video port back into your PC)

Then fire up your Vid Cap application that came with your TV/FM turner and recording it to AVI / MPEG.

This would work actually.

If you are looking for the best performance, use a second machine to accept the svideo input and do the capturing. We have done this to capture footage of sweat when FRAPS proved too limited.

Awesome quality too. I strongy recommend "Dr. DIVX" for capturing the input stream and compressing it if you don't want to be stuck with massive 2gb files laying all about the place from your work. lol

It is a great application and works as advertised.

[W1nTry]

This thread has strayed a bit from my original idea, but its all good. I was kinda thinking of playing the avi using the tvtuner software (which it can) and make the screen capture from there. However as u mentioned feading back the s-video and capturing video, i've not done that per say (at least not recently as I last I tried to do that, it was an Nvidia card and the monitor would go off when I tried to feed to the S-video out, very annoying mind you). But I can do that now with little probs as its an ATI card. Make avi backups of my dvd anime perhaps...

[TriniXaeno]

yeah, that tv tuner app to grab the screen sounds like a plan.

IF that's where your head is at, you may want to give PowerVCR a shot.

It is not tuner card specific, so you can just download the latest version and give it a test drive.

Great app for grabbing a one off pic or a little mpg clip with little or no fuss at all. Not as powerful as Dr. Divx which is more suited to large conversion jobs.

Intervideo also has a cool selection of apps for the job. Trial vers available last I checked.

http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Record.jsp

[Arcmanov]

I was wondering if there are any free apps that will create screen captures of paused screens on say windows media player, or divx player etc. It strikes me that the built in screen capture is just not up to it. I end up with screen captures of media player with a black screen. So other than the complicated method I read up involving windows media encoder etc, does anyone have some short advice, method or app capable of this?

Don't know if you still need this but you can use 'Real Alternative Player'.  It has a screen capture function built right in.  Its free, and the latest version can be had here:  http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternative.htm

[TinyGrasshopper]

Check this podcast's episode 6 out: http://s118155420.onlinehome.us/twat2/?p=13

Free Open-Source mostly cross-platform solutions are discussed.

[AIDS]

If you only need a snapshot from the video file then just use Power DVD.

You get bmp's at the same res as the original video.

Other than that you can do a google search for 'free screen capture apps' or check out tinyapps.org