How to Capture Screenshots from Windows Media Player

THANK YOU!!!!

After a lot of swearing at WMP about not letting me do a screen capture, I hit google and found your site.

That did the trick, thanks!!

this is the single most useful thing i’ve read on the internet…

domo arigato

It’s people like you that help make the Internet great! I knew someone would have a an answer on how to do this for FREE!

Thanks alot for this great help. you saved me a lot of work.
THANK YOU

A saver for all people…. THANK A LOT…. THANK YOU

An easier way: In WMP, at least since version 9, you can use Ctrl-I to capture a frame, either when playing or when paused for greater accuracy. It brings up a Save Captured Image dialog which handily defaults to a jpeg.

I must admit I was sceptical. Sorry! It actually DOES work! Many thanks for solving that mystery!

Many, Many, Many Thanks!!!

I had seen something about overlays on MS website, but it seemed to have been written as an afterthought.

Once again

Many, Many, Many Thanks!!!

Well, since this doesn’t work for BSplayer, RealOne player, winamp and other players, i made another thing to do (Windows 2000 and Windows XP ONLY!!)

1. Click Windows Start > Settings > Control Panel, the Control Panel displays.

2. Double-click Display, the Display Properties dialog box displays.

3. Click the Settings tab.

4. Click the Advanced button, the Advanced Settings dialog box displays.

5. Click the Troubleshoot tab.

6. Click and drag the Hardware Acceleration slider to the left, changing the setting from Full to None. This disables all accelerations.

7.Click the Apply button to apply the settings to your desktop.

8. Click the OK button to save your changes and close the Advanced Settings dialog box.

9. Click the OK button to close the Display Properties dialog box.

Et voilà! Tu n’as pas de PrtScr anymore!

Disabling overlays will result in poor playback performance on some machines. Not a good long term solution.

If you need to get a full screen shot of everything on the screen, video included, then yeah, disable the overlay and hit the print screen button.

But if you just need a shot of the video, use CTRL-I. Or use another player like VLC or BSPlayer, which can do this too.

I always thought it was something on the hardware level that caused the blank screen to show up. Now I know!

wow u rock!!! i always wanted to do this !!! lol thanks ;D

HELLO,
can somebody tell me please if is possible to take capture images from a ram or rm file using Real Player? Thank you!!!

ctrl-I does a fine job. i think setting your hardware acceleration to none also works for the print screen method as well. i don’t recomend keeping those setting tho–

OMG!!! Thank you so much! I’d been fiddling around with my media player for months trying to figure out what was wrong with it. I’m so happy I found your site on google.

Can someone please help me? I tried disabling video acceleration, overlays, and I tried using ctrl-i, and nothing seems to work. The first two, in conjunction with print screen, just result in the same problem, and ctrl-i does nothing.

NOW using camtasia capture and yahoo music we may capture dvd music clips hehe, and burn our oun dvds.
100 BIG THANKS

I Can’t Belive it was that easy, Thanx alot for the tip.

It actual does work in winamp.
Just go into the preferences, then video, and at the bottom it has the overlay option I turned it off and it worked.

T H A N K Y O U!!!!!!!

thanks 4 this one i’ve been tryin for ages to capture screens from media player

Thanks!!!! From Singapore

actually, my friend was in a job interview with ATI and the guy asked him why it appears blank and why. My friend drew a blank. The reason as explained by the interviewer is something due to the video card rendering the video directly , but your windows desktop is in 2d mode and that is done seprately, so when you do screen captures, you only get the 2d content. The reason why disabling hardware acceleration works is becasue you are now forcing the computer to render everything in software, the 2d content along with the rendered video.

You are great!!(Hong Kong)

ohmygod I love you.

No, no, really, I do.

This is a fabulous thing, who knew you could tweak with WMP and be able to print screen things? I Should sell your idea; do you mind? lol

Thanks so much for the tip. Really appreciate your efforts. It works great to save the image to the clipboard, but once I paste it into photoshop it seems that the image and the player are two separate images. If I try to crop the player out, it results in some strange clipping and if I try to save the image as a .jpg it comes up black. If I try to just capture the video image in paint without hte player border using the select function it doesn’t keep the frame of video in the highlighted space. Any ideas?

