@#$!%& Macromedia protection

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Here I am, the happy winner of the guess the movie thread, I have nice DVD from which I want to extract a few screenshots, and...

1st try: my main PC which is a nice an powerful quadcore beast I use to play FPS games, burn movies and to connect to the SQL database I work with. I have a version of PowerDVD installed, sure it should work, right? Wrong, I don't remember where the heck the key is and I can't use the bloody SW. Well, there's VLC free and all, sure I can use that. Nope, something is wrong with it because while it plays the movie it crashes while trying to do the screen capture. (Why DVD Shrink doesn't have a screenshot function?)

2nd try: older celeron Compaq laptop with Intervideo which loads but apparently is incapable of playing a movie (!).

3rd try: I have a nice and shiny new Dell laptop with Vista ( ) that surely is up to the task. Mmm, media player plays the movie but no screen capture option

4th try: lets try the alternative. I just installed Ubuntu 8.10 in my son's computer. I already know that it doesn't come with the codecs to play almost anything so I try to install them. Totem plays the menu but fails on the movie (I supposedly installed libdvdcss2 but apparently isn't working. I'm hating the 'deferred processing' thing). Could it be that VLC will work eventually (still installing...).

Ok, so PowerDVD works on my main laptop (a dual core Acer) and now I'm taking them with it although it sometimes decides not to do so. 

Why the hell is so bloody hard to take a pic of a DVD I own and paid for?!?!?! How is it possible that if I made a copy removing the bloody macrovision I can do it in Totem without problems?!?!?!?!

Edit: I finally made it work in VLC-Ubuntu, it wasn't intuitive, it saved who-knows-where until I configured the folder, closed and opened it again. As much as I hate to admit even as beautiful the latest version of Ubuntu works you still need to be a pro to make it do all the stuff. 

[beagle]

3rd try: I have a nice and shiny new Dell laptop with Vista ( ) that surely is up to the task. Mmm, media player plays the movie but no screen capture option

This works fine for me in either Media Player or WinDVD BD for VAIO on DVDs that say they are protected:

Play movie.

Run "Snipping Tool" (this will freeze the screen to let you select the region by cursor drag).

Save captured image from Snipping Tool as a jpg/png whatever.


I think Snipping tool may be disabled by some OEMs (if so, turn on Tablet PC optional components in Windows features).

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

Pause the frame you want, hit the button that says "PrtSc" and open whatever editor you want--paint, GIMP, etc. Paste it into it, fix as needed, save to photobucket or whatever, and [img] it into your post.

[beagle]

Yep, that should work with Media Player. May not work with *all* others (might be wrong on this) depending how they do video.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Haven't tried that on Vista, but generally in XP on all players that doesn't work (that's living proof of macrovision at 'work'). In any case that Vista lappie will be off my premises soon enough (I'll leave the task of streamline XP on it to the owner).

I'll do it in Ubuntu from now on. 

[beagle]

Hippy