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Take a screenshot with DVD Player running

by Dave Caolo Dec 1st 2005 at 4:00PM

dvderrorYou're familiar with the scenario: You're watching a DVD in OS X with Apple's DVD Player, and you decide you want to take a screenshot. Whether your target is the movie you're watching or not, you're efforts will be greeted with the error message pictured above:

"Screengrabs are unavailable during DVD playback. Please quit DVD Player first."

Apple has had this nifty little "feature" in place since the birth of OS X, as far as I can remember (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). In fact, in order to get the grab of the error message, I had to pop in a movie, try to take a screenshot, elicit the error message and then quit DVD Player without clicking the message away. But what if you want to take a legitimate screenshot, one that has nothing to do with the movie you just happen to be watching? Jason at Random Tech has the answer. He writes:

  1. Put your DVD in your computer and open DVD Player (Applications -> DVD Player) if it does not open automatically. Go to Video -> Maximum Size, or hit Command-3. Fast forward to the frame you want to capture, or select the scene to start at.
  2. Open the Terminal (Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal). Type this, or copy / paste it right in the Terminal: screencapture -i ~/Desktop/dvd.jpg
  3. Your mouse should turn into crosshairs. Now hit the space bar. Your mouse should now be a camera. Click the window the DVD is playing in. A file called "dvd.jpg" will appear on your desktop.

He lists other options as well. Now that this is out in the wild, look for Apple to disable it in the not-so-distant future.

[Via MacBytes]
 

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You're familiar with the scenario: You're watching a DVD in OS X with Apple's DVD Player, and you decide you want to take a screenshot....
 

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10 Comments

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Jim C

how to save the screen capture as .jpg files?. mine saves as a .PDF...

December 01 2005 at 7:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jerry Adlersfluegel

I'm not sure when the current behavior was added, but in an earlier version of OS X (10.1 possibly), you could take a screenshot with DVD Player running just fine. You could open the image and see the movie still. But after you eject the DVD, open the image again and the DVD Player window had a solid black image where your still frame used to be! I think the new behavior is less confusing.

December 01 2005 at 5:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Hopper

In 10.3 it should be .pdf, not .jpeg, otherwise the file extensions is wrong.

December 01 2005 at 5:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Michael

Or just use VLC to play back DVDs and you will never have to worry. On an unrelated note: Anybody know how I can get Tiger to see my SE Z600 as a faxmodem? I can't even add it as a "printer", much less do anything else with it. I could define it as a dial up internet connection, but I just want to send a fax.

December 01 2005 at 4:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jan Kabili

Thanks for the chance to tout my favorite screengrab program yet again. This is a no-brainer for Snapz Pro.

December 01 2005 at 4:51 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
tush

You could also just play the dvd in VLC, then OSX has no problems....

December 01 2005 at 4:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
CUllerClassik

FreeSnap does this as well... freebie... enough features to make it useful... just make sure you do a full screen grab when you snap your picture and you'll get all your lovely 720x480 picture [goes into fetal position thinking about BluRay]

December 01 2005 at 4:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Greg

snap-n-drag, from yellow mug software, has been doing exactly what you describe, for as long as I've had my 867MHz 12"Pb... and it's free. So if you're wary of playing with Terminal, grab this app. http://www.yellowmug.com/snapndrag/

December 01 2005 at 4:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
merrickrider22

for others who want to do screen grabs like this not on a dvd u can also do the shortcut: command + shift + 4 the cross hairs will appear and u can hit spacebar if u want here as well (entire screen grab just: command + shift + 3)

December 01 2005 at 4:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mario Aeby

Well, I found a simpler solution: Just fire up Videolan Client (aka VLC), play the movie and take a snapshot. Works as a charm.

December 01 2005 at 4:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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