Help for the technophobe?

[MinnieQuill]

Right, now most of you are going to laugh at this, but here goes anyway.

How do you get stills from a DVD/youtube video and then save them a picture file? I saw this great movie (well, not great - corny as hell but I am a bit sick of deep and meaningful movies lately) and there's this great kiss in it that I want to somehow enlargeand print because I'm making a collage of photos, drawn pictures, stills (hopefully); basically a whole mass of stuff because I'm moving and the place I'm going to has lots of pastel colours and I love bright, woah! stuff (my favourite colour is blood-red for heaven's sake!) The point is, I want a big thing that shouts 'HELLO, WELCOME TO THE ABYSS'; and I need that still in it for the collage to work.

I also need it for a painting I'm doing; again a collage sort of thing (hard to explain) which is in shades of red (big surprise) and collates a big bunch of stuff. Something in a corner that relates to the next bit which kind of blurs into that bit of the painting and so on and so forth. It's a big one so I need a big picture (bloody 3m x 2m canvas).

Can anyone help? I've tried and it just doesn't work.

[beMMADfabulous]

Okay, what I do is pause the DVD/YouTube video while I'm watching the scene I want and hit "Print Screen" (actually abbrieviated "PrtSc" on my keyboard, so you'll figure it out, I'm sure). After that, I go to my Paint program and click "Paste." It will then, of course paste your entire screen shot onto your Paint program or whatever program you choose to use. Then, you simple use the "Select" tool (or, again, whatever you use) to crop out what part of the picture you need.


That's how I do it, and it's very simple. I'm sure people do it different ways, but that's how I learned it, and it works for me. If you need anymore help, just ask.

[StormAngel]

What I do for youtube vids is the same as what beMMADfabulous suggested. For dvds playing in a media player (i.e realplayer, windows media player, vlc player), (I assume you're running windows) I usually set my computer graphics card to not accelerate at all. Right click on your desktop, select properties, then click on the 'Settings' tab. Click on advance and go to the 'troubleshoot' tab. You should see something like 'Hardware acceleration' there, set it to the lowest level i.e none. Then save the changes and play the dvd again. Press printscreen (prtscr or something like that. I'm using a logitech keyboard) to save a screenshot. Then I would go to Paint or any other image manipulation program and click paste (or ctrl v) Then you could use the select tool to select the part of the pic you want.

umm... that's how I usually save screen captures from my dvds. I'm certain that there's a program that helps you do that somewhere on the net... ;D

[MinnieQuill]

Okay, this is for both of you. I love you, I love you, I love you, etcetera. *kisses on both cheeks*

It worked like a charm; honestly, I can't thank you enough. Now I have the perfect not-quite-centre but to the left piece for my mega-painting!!!!!!!!!! *hugs*

[beMMADfabulous]

Yay, I'm glad I could be of some help!

[StormAngel]

Yay! *cheers* I'm glad I could help. ;D