Am I not allowed to take screen captures from films I watch? Does anyone know how I should do this? I’m having some issues (but please realize: I’ve never taken a screen capture in my life, so it could just be my own lack of mental faculties at work here. Wouldn’t be the first time.) But screen shots, screen captures … can I take them? I’ve done a bit of surfing and it seems like for some reason it might be a bit more complicated than I thought. But I need to do some screen grabs. So badly. You don’t even know.
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Have you tried:
pausing the video
open the Grab application that’s in your (main drive/Application/Utility) folder
under the Capture menu, use Selection. You drag the arrow across the scene and it captures the picture
It’s been a while, but that’s how I did it last.
I think it only becomes an issue if you start trying to SELL the screencaps you make. I think it really all depends. I know of websites that are nothing but screencaps, but its “public” property and the webmaster has to make all the proper acknowledgements of copyright.
Grab deliberately doesn’t work with DVDs. I usually use Capture Me, which lets you grab any section of the screen you want, but doesn’t work on all Macs. DVD Capture should work if Capture Me doesn’t, but it grabs the whole screen, forcing you to crop the resulting image in Preview.
If neither of these work, you can use any screen-capture utility if you watch the movie with VLC. Unfortunately, VLC is a terrible program for watching DVDs…
-j
I like SnapNDrag. You can play your DVD with Apple’s DVD Player, pause at the point you want, then launch SnapNDrag to capture either the entire screen, a particular window, or a selection from the screen. It’s freeware at http://www.yellowmug.com/snapndrag/ . If your OS is pre 10.3.9, you can go to Version Tracker (www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19919) to get versions that work with the earlier OS.
Sheila — Screen capture on Mac: Command (apple key) and Shift together, then hit the number 3.
I recently did one all by myself.
tracey – so I pause the movie? I also have a “stop” command – which gets a clearer picture.
Okay – that didn’t work, tracey – I got a little pop-up saying “Screen grabs are unavailable during DVD playback. Please quit DVD player first” – which, uhm, makes no sense!!!
So mutecypher (uhm that’s quite a handle ya got there! ha!!) – the snap n’ drag seems to work perfectly. I have experimented and I seem to be able to do what I need.
Thanks all!!
Oops, sorry, Sheila! That does work … I guess just for still images.
I’d suggest contacting or commenting to http://www.cinemarati.org — he does screen caps contests on a regular basis, and the images he posts are beautiful.
you’re right to not want to be limited to publicity stills…
Glad to be of service, Red.
If you have the time (and the inclination), The Missing Manual series by David Pogue is an excellent reference for the Mac OS: detailed, but accessable. Be sure you get the version for your particular OS.
You only need SnapnDrag for DVD screen captures. The Shift-command-3 works in every other situation for a full screen capture. Shift-command-4 will bring up a little cross-hair cursor that you can click and drag over an area to do a capture of only a portion of the display.