I tried both ways :
1) unchecking “use overlay”–
still get blank screen

2)pressing Ctrl+I but it does not bring up a Save Captured Image dialog

I am using Window 98 and WMP is version 9.

Could someone assist me?

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

That was truly a great tip. Capturing screen shots in WMP has eluded me over the years but now I know how to do it. Thanks for sharing.
I use WMP 10 with WinXP. The Ctrl-I didn’t do anything though.

Jasmine, I’m not sure what’s wrong there. Could it be a Win98 issue?

It saves to clipboard but once media player is closed the video image goes away and I am left with a black screen with a WMP border. Am I missing something here? Have WMP 10. Thx 4 any help.

Thanks so much, I tried to download a few shareware titles but had no luck.

Now I can screen cap to my hearts content

4 years trying to do that, jejejej, thanks a lot

I know it’s been said already but

THANK YOU

I was going to change me gfx card! You save me sooo much work.

^__^ I luffs you! I’ve been looking for hours for a way to screencap with stupid WMP!!!! *hugs*

thankyou!! you saved my day

THANK YOU!!!!!!

I’ve been trying for ages to make screenshots from wmp, but i never found a way…and after all it’s so easy! Thank’s a lot for sharing, this really made my day! *hugs* xxx

Thanks for the information! It works just great for videos I have on my hard drive, i.e., short interview clips that I’ve downloaded, but when I try to get a screen capture from a DVD playing in my player and import it into Paint, the top half of the image is black, and the bottom half of the image is the half of the image I was trying to capture. Any hints?

There is a much easier solution by just pausing the movie and pressing ctrl-i, which will save a screenshot of the movie. I tried it on WMP10 and it works fine.

Awesome Info, Thanks!!

I too attempted the Ctrl-I option and nothing happens. I have v10 w/XP. Is tehre a setting for this?

However, turning off the Overlay worked great and I use HyperSnap DX (Best screen capture software out there).

Ahhh, I can now take a screen shot! The problem now is, when I try to crop it in Paint (i.e., to crop out the Windows Media Player), whatever I try to crop gets a black bar across half of the picture, and only the top half of the picture comes out at the bottom.

Eh, perhaps I need to consult a Paint expert. Thanks again for the great information!

Wow, thank you so much. I found the answer to this much faster than I thought I would. Thanks so much!

Yes!!! thankyou so much,
for hours i was swearing and getting so frustrated!! ur a genius.
thanks again mate

This is what make the web great, one google search, this guy’s hard work and boom! a problem solved that had been driving me crazy…Good man!

i love it it is the best thing ever you totaly rock i am loving it. your the best. it took me 5 years to figuire this out. your are the bomb. love ya lov ya. woot. this is the best thing thats hapened in my life love ya

omg thanks!!!! i thought i will never be able to do this without paying!

AWESOME — thanks a million!

THANK YOU so MUCH!!

top man, top tip

thanks hardeep singh

Wow, you are very awesome. That is all.

Thank you very much…found your post on Google and it addressed my problem and solved it. Thanks!

THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH, this really helped me!

wow! you’re really great! u know that while im reading your “story” behind the tweaking of the solution..i thought we have the same attitude..i really hate downloading softwares..i would prefer tweaking for hours or even YEARS than downloading..anyway, thanks a lot..i need this info for my thesis..arigatou gozaimasu! [ thank you!:) ]

Dude!

thank you soooo much

you have completed my life

Thanks dis rocks yo! Pimp dizzad in the hiz!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH!! in the past ive found that SOMETIMES WMP will let me screencap, and if that doesn’t work (which is most of the time) then sometimes winamp will let me screencap. Sometimes neither work though.. also, winamp doesn’t really play DVDs, so when I need to screencap a DVD i’m screwed! Anyway, bless your heart for posting this info, can’t tell ye how much I appreciate it! Makes all those money-grubbing screencap programs seem a bit silly, huh?

