Why VCDs are better than DVDs

[triskellian]

I can take screencaps from VCDs on my laptop; it won't let me from DVDs. This post would be a GIP, except that I'm worried about possible spoilerphobes (looks questioningly at lathany). The icon in question doesn't contain any plot spoilers, it's just spoilery about the schtick of "Smile Time".

Comments

[al-fruitbat.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're prepared to accept the loss of quality, sound and so on just so you can take screenies from an apple laptop, I suppose so. My 'puter has no problems taking grabs of DVDs...

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

No spoilers if avoidable.

Incidentally, if you can't screengrab DVDs on your laptop that says more about the playback software you're using than DVDs themselves.

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Once I disabled the Hardware Acceleration (with that enabled, I get get gibberish), image capture's easy.

[triskellian]

OK, I won't use the icon yet then.

And I've now found out how to get screengrabs with the terminal. Thanks for prompting me to go off and find out why!

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Screen capture from apples is easy: Shift-apple-4 allows you to draw a box on screen and its contents are automatically saved as a picture on the desktop. To maximise the image resolution, set the screen to the maximum possible resolution. Alternatively, shift-apple-3 will capture the whole screen. If this doesn't work, I can only assume apple have specifically disabled it in their DVD player. Although if you pause the DVD, switch to the finder and then do the capture, that shsould be foolproof.

[triskellian]

Nope, none of those work when the DVD player is on, even if it's paused. The only way I've found to do it (other than by getting new software) is from the Terminal, but that works just fine, so I'm happy ;-)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

To maximise the image resolution

DVD tends to be 640x480...