No screen captures?
Published on 22 May 2008 at 4:41 am.
25 Comments.
Filed under Uncategorized.
This bugs me to no end. In fact, I can’t even capture it with a screen capture. I often code while watching… err… listening to a DVD. Every once in a blue moon, I need to do a screen capture to examine pixel for pixel what I’m doing. And every time I get a lovely dialog that tells me”Screen grabs are unavailable during DVD playback.”"Please quit DVD player first.” Why can’t I pause it, or minimize it? Why must I quit? Imagine going to some club that’s non-smoking only (ok, you won’t have to imagine that, it seems they all are these days). But you get stopped at the door… “Have you quite smoking?” “No, but I won’t smoke in here.” “Not good enough, you must be a non-smoker.” So I quit DVD player, start my screen capture, start DVD player. What’s the harm? Uhh, hello! DVD player lets you capture a frame. If it’s some technical thing, uh yah, beyond me. Pure, Simple, Annoyance.Thanks Apple, for making me take a break from Star Trek to capture a webpage. But, at least, could I capture this “error?” BTW, does anyone know of a DVD player other than “DVD Player?” I’d really love something full screen at about 10% opacity.
Holland Rhodes on 22 May 2008 at 4:42 am: 1
and it bugs me that since Safari 3, my line breaks are removed… because half the code knows Safari can do “rich mark-up” and half the code doesn’t.
J. Odell on 22 May 2008 at 6:35 am: 2
Plays DVDs:VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Abe J on 22 May 2008 at 6:46 am: 3
use snapzpro x from ambrosia software
Bluejade on 22 May 2008 at 6:47 am: 4
I would think that screenshots are disabled in DVD Player because of copyright issues. : ((
But don’t worry, just download VLC Player ( http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14738)
or MPlayer ( http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27163 )
Both players are free open source apps containing all possible codecs and are much more capable than DVD Player. Specially VLC is considerate to be one of the best.
Give it a try and judge for yourself : )
Peter on 22 May 2008 at 9:06 am: 5
The reason is that if you can capture the screen, you can capture video. So I could run DVD Player and have it turn the screen captures into a movie which I could then distribute all over the Internet and cause movie studios, actors, and key grips to lose their jobs and end up bringing on the downfall of Western Civilization.
See? Apple is protecting us.
Harvey on 22 May 2008 at 9:31 am: 6
Use VLC. It will play DVDs and it doesn’t have restrictions on taking screenshots of videos. And it’s free.
Pietro on 22 May 2008 at 10:25 am: 7
You could use VLC. Choosing “open” and navigating to the mounted DVD, choose the “VIDEO_TS” folder (not it’s content). Or you can use ‘MPlayer OSX’ and do the same thing. Under VLC you can so regular screen/window shots or use VLC’s snapshot (Command-Alt-s) feature to capture just the movie scene
R on 22 May 2008 at 10:53 am: 8
Have you reported this to Apple?
BK on 22 May 2008 at 11:02 am: 9
You can perform screen captures while using VLC:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Chuck on 22 May 2008 at 11:06 am: 10
You want—and I am not making up the name–Trans Lucy.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/22043
$15
Ian O on 22 May 2008 at 11:14 am: 11
Welcome to the world of DRM!
Anyway, VLC works for me. Video of “The Young Ones” playing, Cmd-Shift-4 to select a piece of the screen, and there’s a clip of Rick on my Desktop. Bit blurred as he was diving out the door. May be better to Pause to lock the frame.
Can’t help with the 10% thingi.
Louis on 22 May 2008 at 12:14 pm: 12
http://www.translucy.com/Trans%20Lucy%202%20-%20Clarity%20of%20Vision.html
That looks to do what you’re looking for.
OldandSlow on 22 May 2008 at 12:19 pm: 13
err… /Applications/Utilities/Grab.app?
been there since… well since NeXTSTEP.
John Halbig on 22 May 2008 at 12:23 pm: 14
Dude, check out VLC:
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html
I don’t even bother using DVD player any more, as VLC allows screen captures, and will also let you set the opacity for the playback AND let’s you float the video widow “always on top”.
Tom on 22 May 2008 at 12:40 pm: 15
Apple is driven to do this by the Movie industry, to prevent screen capturing of movies (or worse, in their mind, stream-capturing of movies, i.e. movie snippets).
It’s likely pretty tough to ensure the movie is not within the current display, and to run that check when, doing a simple screen grab of a whole screen or screen region or window. Simpler to see DVD Player is running and just lock out screen capture… My guess if if you played the DVD with some other software than DVD Player, you could continue with playing it when you did your screen grabs.
Mark on 22 May 2008 at 1:55 pm: 16
BTW, does anyone know of a DVD player other than “DVD Player?”
VLC will do that, it also has a setting for opacity but that doesn’t seem to work on my MacBook.
Pecos Bill on 22 May 2008 at 3:02 pm: 17
_Quite_ a lot of huff these days about quitting smoking. Feel free to smoke all you want, but please don’t make me smell it. I’m allergic.
Meanwhile, yes, it’s quite illogical that you have to quit the whole app with that built in capture! At least it offers to resume from where you were (if you didn’t turn that off).
VLC at http://www.videolan.org/ is very happy to play DVDs. Dunno about it interfering with capture though and don’t have a DVD here at work to test with. Too bad you didn’t post this on Tues.
Leland on 22 May 2008 at 3:32 pm: 18
Try VLC for DVD playback that doesn’t disable screenshots.
Blame the RIAA/MPAA for Apple blocking screenshots of DVDs.
Bix on 23 May 2008 at 3:42 am: 19
you need to use snapz pro x form ambrosia sw, you could capture an entire dvd with that!
Bix on 23 May 2008 at 3:43 am: 20
Sorry … here is the link:
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
Anonymous on 23 May 2008 at 7:14 am: 21
VLC is the only program I know of that ignores the screen capture restriction, although it is a bit of a pain to use for DVD playback (you have to set up a play list of the correct tracks, rather than go through a DVD menu). Chroma and Nice Player both use the OS based DVD routines, and therefore the restrictions apply. The way around it is to use a third party screen capture utility, such a Snapz Pro.
Tim on 30 May 2008 at 1:58 am: 22
Try using VLC http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html
which doesn’t stop you. It’s not as usable as DVD player, or at least I haven’t had time to get used to it.
HTH
Tim
Holland Rhodes on 19 Jun 2008 at 6:11 pm: 23
Wow, this came as a shocker. It took me until now to see there were comments needing approval.
I’m very familiar with VLC, but it is a bit of a pain to use and it also doesn’t render very well.
Thanks for the tips about Snapz Pro X. I’m going to give that a try. Also for the tips about Trans Lucy, that’s going to be a big help as well!
Hedi on 23 Jun 2008 at 10:20 pm: 24
I wrote a small tutorial a long time ago on how to make it with VLC, it’s easy: http://macamour.com/blog/2006/03/07/taking-a-screenshot-while-watchin-a-dvd/langswitch_lang/fr/
As a goodie you’ll have a Nicole Kidman picture using a PowerBook G4. Very irresistible!
Anonymouse on 2 Jan 2009 at 6:05 am: 25
Apple/Command + Shift + 3 captures the whole screen. If you want to capture (all photo) a window, command/apple + shift + 4. Space bar to switch between selected space and window.