DVD Screengrab

Hi, Paul!

There are legal reasons to do screen grabs from copyrighted material (academic, for example). I just want to remind everyone that we need to stay away from talking about anything that would violate copyright law.

See the MacOSX.com "Board Rules" at the top of the page for details.

Mac OS X's screen grab apparently will _not_ grab a frame from DVD Player. Assuming legitimate reasons, one probably could use another DVD player such as VLC and do a screen grab from that.

Good luck.

Doug
 
There are legitimate reasons why you would want a screen grab from a DVD. Copyright law usually allows for this for academic purposes, reviews and critical purposes, though you'd need to check before you think of publishing or distributing a screen grab in any way.
So, Paul's question isn't really asking about anything illegal, just "potentially" illegal, like ripping an Mp3.

That said, there is a shareware program called "Snapz Pro X" available here: http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/

Some freeware utilities such as Screen Dump work on some hardware, though I've yet to find one that works consistently.
 
Thanks for your replies. My reason for wanting to grab DVD stills is from my companies own DVD and not to violate any copyright.
- Paul
 
In that case it is most likely not a locked up DVD and you can grab an actual frame from the MPEG file itself. That would be best if possible since it would avoid potentially two resampeling passes on the image.

Now I don't know what software on the Mac would allow that I only played with that stuff years ago under Linux. I am sure someone could pop up with something maybe even iMovie or Quicktime Pro.?.?.?

If you can go that route the secret is to use a cheep video card with no DVD support so that everything is done in software. Better cards do this in hardware via a screen overlay before sending the signal to the monitor. The OS doesn't really know it is displaying a DVD movie it just sees a boring rectangle that never changes - and that is what you get with a screen grab.

-Eric
 
Symphonix mentioned a good point. As I understand it, talking about copying copyrighted material is not, by itself, against board rules.

I tried to indicate that in my friendly message to Paul.

Back to the subject: I'm impressed with how well VLC shows DVDs. I was disappointed when twice Apple's DVD Player basically crashed because of a scratch on a DVD I was watching.

Doug
 
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