Screen capture adventures
 

I needed to make screencaps from a video.

So I attempted to do this by pausing the vid at the right moment, hitting "print screen" and then pasting them into Photoshop.

Unfortunately it didn't work. Photoshop refused to do what it was told. It kept saving a blank screen.

I tried free screen capture software Screenhunter but it did exactly the same thing once the image was transferred into photoshop.

I searched on a few boards and Alphawolf recommended on one that turning off graphics acceleration would help. Either that or using Windows Movie Maker.

Before I tried it we found another solution: The Gimp

The Gimp is open source photoshop-type software that will allow you to do a print screen and then edit the resulting image. You just pause the video, hit print screen, go into the Gimp and go File - Acquire. Then you save it as a jpg and crop the pic down.

Not perfect, but I was ready to tear my hair out this afternoon with this issue.
So I thought I'd share the info in case anyone is interested.

If you have any better ways of doing screencaps (which don't involve buying software) I'll be keen to hear them.
:)

The Gimp is a great open source software - according to them they also used this software for editing a full move (frame per frame) - also know some people who prefer The Gimp over Adobe Photoshop ;)

i highly recommend using snatchit or frame shots as its called now. it only costs $30 bucks and is well worth it

Hey grandmascrotum, how ya been, sweetie? Nice to see you again. It's been a while.

I've been told that Quicktime has some screen grab features, but I don't really know enough about that sort of thing. Can anyone offer any help on that? Is this true or was someone just giving me misinformation?

Shift+Command+3 makes the screen into a PDF.

Shift+Command+4 gives you a marquee that you drag to capture and makes a PDF.

Shift+Command+4+Spacebar turns the curses into a camera that you click on the window that you want to make into a PDF.

Of course you do need to be on a Mac for any of the above. :D

I had the same problem, and then discovered BSPlayer (funny name, but great video player.)
There is a free version http://www.bsplayer.org/
Not only can it do screen caps, but you can play mpg and avi's in slow motion, and a bunch of other cool stuff. shift-p does the screen cap. I enjoy this video player over all others that I have used, very nice stuff.

I used to use video mach/print screen and paste to photoshop but I just bought frame shots (thanks sec man) and I have to recommend it if you want to save time, it's a great program.