Thank you! Very helpful.

On Windows 2000 with Media Player 9, neither the CTRL-I or unchecking overlay methods works.

I’m still bummin.

J

U da man!

genious!

you’re a genius, a genuis i tell you! thanks a lot!

“Can someone please help me? I tried disabling video acceleration, overlays, and I tried using ctrl-i, and nothing seems to work. The first two, in conjunction with print screen, just result in the same problem, and ctrl-i does nothing.”

I have this same problem, maybe the author can figure it out.

Thank you so much for this very very HELPFUL tip… Best tip i’ve ever had… it took me 2 software downloads at download.com worth 5mbs before i finally (to my relief) discovered of the PERFORMANCE TAB approach! Thanks so much Ü

woo hoo!

lots of cool desktop wallpapers to be created now…. mwaahhhhhhh

Thanks sooo much! I was looking for this trick forever and finally I found it on your page! Thanks SO much!

I’ve been trying to do this for years and finally someone was able to figure it out and share it.
You deserve a pat on the back and a “Thank You” from all of us that wanted to do this but were unsable . . . until now! Thanks!

You’re incredible.

Thank you so much!!

You’re such a legend. ^_^ That is by far the best computer tip I’ve ever been given.

With two computers at home i would have thought this tip would work on one of them. Both pc with xp, one with WMP 10 the other 9. Neither worked so i tried advice from a guy on top he said download BSPlayer. Prt Sc works perfectly. No complaints. Thanks to evry1’s input. Awesome sight.

Thank you so much. It’s guys like you that keep the web alive as a resource.

You rock, thanks!

Thank you! It really worked (nothing else I’ve read on the web has helped).

Thanks thanks!!

There are good people in the world! Thanks!

Everything has already been said, but I pose a question.

Why does Ctrl - I work for some people?
Hmmm? Doesn’t work for me.

For those that do not get it to work right away, go into WMP->Tools->Options->Performance tab
then, down where the Advanced button is (like in the screenshot), you NEED to drag the Video Acceleration from Full to None.

Then you will be able to get something other than a black screen! Remember to drag it back, afterwards!

If you can’t drag it, try resetting to your defaults.
Thanks again! As has been said, this is the MOST useful tidbit on the ‘Net!

The suggested method didn’t work for me with a WMV embedded in a webpage, however what worked for that case was:
- start a video playing in WMP with overlays enabled
- open the webpage
- hit alt-printscreen
The reason this works is because most video cards, mine included, can only do one overlay at a time. By using that up with standalone windows mediaplayer, the one embedded in the webpage has to fall back on drawing without overlays.
Presumbably this would work to capture shots from other players (realplayer, quicktime) as well.

Still no luck after trying your method. When I push prt scr, and paste it into an image program, the picture disappears after I turn off WMP. Or if I paste the picture and play WMP the image that was pasted will begin to play.
I’ve tried everything, nothing has worked.
(I have WMP XP)

words cannot express my gratitude for ur help. i am running out of HDD space and just wished to capture some memorable images from anime. thanks to u that dream will be a reality now.

- austen

You da man.

You are god. o_o

Wow, that is Great!! I was already getting pissed. That’s when I did a search, and found you. Thanks!

Just wanted to note that you gotta uncheck the “Use overlays” box under “Video Acceleration” rather than the one under “DVD video” to do the trick. Great tip, though. Thanks!

OMG after trying to capture the screen, and it not working… I had just given up. This page has given me new hope!!! Thanks to the creator of this topic thing, and to Arthur for the great tips!!!

For those of you who have tried modifying WMP v10 settings and still got a black screen shot, you need to put the WMP settings back to full (or whatever they were set to) and modify display properties. Do this selecting Control Panel > Display > Settings tab > Advanced button > Troubleshoot tab. Drag the hardware acceleration to None and get your screenshot. I use SnagIt for full control of which screen elements I want to get. Don’t forget to set it back when you’re done. Good luck.

awesome! thanks.

doesn’t work for dvds on my system, but otherwise fantastic.

thanks from Spain.
You are a real friend.

