Is there anyway to capture a screenshot of a streaming movie, or iTunes trailer played on your mac? I've tried using Grab, Shift, Command and 3 and quicktime screen recording, but always end up with the movie portion being blanked out. I assume its because of protected video settings?
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Screenshot capture of movie is blank
- Thread starter Cagle
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I can easily screen-shoot a frame from a trailer from Apple played in QT Player X via CMD+SHIFT+4 > Spacebar.
What exactly do you want to shoot?
What exactly do you want to shoot?
thanks, I tried your suggestion but the resulting screenshot still came out blank, just a grey/white checkered pattern
it's a trailer I have opened in iTunes, I just wanted to grab a fame of it as a png.
Is the trailer also available on http://trailers.apple.com? If so, try it there, as it opens the trailer in QT Player.
nope, its an old movie, but I thought iTunes used quicktime player to play stuff, so i'd have thought it would work (your keyboard commands worked)
What exact movie is it? And did CMD+SHIF+4 > SPACEBAR worked, though CMD+SHIFT+3 did not?
edward scissorhands - both commands worked, yours brought up a crosshair which let me select part of the screen and capture, the command, shift 3 just took a snap of the whole screen - both captures came out blank wherever the trailer was.
Yep, tried it too, didn't work. And the trailers I found online were 4:3 and of abysmal quality, but I didn't look that thorough.
I could however record the trailer via ScreenFlow, it stutters a bit, but I could upload the 134 MB to 2Shared or somewhere else if you want. You could then play the file in Movist and create screenshots via CMD+I.
Copyright / Fair Use Issue
You may have encountered a copyright / fair use issue with the protected content from which you want to make a screen capture. The laws and standards for fair use vary by country and the content owners and software implementers of course must try to account for all that. If this turns out to be the issue and you have done the legal research to prove what you want to do is allowed under the principle of fair use (which exists in the US and many countries but may not exist where you are) then you may want to investigate using software with a different implementation of the protection schemes that will allow you to make the screen capture. One piece of software which may work in your area from a technical standpoint would be the VLC Player. http://videolan.org/
I am not a lawyer nor am I an expert on the VLC Player. If you have further legal or technical questions I will in all likelihood not be able to help further.
You may have encountered a copyright / fair use issue with the protected content from which you want to make a screen capture. The laws and standards for fair use vary by country and the content owners and software implementers of course must try to account for all that. If this turns out to be the issue and you have done the legal research to prove what you want to do is allowed under the principle of fair use (which exists in the US and many countries but may not exist where you are) then you may want to investigate using software with a different implementation of the protection schemes that will allow you to make the screen capture. One piece of software which may work in your area from a technical standpoint would be the VLC Player. http://videolan.org/
I am not a lawyer nor am I an expert on the VLC Player. If you have further legal or technical questions I will in all likelihood not be able to help further.
Yes, it's a DRM thing. I got the same when trying to take a screen shot of a dvd in DVDPlayer...and it was a homemade one!
thats very kind of you but I'm about 44 minutes away from obtaining the hd version from a different source
all I wanted was one frame and they've forced me to steal the whole movie!
thats very kind of you but I'm about 44 minutes away from obtaining the hd version from a different source
I could give you the frame, if you tell me what time the frame occurs at, but I guess the illegally obtainable HD version has much better quality than the SD version of the trailer.
Anyway, as mentioned before, Movist and VLC Player can make screenshots of the current frame (wait till the pause sign has disappeared though) without the window borders and such.
Good luck.
that would be good but I don't see a clear way to download the trailer from iTunes for playback in the vlc player. i also don't see a way to get the URL of the trailer for steaming playback in vlc
I just went to the iTunes Store, downloaded a free 1080p trailer in iTunes, right-clicked on the trailer and chose Show in Finder, then right-clicked on the file in Finder and chose Open with: VLC Player... then was able to take a screen shot. It's really quite simple.that would be good but I don't see a clear way to download the trailer from iTunes for playback in the vlc player. i also don't see a way to get the URL of the trailer for steaming playback in vlc
Also, for the specific movie you mentioned, I played the trailer in iTunes and took a screen capture while it was playing. It worked fine.
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i'm sorry I just don't see a download trailer option for this particular movie, maybe it's because it's not one of the current releases, all I see is a play trailer button, which opens up a playback window, which contains just simple playback controls. i see on recent releases they have a list below the movie of different trailers (720p, 1080p etc) with a get trailer button next to them, but nothing like that is found on this movie's iTunes page.
ha, thats what I did but every screenshot resulted in a blank image; I guess you're not bound by the same copy protection laws that I am?
LOL! Yeah, people tell me I'm a "special case!"
With the trailer playing, click on your Desktop, so your Menu Bar shows "Finder" instead of "iTunes" in the upper left corner. Now press Command-Shift-4 and drag from your Desktop over the iTunes trailer window, so you capture part of the Desktop and part of the iTunes window. See if that captures the trailer screen.
Mister GGJstudios has Mac OS X 10.5.8 and probably an ancient iTunes version as well. Maybe Apple didn't put such effort into older releases of iTunes and Mac OS X, if you, Cagle have a more recent version, as I assume.
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That does not work in 10.6.8 and iTunes 10.5.x.
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LOL! Yeah, people tell me I'm a "special case!"
With the trailer playing, click on your Desktop, so your Menu Bar shows "Finder" instead of "iTunes" in the upper left corner. Now press Command-Shift-4 and drag from your Desktop over the iTunes trailer window, so you capture part of the Desktop and part of the iTunes window. See if that captures the trailer screen.
That does not work in 10.6.8 and iTunes 10.5.x.
You're quite right. I just tested on 10.6.8 and it doesn't work. Yet another reason why I haven't found any benefit to upgrading!
Yeah, you must be loving 10.7 then.
Maybe I should revert back to 10.5.8, that I can upgrade to 10.6 some months later, thus I feel like I have a newer OS, as I hardly find fault with 10.6, though the recent SecUpdate was bit mean.
And take a look at FS, there is a thread waiting for you.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=edward+scissorhands+trailer
Can't you use one of the trailers on YouTube? They won't be DRM cockblocked and I'm sure at least one is of decent quality.
Can't you use one of the trailers on YouTube? They won't be DRM cockblocked and I'm sure at least one is of decent quality.