"Print screen" won't print image from Media Player

[leoblob]

I'm trying to do a simple screen capture from a video that plays perfectly in Windows Media Player. I pause the video where I want, hit the "print screen" key, and I get an image that contains everything on my screen... EXCEPT the "live" area inside Windows Media Player is completely black.

I have ancient WIN3.1 program that still does an excellent job of making a PCX screen capture... but it has the same exact problem. It captures the screen perfectly, except the area inside Windows Media Player is black.

I don't think this is a Windows Media Player problem, since I've tried screen captures playing a DVD under the commercial program PowerDVD and again the live area is black (but the rest of the screen capture is perfect).

Any ideas here?

[Dodge DeBoulet]

The problem is that the video is an "overlay" and not actually part of the screen buffer that the PrintScreen function has access to. You won't be able to grab it that way.

If you have WinDVD, it will play many types of media files and has a built-in frame capture facility designed to do what you want. Other software may have the same feature.

[ZaZ]

You can do it in VideoLAN too, which is free. You have to disable the overylay. As I recall and it's been a while, it's in the preferences.

[leoblob]

Thanks for the info

I do use VideoLAN and while poking around for that "disable overlay" setting (which I found) I also found a button for taking a screen capture.

And thanks for the explanation about overlays. I had a feeling it was something like that, but couldn't quite figure it out.

PowerDVD also has a screen capture button, but I've never tried to play anything with it other than DVDs...