VERY USEFULL!!!!

Thank you now i can capture the moveis i like most on pictures instead of looking from the internet!!!!

THANK YOU! You’ve no idea how much this has helped.

Usually I just open the files in PowerDVD, but this one wouldn’t open.

This also works for WinAmp, btw–Options>Preferences>Video. And it works well with screencapping utilities.

Thanks again!

u are great help man without u i think i’ll just give up on finding a solution. thx a lot

It still doesn’t work for me! Please help! Iv done everything that has been said does it matter what type of the disc it is?
Please help me!

Thank you so much!!
I really didn’t want to download a lot of programs.

Jenosis

Thank you for this advice and for going through the work to figure it out. The closest I came was the advice to reset the “video acceleration” bar to none, which is a complete overkill versus your solution. For those who are lazy, here is the Player Help description of the overlay feature that you turn off:
“Enables the graphics/video display card to display and scale video from an alternate source on top of the image displayed on the monitor. If you select this option and overlay hardware is available, video is displayed using the overlay hardware of the video card.”
Seems like most of us neither have the hardware, nor have the use for this feature at all. Thanks again!

OH man, the small trick that save the world.

Believe it or not. This question stumped onto my head about two minutes ago.

Off I go onto google and to find this. Amazing.

Thx.

Thankyou, Thankyou, - I was watching CBT Nuggets and was trying to copy some of the screens for my study notes. I thought I was going crazy as it was linking parts of the screen shots to the media, I tried all the options, paste specails, editing tools and even tried using different media players. I don’t no how I missed this one or why MS has it so tucked away. Big ups to you

Oh my God something that actually works for a change… THANKS!

thanks sooooooo much, now i have lotsa lovely ff7 movie pics

This is the first time I have ever seen this, and it really works!

Very Nice !

I really appreciate it! I was able to get my old Windows Media Player to do screenshots, but when I got a new computer, a new OS, and a new version of WMP, I was getting frustrated. Thanks! :o)

OMG I LOVE YOU. !

Thank you for being Google-able!

You made my night when I was trying to pull screenshots off of a few dance videos for my blog. I don’t see the purpose of overlays anyhow.

Thanks again,
Karen

(PS: tracked my blog post back to you)

Thanxs for the tip.it was very useful

This has puzzled me for such a long time, you have the most utter determination on finding the right answer to questions

I have tried all of the abover and i still am only getting a black screen…it’s driving me insane… i have WMP 9 and nothing works..

For WMP 9: Unclick: Use overlays,Use YUV flipping, Use RGB flipping and use primary surfaces. Hope that helps.

Your a champion!

Helped me out alot thanx!

Just a word on the Ctrl-I feature:

It works on some files and not on others. One of the tech geniuses could tell you why, but I have no trouble using WMP 10 to caputre DVD video, but it doesn’t work on .WMV files at all.

Thank you for the WinMP tip! I was about to download screencap programs but good thing i found your blog! do you just love google hehehe

Wow! Works great (I have XP and WMP V10). Especially the “Ctrl and I” function since it means I don’t have to do any cropping (which I will need to do if I use the screen capture method).

Also, note that MS Movie Maker has a “Take Picture From Preview” function under the Tools menu which does pretty much the same thing.
Thanks

Thanks alot, worked wonders.

Hmmm… these packages exist for a reason. So although this simple settings tweak will allow about 2% of people to capture videos, for most people it makes no difference at all.

Thank you SO much! It worked perfectly! I’ve only been trying to figure out how to cap from WMP for like a year and a half now

Truuly the best hint i ever seen in internet, simple, easy, and work!!.
De veeerdad la mejor pista que jamás eh visto en internet, simple, fácil, y funciona!!

