How to Capture Screenshots from Windows Media Player
Grabing a screenshot from Window Media Player is not so easy as it seems. Yesterday I tried to use the extremely useful screen capture by ‘Print Screen Key’ to try to capture a wmv running file on my Windows media player classic V10. But whenever I tried to use the print screen, a blank image was captured from the windows media player.
Screenshots from Windows Media Player
Then I thought maybe the running video was posing a problem with capturing a frame. So I paused the movie and tried the print screen technique. But still got a blank screen.
Then I tried to capture paused and running movies in full screen (Full screen shortcut – using Alt+Enter). But again no luck.
So I decided to tweak some advanced options of Window media player. After lot of different combinations of tweaks, still had no luck.
Looking to buy a professional multimedia software to do the job? There are several shareware and paid professional image capture software available which can do the job. But why should I pay when I should try to get a freeware or get a tweak to fix it myself. I tried to see how professional paid software’s for this worked, but I was disappointed the moment I captured the screenshot. It had a big logo on every image it captured. Of course it was shareware and you needed to pay to remove the text messages.
Free simple way to capture Images from Windows Media Player
- Open Window Media Player
- Then go to Tools | Options
- In Options, select the Performance Tab
- Way below you click on the Advanced Button
- Uncheck “Use Overlays’
- Click Ok
- And you are ready.
Now run your movie in any size or screen resolution. Use the standard ‘Print Screen Key’ Method as described and you have captured a snapshot from your favourite movie on windows media player without using any special multimedia software. Enjoy!
More Ways to Capture Screenshots from WMP
Update: Some users have given excellent suggestions in the Comments which provide an alternate method if this does not work.
- Instead of the Print Screen Method – try pressing “CTRL+I”. This pops up a save as window after capturing the screenshot
- After you open Window Media Player. Go to Tools | Options | Performance Tab. You will see a picture similar to the first image above. Reduce the “Video acceleration” from the default Full to None, click ok and then close down media player. Next open the file you want to take a still using the Print Screen method – from press ALT and the PrintScrn key to copy an image of media player to the clipboard.
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 voilą! 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!