Screencapping Programs?

[BeardedHoplite]

I typically use Windows Media Player to get my caps, but recently I've had to abandon a few movies I want to make pages for because when I pause, the cap gets all blurry and unusable.
So I wondering what programs do you guys use? I got a backlog of films I want to make pages.

[zackmann08]

VLC! VLC all the way man! Also, check out Ben41's page. He has a bit of info about how he caps but VLC is your program.

-Z

[BeardedHoplite]

Is there a way to get VLC to convert .pngs to .jpgs? Since it only poops out .png-s.

[zackmann08]

Originally Posted by BeardedHoplite

Is there a way to get VLC to convert .pngs to .jpgs? Since it only poops out .png-s.

Yes. Somewhere in the preferences you can set it to jpg.

[Ben41]

As it says on my page, you can use Fast Stone Image Viewer or Microsoft Picture Manager to crop and convert our images to JPG. When you use JPG's on VLC, the quality is much lower.

[BeardedHoplite]

Alright, I grabbed VLC, but how do I configure the screen-capturing? Do I need that Stone Image Viewer or does VLC come with one?

EDIT: Nevermind, I got it. Would Paint work to crop and convert? I really don't want to install another program.

[Evil Tim]

Originally Posted by BeardedHoplite

EDIT: Nevermind, I got it. Would Paint work to crop and convert? I really don't want to install another program.

Paint's JPEG output is horrible, you're better with something like GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) or photoshop.

[Gunman5]

Hi, I'm one of the newer users on here and like some, I typically take my pictures and screencaps either from a quicktime file or a YouTube video since the copyright protection disallows for me to do a Shift+Command+4 snapshot but overall I find that the best way if you get the video in fullscreen mode and take a picture with that key combo.

[Evil Tim]

As a note: nobody should discuss how to take screenshots from blu-ray discs, since almost all ways to do so can also be used to pirate blu-ray discs, and the industry is pretty sharp on sending cease and desists to anyone discussing how to do that.

Best you can say for that is that older blu-ray players have screenshot functions. Most new ones have the functionality gutted out of them to stop people using a macro to screencap every frame and them stitch them back together into a movie.