Bueno con la pista del overlay, probe en otros reproductores, y para el Media Player Classic (ya se k tiene la opción Ctrl-8 pero no queria activarse y el Imp Pant no funcionaba) se van a View>Options>Playback>Output y cambian donde dice DirectShow Video a VMR9 (windowed) si tienen el DirectX9 instalado, no eh probado si funciona cambiando en “VMR 7/9 & DirectX7/9″ a “Use regular offscreen plain surfaces”

Well with the hint of the overlay, i test it in other players, and for de Media Player Classic (i know the thing of the Ctrl-8 but for my dont work and the Imp Pant dont work either) you go to View>Options>Playback>Output and change where say “Direct Show Video” to “VMR9 (windowed) if you have DirectX9 installed, i havent test if work changing in “VMR 7/9 & DirectX7/9″ to “Use regular offscreen plain surfaces”

Thank you Very Much
Muchas Gracias
Arigatou Gozaimasu

Didn’t work at all for me. I even tried all the suggestions in the follow-up posts. Oh well…

Man, you are genius!! I need this so much for my website!! This is excelent advice!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

I LOVE YOU AS WELL!!!!

It was so weird. Yesterday I was doing screen captures perfectly fine and then suddenly I started getting shots a few seconds too late or I’d capture another shot and it would replace the previous shot in Photoshop CS before I even opened a new file and pasted (in the previous opened document) and then - and this is really weird - if I just let the video keep running - switched over to photoshop - the document would be PLAYING the video clip IN PHOTOSHOP!! I could NOT believe my eyes.

So I would pause Media Player and print screen and then open new doc. and paste and if I would try to resize the window - the area that was the media player would move around overtop the area that was the image of the video (in photoshop) so I KNEW this was a layer issue as well. And I looked through the preferences - I’ve been up for two days looking around - but I MISSED the overlay tab!

It was simple and I don’t know why I didn’t see that box - if I had it would have made perfect sense to me as well. I was looking for something that would “lock” media player or something to the video because I could tell it was floating over the video by the way it was displaying in Photoshop.

Very strange - but I guess it’s suppose to work that way - now I’m going to find out why Photoshop does this because I’m sure there is a very cool reason.

I also tried Control L (or whatever it was - it’s gone from my memory right at this moment) and it didn’t work for me either - so I guess different things work for different people’s computers.

But THANK YOU - I was going mental!!!

Sorry so long!

LuCynda

Thank for the great tip, it works perfectly only for Video CD (VCD) movie. But it did NOT work for me when I played a DVD movie, I pasted the capture image to the same MS WORD file, this image was playing as Windows Media Player on playing, when I closed the WMP, the pasted image became black screen image. Since we use DVD more than VCD nowadays. Can anyone help me to solve this problem. Many thanks in advance.

Andi

The easiest thing to do is to import the WMV file into the program Movie Maker, and cap from there. It’s included in most Windows computers.

I read this post, and tried this method to get a screen capture from a DVD. It did not work.

I tried this same method again, using a normal *AVI file on my computer. This time it did work.

It seems like other people who have responded have the same problem:

This method works for normal files on your hard drive, but not for taking screen captures of DVDs.

I have to say…from my heart…thank you. This will be instrumental in helping to torture a coworker!

thankyou tahnkyou thankyou.

i was going mad at the thought of a virus or something, i tried everything from software to hardware and still no luck. This very very simple option is fantastic. Many thanks again

Thanks a lot mate - i cant believe something simple like this has annoyed so many other ppl lol

all i wanted was a screen shot for my msn and it was so annoying! anyway thanks - simple , easy instructions - voila

altho the one thing you might need to pointout is (as stupid as it may seem) how to find the tool bar! as i couldnt find it until i madly clicked mediaplayer and it came up with another menu!

anyway less of the moan, thanks for the help on your site

thats an wesome discovery.. this overlay shits troubling in bsplayer too..

THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

THANK YOU!!!

Thank You!!!! You made my day!!!

OMG THANK YOU SOOOOOOO MUCH!!!

CTRL+I FOR THE WIN

Awesome! Thanks!!!

