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Video-Copy Protection? |
Light-of-Aurora
Grand Admiral
Joined: December 01, 2003
Posts: 602
From: NJ, USA
|  Posted: 2006-01-26 17:12
Ah, quick question..
Watching a video file [AVI], and tried to take a screenshot. But, alas, when I close the video player [RealPlayer], the image turns into a black rectangle.
I've tried taking screenshots with the 'standard issue' alt+prntscrn, and with a program calked SnagIt, but it seems I cannot take a screenshot.
How can I get around this? Or should I not try getting around this?
I'm guessing it's some sort of copy prevention device, but I wouldn't know :/
Suggestions?
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Axalon
Vice Admiral
Joined: June 15, 2003
Posts: 442
From: East Windsor, NJ, USA
| Posted: 2006-01-26 17:21
No, its not that its copy protected, but that the video uses hardware acceleration and buggers up screenshots. You may notice that if you pause the movie, take a screenshot, paste into MS Paint, and move the screenshot to match up with the movie player, you can actually *see* the movie in the region of the screenshot where the movie was. I had the same problem. Oddly enough, Fraps can take screenshots of videos properly (at least with Windows Media Player), so I would try that.
www.fraps.com
However, Quicktime doesn't seem to have that problem. Hope that helps...
-Axalon
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Light-of-Aurora
Grand Admiral
Joined: December 01, 2003
Posts: 602
From: NJ, USA
| Posted: 2006-01-26 17:34
Much Thx for the help 
I'll try it out tomorrow.
*Displays thanks slightly short of profuse gratitude*
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2006-01-26 18:24
Windows uses WMV acceleration if the hardware card supports it. Most cards (80% of them), nowerdays come with a little chip on the card to help with DVD playing and WMV, and such (WMV stands for Windows Media Video).
Basicly, any video played using windows will run the video through the hardware. It renders the video after the screen (hence when you sometimes move a playing video around the desktop, you can see it lag, or stay in it's old place untill you release the mouse button). This is why when you try to get a screendump (screenshot), it will render the desktop area, and not the video that the graphics card is processing.
I seem to remember reading somewhere about enabling windows to take screendumps of everything would make the GUI run extremely slow because of the way it owuld have to be updated...
Anyway, fraps works by getting a graphics card dump of the screen, instead of windows doing it. So that'll sort your problems out like Ax said.
- Jack
[ This Message was edited by: BackSlash *Jack* on 2006-01-26 18:24 ]
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Eledore Massis [R33]
Grand Admiral
Templar Knights
Joined: May 26, 2002
Posts: 2694
From: tsohlacoLocalhost
| Posted: 2006-01-27 02:20
Quote:
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On 2006-01-26 18:24, BackSlash *Jack* wrote:
Windows uses WMV acceleration if the hardware card supports it. Most cards (80% of them), nowerdays come with a little chip on the card to help with DVD playing and WMV, and such (WMV stands for Windows Media Video).
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lol i didn't know about the dvd support chip. tankyou for telling that.
and ill add my knowlage to this tread.
video in old times used the OS and a sort intigrated code(c) to extract video formats.
this was kind of slow and not verry high quality. (just look at a webcam, most of the usb webcams stil use OS deliverd codec's. Hench why you only can find windows drivers for a webcam.)
the wanted to impruve that to skip the OS from interfering whit playback, but stil needed the OS to be able to control the video playback. (pause stop ff etc.)
this is the beginning of the real world of codec's.
the basic function about a codec is translating and controling the video stream, but some have got extra functions.
what the do is the load them selfs in the ram, the ask the OS were is the video stream located. (hdd/dvd) than the load a small buffer and begin using the CPU to decode the video stream to raw format. this raw info is loaded back in to the video card ram buffer. (in the old time it was loaded back in to normal ram were the OS would send it to the graphic card.)
here the video card proccesses the raw code to visable formats.
so if you want to make a screenshot of a video file you wil need to force either the codec to instruct to send a copy of the raw format to the ram.
but somthimes this option dous not exist in a codec. than you wil need to force a backload from the vga card. this is mostly done by a programm or plugin/building option in the player currently controling the video stream.
(I left the player out of it becous the function of the player is mearly to controle the playback of the video stream, communicate with the codec and send information to the video card were the stream must be placed on the screen.)
my 2 cents.
p.s. last time i looked this up was in mid 2004 if things have changed.
blame microsoft (joke)
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Ragglock
Marshal
BIOnics Industry Syndicate
Joined: May 29, 2001
Posts: 1955
From: Denmark
| Posted: 2006-01-27 03:48
single screen inmatrix Zoom player
btw dont for gods sake use real player for watching vids there is better programs out there
want to take a bunch of them for contact sheet etc .... Imagegrabber imagegrabber
simple load vid file take screen shoot
Zoom framegrab key: Alt-F (remeber to define where to put them the config screen of the player )
and for all the above to work you need to make sure the codecs for the video file are installed.
recomend using:
K-Lite Codec pack all in one installer of the most common codecs around incl an excelent version of mediaplayer classic.
btw trubble finding out what codecs are used and /or installed on your system in the same pakkage is Gspot good for testing out your aud/videofiles.
and dont be afraid to install this because there is options to install just what you need from the installer.
if you dont have it get it 
or the just the Fddshow Multi-Format Decoder filter from here
witch also is in the k-lite pack
have fun
[ This Message was edited by: Ragglock on 2006-01-27 04:22 ]
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LOVE the smell of human flesh in the morning smells like MVictory
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2006-01-27 04:36
Yeh Fire, a few years back it was all the rage to put "HARDWARE DVD PLAYBACK SUPPORT" on your graphics card packaging... Didn't really bother me though.. My Geforce 2 MX did its job (Best budget card EVER) 
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