For those who say it still won’t work, and since others have been offering other solutions as well…

What has worked for me for a long while, annoying though it is, is to open up two videos at the same time. Two different ones, or the same one, doesn’t matter as long as you have two videos loaded into two different windows. Then when you print screen, the second one opened will always capture fine. It’s worked for me in WMP, Winamp, DivX… everything.

Speechless I am. I’m not only impressed with the simplicity of the fix, and your generocity in sharing, but with all the great compliments everyone has.

Well done to everyone!

Hi there, i have a new laptop with windows 2000 loaded, earlier i have used CTRL+I while i had my desk top, and it worked fine, however, the same function with on the laptop is not activated, i am wondering why.
however, i have irfan view with me, and it has this cool feature of screen capture. by pressing “C”. a separate window pops up to ask whether we want the entire screen, or the foreground or the foreground with the client area. select the last option i.e. with foreground with client area and press start, and press ctrl +f11, thats it. (hope u guys understood what i meant) anyway, please download irfanview and it is very easy.

this saved my day. Thanks!

thanks for the tip
But this really reduces the video quality. IS there any way we can maintain the vidoe quality when we uncheck ‘User overlay’

regards

you the man !!!!!!!!!!! i just couldn’t do it.. and thought there has to be a fast way and easy way to do this..

you the man..

phamster

thanks SO MUCH!

Keep up the good job!
Thanks a million
Wilfredo

Thatks for the incredible tip on how to get genuine, clean screengrabs from WMP…
Before i stumbled on this little tip, i’d use the client area capture function in ArcSoft’s Photo Studio, but the images always came out looking jagged and had artifacting in them.
And also, i noticed by doing this tweak to the setting, the films themselves no longer have that odd rendering with color shading and play more smoothly.
Thanks a whole bunch for this tip! Mucho appreciados!

THANKS SOOOOOOO MUCH!!! iv been trying to do this for ages and told someone and they showed me yr site, yr brilliant!!
thankyou!! xxx

I’m one more person you’ve helped a lot with this tip just leaving a thank you note! Much appreciated!

BRILLIANT!!! At first I was trying all the different things that were suggested on this page, but it wasn’t until Dan(http://www.blogger.com/profile/5212233) pointed out that “you gotta uncheck the “Use overlays” box under “Video Acceleration” rather than the one under “DVD video” to do the trick”….now I can screen capture to my heart’s content!! Oh I’m so happy
~Caitlin H.

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could not get any of the above tips to work, including unchecking the overlay options in Windows Media Player, I tried everything in several configurations. Eventually I checked in the VLC Media Player options, and if you go

Settings > Preferences > General Settings > Video > and then make sure the “Overlay video output” option isn’t checked. (You might need to check the “Advanced options” box in the bottom right hand corner of the panel to see all the options.)

Voila! I can now take screencaps from all kinds of media files including DVDs with the PrtSc or Alt+PrtSc options.

you. are. a. god.

sure, many peeps probably know this method already, but they don’t seem to share it! thanks heaps~~~~~

Thanks dude you’re the BEST!

Any idea how we can improve image quality?

Please email me at lawnn_mower@yahoo.com.

Thanks man and keep up the fantastic work!

Awwwwww shucks! YOU ARE THE BOSS! THANK YOU!

It may depend on your video hardware (card) as well. On my laptop (which has a Radeon 9000 display adapter), I wasn’t able to slide the Video Acceleration in WMP 9 under W2K - it was greyed out. I was able to acheive a PrintScreen capture of the video only after unchecking all options to do with Video Acceleration. Later I discovered that if I pressed the ‘Restore Defaults’ button beside the ‘Advanced’ button, I had control of the Video Acceleration slider again and with it at ‘None’ I could get a capture.
However, I can’t get Ctrl-I to work for the life of me - nothing happens (I tried the capital I, the small i, the small l, and the number 1!)

Great!!
I thought it was a protection system so you could not easisly ’steal’ images of possibly copyrighted videos.

Thanks! This really helped!

great! this is what i’ve been lookin’ for… thanx man

I can’t get Ctrl-I to work for wmv

other formats can

why

i tried this and i can get screen shots kinda but when i move the captured image around it changes as if it is folowing the video so eg if i had a whole face and move the picture down the page i end up with the bottom half of the face! ne help pls?????

THANKYOU SO MUCH!!! i was stuck on trying to screenshot ever since afternoon… i was able to capture a few of the screenshots + save them + there was no blackness @ all…. then awhile later… when i try to screenshot again… it didnt work.
^_^ now… after i read this… i m able to screenshot again!!! :):):):)

truly excellent!!!! bookmarked forever or the users at my site!!! thank you for taking time to figure this out!!!

Are you surprised? It’s something called XVideo (or Xv) in X Window world (found on popular Unix like distros like Linux), and also called “video overlay”, but not the name is the important thing but the fact that modern video cards have hardware acceleration ability to scale an image and/or convert colour space info (like directly accepted YUV data instead of RGB for example). This feature is designed for displaying displaying video with high performance and quality (scaling). It’s quite normal that you can’t see it on a normal screenshot, since the content of the WMP window is NOT present in the video ram for real either! The video RAM contains only a surface with “colour key” (like some black or blue, or something depends on the software solution). The solution on every platform (even on Linux for example with many open source players) is switching output not to use this video overlay unit (or Xv, or whatever). Than it becomes slower (or at least requires much more CPU power) and maybe uglier (no smooth scale algorithm in the player for example), but the content is shown as “normal” video data.

Thanks a lot for this useful tips

I’m still having difficulties. I’m doing everything. But I can’t seem to save the picture. When I do that… I only get a black screen.

I can screenshot from music videos but not DVDs… This is very annoying!

Thank you

You are awesome.

Thanx u very much…u posted really a good thing.

Um, well….ahh……you………. see……..I…….I’m not…………sure……..THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!!!

THANK YOU!!!! That is exactly what I was looking for! You are great!

Thanks a million. Tried it and it works perfect. Way cool!!
aweysham@yahoo.com

Thanks man, really helped me out here!

Cool! I’ve been trying to capture from WMP for the longest time. Thank you for the tip!

Thanks!!!!
Thanks so much for posting this, I’ve been trying to do this and it never worked.

your information worked a treat. Thanks very much for going to the trouble of posting this information. Much Appreciated

Excellent work!
Thank you all!

Nice, but why would you even consider using Windows media player to capture a screenshot when there is VLC player.
No damn complicated stuff. It plays pretty much everything and capturing a screenshot is very easy

Excellent! I’ve always wondered how to capture from WMP! You are awesome! [bows] Thank you. 8]

does this work on shows like on mtv

Hey yo, for all the people out there that can’t use this method becouse it des not work…maybe you should buy a digital camera and make a picture of your display…That will work on everybody’s computers…Don’t botter to thank me… :))

YOU ARE A GENIUS! THANK YOU! Like you, I tried almost everything. Didn’t want to pay for something that I would eventually figure out myself and after hours and hours of trying all, I finally gave up for the night. THEN, I searched for capturing images and FOUND YOU. Just how lucky can one get!

THANK YOU FOR TEACHING ME SOMETHING NEW TODAY!

OMG, thank you so much for this, i have been wondering for ages i a tried everything you did, i didnt think it was possible, you have been a massive help thanks!

The print screen/alt+ print screen, ctrl + I and the “capture image” from the DVD Features of WMP v10 itself used to work just fine in my laptop. But suddenly, I can’t use any of it anymore. I’ve read and done every suggestion I found in this site and others, which was quite a lot of work and time by the way, but nothing, absolutely nothing worked. I even did Display-Properties-Settings-Advanced-Troubleshoot-Hardware Acceleration-drag slider all the way to None-click Ok. But when I tried playing a file in the WMP, the screen was just black. There was no video but there was audio going on.

I feel as though I’m being punished by the Windows Media Player god or something. -_- Anyway, I’m willing to try other suggestions if anyone has one so please just e-mail me.(blusirius@yahoo.com).

It’s a good thing InterVideo WinDVD hasn’t forsaken me. It lets me capture images with no hassle although I still have to covert the image format from bitmap to jpeg.

I desperately want my WMP v10 to do the things it used to do for me.  Please help, anyone? Someone?

Such a simple solution. Thank you for making my day better (and I guess thanks to Google too).

Thanks a million!

THANK YOU I LOVE YOU!!!! You have no idea how long I needed this answer.

You are a genius man.I loved it

One problem with Ctrl+I is that it distorts the aspect ratio :/

Nothing worked for me as I try to capture stills from a school talent show DVD, I have WMP 10 with Windows XP. I’ve read through all the suggestions and tried them to no avail. I can use print screen and then paste but it can’t be cropped because it keeps moving around as I try to crop. Very disappointing.

I’ve been looking to find this out for many months now. Thanks

This is one of the best days of my life. This tip is a godsend.

I’ve just shouted to the rest of the office “Yipee I’ve done it!!”
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I wasn’t going to be defeated so you’ve helped me out big time.

Very useful…….. Thank you

this really was useful for me!!
big thx for you!

keep up posting these kinda stuff

Thanks a lot! I used a program called Hypersnap DX for capturing screenshots from Windows Media Player but now I see that with the help this little tip you can do the job by yourself for free. It saves you lots of time, too. Thanks a lot one more time!

None of them work for me =/

It still brings up either a black screen, or the moving video if its still playing. Ctrl + I does nothing at all either.

OMG!! How friggin’ easy was that…I mean…really. Thanks!!

It’s very good
Excellent.
Many many thanx.
Hav a nice Day!!!

It worked. Many thanks.

Windows Media Player 11 has a screen capture feature but it does not tell you where it placed the captured screen.

Anyone know where Windows Media Player 11 places the screen capture?

it used to work! Now, it doesn’t! its so strange, erm help?

Where do you go to view the images afterwards????

THANK U SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH

Don’t know if this is mentioned yet, but none of those methods worked for you, you can just use Media Player Classic (google to download it)

Open the videos using this media player and the option to save image (or thumbnails) is under the file menu.

maybe you should add that this (ctrl-i) works for .mpg but NOT for .wma

Thank you so much! I was going crazy trying to figure this out.

Dear Sir,

today i try to capture some snaps from my DVD, i played the DVD and did pause, then i pressed ‘print screen’ the i opened paint brush, then i paste the picture, then i saved bitmap format. then i try open the file (photo) its come blank. please advise me how to do?

i am using windows media player 10

thanks sir

dear sir,

i forgot to tell, VCD capture is ok, but DVD capture is not working the same way.

Kannan

I used this page to edit the settings in Nero Showtime - those of you who have it and had NO LUCK with the stuff listed above:

What worked for me was as follows:

1. Open Nero Showtime, which comes with the full version of (purchased) Nero.
2. Preferences (the little hammer icon)
3. Video: change video mode to “no interlacing”
4. Video quality: select the “off” circle
5. Play DVD, press the camera icon to capture (assuming you have already gone in and selected a place for the frames to be saved to)

*please note that “print screen” still results in a blank image. You’ll have to use Nero’s capture device to be successful. I also recommend Nero in general, as the software has burned CD and DVDs for me flawlessly.

Thanks a lot!!!

To quote a previous comment…
“THANK YOU!!!!

After a lot of swearing at WMP about not letting me do a screen capture, I hit google and found your site.

That did the trick, thanks!! ”

I couldn’t have worded it better myself.

Thank you, thank you! I needed to capture some screenshots of stills from a number of videos to paste them into a Microsoft Word document to send to a web designer, and I had just about given up trying to do it. I tried it in Windows Media and RealPlayer but I couldn’t capture the images in either one. Then I found this web page, cleared the checkbox you suggested and it now works! Thank you very much for providing this information, it’s extremely helpful.

Thanks for that, it works fine. It will save me using Vlc Media Player to do the same job

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